Opinion Martin Regg Cohn: At 75, the greatest threats to Israeli democracy are from within
Today, its contortions are all about the democratic process for Israelis.
“Everyone expected the most right-wing, the most religious government in Israel’s history … to incorporate the territories into Israel proper, to impose more religion,” Kaplan Sommer told the audience. “But I don’t think anyone expected them to … change the rules of the game — change the basic structure of Israeli government.”
The response on the streets, plus public admonitions from U.S. President Joe Biden, gave the prime minister pause. Netanyahu reluctantly agreed to a respite, but his far-right coalition partners insist they will persist. Within months of arriving in Jerusalem to take over the Toronto Star’s Middle East Bureau, shortly before Israel’s 50th anniversary, I found myself covering the assassination of then-prime minister Yitzhak Rabin . I reminded the audience that Israel was at war with itself, then as now, with Netanyahu similarly accused of exploiting intolerance in a climate of incitement.
I pointed out that Hungarian-Canadians might be holding a vigil of their own down the street to lament democratic norms being upturned by authoritarian impulses in Budapest. So could Brazilian-Canadians, who watched the democratic drift in Brasilia in recent years.
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