Is it possible for Israelis to overcome the differences that nearly tore the country apart before the Palestinian Arab invasion and terrorist attacks on Oct. 7, 2023?
JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin points out that the divisive debate about judicial reform, which helped encourage Hamas to strike that black Shabbat, was part of a culture war that pits liberal secular elites against the religious and nationalist communities that they think shouldn’t be allowed to govern, and which is still simmering.
He’s joined in this week’s episode of “Think Twice” by Israeli historian and activist Yoav Heller, the leader of the Fourth Quarter movement that is trying to transcend this divide. Created in 2022 as a reaction to the four stalemated elections that took place after 2019, the group—whose name references the effort to ensure that the Jewish state survives past its 100th birthday—seeks to bring Israelis from across the political, ethnic and religious spectrum together.
A former journalist and historian of the Holocaust, Heller says the point of the Fourth Quarter, which, he notes, has hundreds of thousands of members, is to allow Israelis from different communities to experience each other’s pain rather than just blaming each other for the nation’s problems. In particular, he wants to build support for a party he may or may not lead that will be pledged only to serve in a unity government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud, and his centrist and left-wing opponents.
Heller is a critic of Netanyahu but believes that if the prime minister wins re-election, even those who have said they will never serve with him should join with him to form a unity coalition. Indeed, he is critical of those parties for not agreeing to serve with Netanyahu after Oct. 7.
Netanyahu’s efforts to reform the out-of-control and all-powerful Israeli judiciary have been contentious to the point where the government’s critics were prepared to tear the country apart during most of 2023. That may very well have encouraged Hamas to attack on Oct. 7. The Fourth Quarter’s platform features support for judicial reform, albeit in a manner that Heller claims will offer consensus rather than one side of the political divide triumphing over the other.
According to Heller, the point of the group isn’t just politics. Its real purpose is to awaken a higher degree of civic engagement, volunteerism and local philanthropy among Israelis. Only by creating a communal spirit can seemingly unsolvable problems be solved, allowing the Jewish state, unlike previous Jewish commonwealths more than two millennia ago, to survive into a second century.
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