Ilan Z. Baron and Ilai Z. Saltzman
At Israel’s creation, in May 1948, its founders envisioned a country defined by humanist values and one that upheld international law. The Declaration of Independence, Israel’s founding document, insisted that the state “will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race, or sex” and that it would “be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.” But from the very beginning, this vision was never fulfilled—after all, for nearly two decades after the signing of the declaration, Palestinians in Israel lived under martial law. Israeli society has never been able to resolve the contradiction between the universalist appeal of the declaration’s ideals and the narrower urgency of the founding of Israel as a Jewish state to protect the Jewish people.
Over the decades, this intrinsic contradiction has surfaced again and again, creating political upheavals that have shaped and reshaped Israeli society and politics—without ever resolving the contradiction. But now the war in Gaza and the judicial crisis that preceded it have made it harder than ever to go on this way, pushing Israel to a breaking point.
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