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The War on Israeli Modernity

A coalition with Ben Gvir will unravel the social fabric and destroy Netanyahu's legacy as an economic reformer who secured the country's place among the nations.
Meir Kahane 1991 Denver Post/Getty Images
Meir Kahane 1991 Denver Post/Getty Images
Yossi Klein Halevi is a Senior Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. Together with Imam Abdullah Antepli of Duke University and Jennifer Raskas, he co-directs the Institute’s Muslim Leadership Initiative. Yossi is the author of the New York Times bestseller, Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor and co-host with Donniel Hartman and Elana Stein Hain of the Institute’s award-winning podcast, For Heaven’s Sake. He is also the author of Like Dreamers: The Story of the Israeli

“One of our responsibilities as custodians of this land is to rein in religious extremism, its uncontrolled passions and outrages, whether from Hamas and Islamic Jihad or from within our own midst. Giving power to Ben Gvir would betray that sacred trust.

Our ability to remain a decent nation despite relentless pressures that would have driven other societies to madness is one of the glories of the state of Israel. Those who would criminalize Israel and turn it into the sum of its failures erase the context in which Israel struggles to find its balance between moral imperative and relentless threat. The Israeli far right and the anti-Zionist left are united in their contempt for Israel’s heroic struggle for balance. Ben Gvir would abandon that struggle and turn us into a state driven by hatred and vengeance and justified by messianic bombast.”

Read the full essay in Times of Israel.

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The End of Policy Substance in Israel Politics