After Independence Day, Israel faces its biggest test: Unity - opinion

Protests and political arguments are not necessarily weaknesses. If kept within accepted limits, they can be strengths. Democracies argue. Free societies are noisy. Israel, perhaps more than most, has always lived through vigorous internal debate.

Yet, today, there seems to be no limit as to how far political insurrection can go. The alternative ceremony projected not merely an alternative celebration, but an alternative governing authority and rejection of the democratically elected government. That is why my depression is so severe, because I cannot understand where we go from here.

Traditionally, the period following Independence Day is a fitting moment to ask a harder question: Why does Israel so often seem most united only when facing an external threat, and most divided when confronting itself?

External enemies often create what politics struggles to produce: cohesion.

Yet when the immediate danger recedes, internal fractures reemerge with extraordinary force. What is frightening now is that after several years of one of the worst continuing wars Israel has fought on multiple fronts, our cohesion has not reappeared as strongly as in the past. This clear and present danger to our future survival is more significant than the dangers posed by our enemies.

The erosion of national cohesion in recent years was sharply visible in the struggle over judicial reform and the broader confrontation between the elected government and the judiciary. One side argued a straightforward democratic principle: a government fairly elected by the public must be allowed to govern. The other argued an equally serious democratic principle: elected power must be constrained by independent institutions that protect the rule of law and minority rights.

Both arguments contain truth. But the battle became something larger than a constitutional dispute. It became a national identity struggle.

My wife signed it. I refused.

Not because I lacked sympathy for the frustration, but because sovereign states should not selectively invite foreign powers to referee domestic governance disputes. Today, one may welcome intervention from a friendly administration. Tomorrow, another may arrive with priorities far less comfortable.

That such a petition gained momentum revealed something serious: many citizens no longer believed Israel’s own institutions could resolve Israel’s own disagreements.

This loss of confidence was matched by something equally troubling: refusalism. During the crisis, former generals, reservists, pilots, and public figures openly discussed or supported refusal to serve as a form of protest.

Whether one agreed with their cause or not, the signal projected outward was dangerous: an internal fracture in a country whose deterrence depends heavily on perceived unity and readiness.

Many Israelis believe those scenes were studied carefully by Iran, Qatar, and Hamas before October 7. Whether fully provable or not is almost secondary. Adversaries watch national cohesion. They monitor morale, discipline, and social trust as carefully as they study troop movements and military capabilities.

Deterrence is psychological as much as military.

This points to the deeper challenge now facing Israel in the post-Independence Day moment. If external threats are what repeatedly restore unity, then unity is being activated by crisis rather than sustained by civic strength. That is not a healthy long-term model.

Israel should not need enemies to survive. It needs stronger internal mechanisms that allow intense disagreement without social rupture. It needs broader civic trust. It needs rules of democratic engagement accepted by winners and losers alike. It needs a shared language for disputes over power, identity, and institutions.

Because today, Israelis are often not merely debating policy. We are debating first principles: What kind of state is this? Where does sovereignty reside? What is the balance between majority rule and judicial restraint? How should Jewish identity and democratic governance coexist?

These are legitimate questions. They are necessary questions. But when every disagreement becomes existential, society exhausts itself.

At a time when antisemitism is rising sharply around the world, it is striking that Israelis can still be so willing to turn inward against one another. A country founded to restore Jewish sovereignty must be careful not to erode social sovereignty from within.