The Munk Debates Podcast - Munk Dialogue with Vivian Bercovici: Israel in crisis

Episode Date: March 13, 2023

Israel is facing its biggest internal confrontation since its founding in 1948. Army reservists are refusing to be called in to serve. Former Mossad chiefs are denouncing the government. Hundreds of thousands of protesters are taking to the streets. And businesses are fleeing the country en masse. What precipitated this conflict? What’s at stake? And can Israel remain a liberal democracy under Benjamin Netanyahu’s extremist coalition and the judicial reforms they are hoping to pass? Vivian Bercovici is the former Canadian ambassador to Israel, and the founder of State of Tel Aviv, a weekly newsletter and podcast focusing on Israel and the Middle East. She joins us from Tel Aviv for a far reaching conversation about how competing visions over Israel’s future could threaten its very existence.   The host of the Munk Debates is Rudyard Griffiths - @rudyardg.   Tweet your comments about this episode to @munkdebate or comment on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/munkdebates/ To sign up for a weekly email reminder for this podcast, send an email to [e-mail].   To support civil and substantive debate on the big questions of the day, consider becoming a Munk Member at https://munkdebates.com/membership Members receive access to our 10+ year library of great debates in HD video, a free Munk Debates book, newsletter and ticketing privileges at our live events. This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue - https://munkdebates.com/ Senior Producer: Ricki Gurwitz Become a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When you're a journalist and people don't trust you, it's always your fault. These people need to be represented. They are Canadian. They deserve to have a voice and a seat at the table. It is time to go back to the office, and the time is now. Russia had reasons to be concerned. They had reasons to be fearful. We're at an absolute turning point in reproduction. This is the problem with realism. They just treat all countries the same. They don't distinguish between dictatorships and democracy. Hello, monk listeners. Rudyard Griffith here, your host and moderator. Welcome to this, our continuing conversations called the monk dialogues. These are in-depth questions and answers of some of the world's sharpest minds and brightest thinkers. We go deep into the big issues that are transforming our world and shaping our future on each and every monk dialogue. Well, Israel is facing today maybe one of the biggest tests of its democracy since its founding with hundreds of thousands of people. pouring out onto the streets to protest,

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's new right-wing coalition government and its plans to radically reform and change Israel's high court. What is the future trajectory of this exceptional moment in Israeli politics? What's at stake? Can the country remain a liberal democracy if the Netanyahu government is successful in pushing through its reform? forms. Vivian Berkovich is a former lawyer, Trontonian, and Canadian ambassador to Israel. She's the founder of the newsletter and podcasts, the state of Tel Aviv. She joins us from Tel Aviv

during a week of outsized protests for a conversation about how these different competing visions over the future of Israel are vying against each other and what this all means for its future existence. Vivian, welcome to the Monk Dialogues. Thank you so much, Rudyard. It's a pleasure to be here. Well, I'm really looking forward to this conversation. There's so much going on in Israel right now that we need to wrap our minds around. And the added benefit is a lot of the controversy, the debate, the crisis that Israel may be hurtling towards has to deal with your high court. And as a Canadian, as Canada's former ambassador, Israel, you're someone who really understand. Canada's high court. And you're the ideal guest for us to unpack this kind of complex,

fast evolving situation. So Vivian, that's where I want to start. I think a lot of us are uninitiated in terms of the core, the essence of this explosion of public anger and protest in Israel. What's driving it? What's happening with Israel's high court? What's at stake? Well, I think that you said at the beginning that we may be hurtling towards some kind of, I don't know if disaster is the word you used, I would suggest that we're in the middle of it already. What's at stake is liberal democracy, is the future of Israel as a liberal democratic state. Because the very widespread sentiment is that should these so-called reforms, pass that Israel will no longer be a true democracy. I mean, the polite phrase that's used these days is it would become an illiberal democracy a la Poland or Hungary. But you know, you're either pregnant or you're not, you're a democracy or you're not. And there's widespread anger, fury, dismay that this is happening and why it's happening. So,

So, you know, I mean, you ask what's going on? What are people so angry about? The judicial reform was really the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. But this isn't just about judicial reform. This is decades of social and political mismanagement just kind of that's been festering and building and coming home to roost. So let's unpack that. there's a sense here, Vivian, that what's happened here is some deeper fault lines have been exposed in Israeli societies. You say issues that were either postponed or delayed that have now

come to the fore and it seems to be a fault line between a party of Benjamin Netanyahu right now, which has gone to the kind of extreme right, the far right, that embodies a lot of the values, the attitudes towards the state in an ultra-orthodox and kind of settler communities, and that their interests of that group represented by Netanyahu and his party at this moment are facing off against what you might consider the more traditional kind of power structures in Israeli society, arguably the power structures that have built the Israeli state. Is it fair to say that in some ways the stakes are that big, the fault line is that large? this is about a societal kind of face-off between competing visions over Israel's future.

