Keeping despair at bay. I’m distraught and feeling on the verge of hopelessness about Israel’s democracy. Israel is approaching 75, a time when you’d think a democracy would have had time to mature and become entrenched. But Israel’s democracy, like those of so many other countries, is under attack. Israel is on the verge of becoming what the founders once hoped for – a nation like any other nation. It’s looking more and more like Israel is becoming a nation like all the nations in its neighborhood and some more far away – an autocratic, theocratic, racist country. But before I decided to give up, I took a look at where the United States was at 75 years old.
The US in its current form dates from 1788 when the Constitution was ratified. Seventy-five years later – in 1863 – the country was in deep into a Civil War, a conflict over human rights and the rule of law. That’s almost exactly where Israel is now, engaged in a values-defining struggle over human rights and the independence of the judiciary.
The US came out of its war with a commitment to equal rights and equal justice, not always acted upon, but at least honored in principal. I’m clinging to a thread of hope that Israel can do the same.