Although tens of thousands of protestors have been gathering night after night in Tel Aviv to express their frustration over plans to reform the Israeli judiciary, they possess little sense of direction, observes Haviv Rettig Gur. The leaders of the parliamentary opposition, meanwhile, botched a filibuster they had planned last month because the delegates involved decided to go home early. But the real problem is a deeper one, Gur writes:

It isn’t just that center-left leaders didn’t bother to show up at the early protests until public criticism forced them to. None has come forward to clarify what the fight is about. Slogans about the death of democracy aren’t sufficient. It isn’t enough to know what one doesn’t want to happen; the center-left doesn’t seem to have any idea what it does want to happen.

Much ink has been spilled in the Hebrew-language media about the growing influence of the Kohelet Policy Forum, a conservative think tank in Jerusalem with anonymous foreign donors and (to the center-left) maddeningly American habits of thought. Kohelet researchers played key roles in developing many of the new government’s policies, making the organization a bogeyman of the center-left imagination.

But this focus is a cop-out, a cover for the fact that the center-left has no equivalent policy shop of its own. It’s easier to frame the government’s policy push as a nefarious, foreign-inflected conspiracy than to respond to right-wing proposals with ideas of one’s own. On judicial or constitutional reform, economic policy, natural gas, Palestinians, Iran, and countless other questions, the center-left sometimes knows what it opposes, but can rarely articulate what it supports.

By failing to advance a serious alternative to the government’s judicial remake, the center-left’s blind resistance to all reform fails to challenge rightist ideas.

For some time, opponents of U.S support for Israel have been urging the White House to end the war in Gaza, or simply calling for a ceasefire. Douglas Feith and Lewis Libby consider what such a result would actually entail:

Ending the war immediately would allow Hamas to survive and retain military and governing power. Leaving it in the area containing the Sinai-Gaza smuggling routes would ensure that Hamas can rearm. This is why Hamas leaders now plead for a ceasefire. A ceasefire will provide some relief for Gazans today, but a prolonged ceasefire will preserve Hamas’s bloody oppression of Gaza and make future wars with Israel inevitable.

For most Gazans, even when there is no hot war, Hamas’s dictatorship is a nightmarish tyranny. Hamas rule features the torture and murder of regime opponents, official corruption, extremist indoctrination of children, and misery for the population in general. Hamas diverts foreign aid and other resources from proper uses; instead of improving life for the mass of the people, it uses the funds to fight against Palestinians and Israelis.

Moreover, a Hamas-affiliated website warned Gazans last month against cooperating with Israel in securing and delivering the truckloads of aid flowing into the Strip. It promised to deal with those who do with “an iron fist.” In other words, if Hamas remains in power, it will begin torturing, imprisoning, or murdering those it deems collaborators the moment the war ends. Thereafter, Hamas will begin planning its next attack on Israel:

Hamas’s goals are to overshadow the Palestinian Authority, win control of the West Bank, and establish Hamas leadership over the Palestinian revolution. Hamas’s ultimate aim is to spark a regional war to obliterate Israel and, as Hamas leaders steadfastly maintain, fulfill a Quranic vision of killing all Jews.

Hamas planned for corpses of Palestinian babies and mothers to serve as the mainspring of its October 7 war plan. Hamas calculated it could survive a war against a superior Israeli force and energize enemies of Israel around the world. The key to both aims was arranging for grievous Palestinian civilian losses. . . . That element of Hamas’s war plan is working impressively.