Israel’s parliamentary system produces weak governments that are increasingly liable to capture by minority parties, who have every incentive to indulge their most radical plans.

The “judicial reform” legislation, expected to change the face of Israel, has progressed rapidly and aroused widespread protests, while Israel’s enemies, from Tehran to Beirut, rejoice from afar.

Dear Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, this is a plea — a last, long-shot, desperate appeal to your patriotism, to your Zionism, to your concern for your place in history, to your conscience: Stop this madness.

Israelis who work, fight in the army, and pay taxes are wary of the new government

I recently attended the annual lunch of the UK Labour Friends of Israel, whose assembled throng was made up largely of those Jews indefatigable, courageous, or plain masochistic enough to have stuck with the party of the British left[1] through the Corbyn interregnum (or who have returned since the unquiet fall of the ancien régime) and those outlier non-Jews whose leftism incorporates Zionism – foundationally so, for some of us.

This time it’s different.

I can recall how, in 1977, when Menachem Begin and the Likud came to power after three decades of Labor Party rule, there was alarm verging on panic in some circles.

I woke up on Saturday morning, read the news from Israel that at least 50,000 Israelis had just demonstrated once more against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plans to strip the Israeli Supreme Court of its independence and put it instead under Netanyahu’s thumb — at a time when Netanyahu himself is facing corruption charges — and I asked myself a simple question: “What does President Biden think of this?”

On Israel-interested social media, complaining about Tom Friedman’s columns in the New York Times has become something of a sport.

Imagine you woke up after the 2024 U.S. presidential election and found that Donald Trump had been re-elected and chose Rudy Giuliani for attorney general, Michael Flynn for defense secretary, Steve Bannon for commerce secretary, evangelical leader James Dobson for education secretary, Proud Boys former leader Enrique Tarrio for homeland security head and Marjorie Taylor Greene for the White House spokeswoman.

“Impossible,” you would say. Well, think again.

Israel’s fifth election in four years has finally broken the deadlock, producing a decisive victory for Netanyahu and his far right and ultra-Orthodox allies.