Absolutely. I think, though, I mean, I'm glad you've sort of set the table, and now I'm going to lay out the cutlery. The fault lines are huge, and there are many. And what's at stake again, as you quite rightly point out, is the fundamental integrity of liberal. democracy in Israel. What's happened, though, and this kind of weird government that we find that we have with Likud being the largest party, right, in this so-called coalition. And they like to call themselves a kind of alliance, a coalition, a coalescence of right-wing interests. They love to use the term. We're a right-wing government. There's really nothing right-wing about this government. you've got Likud, which traditionally and historically has been a secular kind of really big tent, secular, traditional, even orthodox, but a liberal democratic party that just stands for all of the kinds of

the principles that I expect you and I would like to see in any democracy. But Likud has lost its way, and there are a number of reasons for that. And it shows part of it is because of the continuing. ongoing extreme pressure than at Njahou's under. He is in the in the midst of a criminal trial for corruption. I'll get into why that takes three years in a place like Israel. But there is this ongoing trial. Clearly he wants to avoid any consequences, you know, whether that's going to jail or being removed from office, or maybe the charges are all trumped up as he says. But what's happened in Lycud is, in my view, the real quality members of the Likud party,

and in the government have defected. And they formed other parties, they've joined with other parties, or they've left. And what's around Benjamin Netanyahu these days is not the cream. It just isn't. So Likud, nobody really knows what they stand for anymore other than we want to retain power and at any cost. So what are the other major blocks in the so-called right-wing alliance? we have two large parties that represent the ultra-Orthodox. And this is a 12% cohort of the population that is probably going to be about 15% or 16% by 2030.

Extremely religious. The men generally do not work. Some of the women do. They believe that the righteous way to live is to study the 24. Torah, the Jewish religious books and interpretations all day long. Poverty rates are high. They do not study secular subjects like math and science and English. And the fertility rate in this community is about eight per family.

And they also do not serve in the Army or National Service. And out of these 64 seats in this coalition, the ultra-Orthodox now control 18. That's a lot. and they are probably the main driver of one aspect of the judicial reform that I personally find most horrific, but we can get into that in a moment. And the last big chunk of this coalition is what's called the religious Zionist parties. And there are three of them in this coalition. They're messianists. They're extremists.

They do work. They do serve in the army, but they hold very, very extreme views. And another thing that's important to point out is the ultra-Orthodox are not Zionists. And fast, most of them oppose the existence of the state of Israel. And their view, in their view, only the Messiah, you know, if and when he should come, because he definitely is a he in their view. Only when the Messiah comes can God create this state of Israel. So what we live in today is some kind of abomination that they'll tolerate as long as we maintain their lifestyle.

And so these kinds of pressures where you have a shrinking number of the population, a shrinking percentage of the population, doing Army service, you know, working in the general economy, paying taxes, that you have the smaller, it's shrinking demographic and there's tremendous anger that this government and this particular constitution of the government is going to dismantle our liberal democracy. It's just like there's this expression in Hebrew,

ad can, up to this point. And then like the lid has just blown off the pot. People are going crazy. and for good reason. Give us a sense, Vivian, of the scale of the protests here and how the government is responding to them because the longstanding perception is that Israel is a viable and vibrant democracy. And if you are truly seeing protests on the scale that,

at least I pick up through the BBC or international media, surely, Vivian, this would cause the government an intense amount of pressure to find compromise, to back off these kind of extreme positions that are driven, as you say, by many of these extreme members of their governing coalition. So it's a fast, look, first of all, to give you a sense of the scale, the momentum, the size of the demonstrations, it changes honestly by the minute. Today is the second so-called day of disruption. It's Thursday.

It's the end of the work week in Israel. Our weekend is Friday, Saturday. There are so many different groups that are organizing demonstrations. They are unbelievably well organized now. You got to understand, this is a culture where everybody serves in the army. So it's kind of, you know, famously kind of chaotic here and everybody's kind of yelling. And it is. But they know how to follow orders when it becomes important.

They really know how to fall in line. So it's been extraordinary. It started out, gosh, the first one was on a Saturday night eight or nine weeks ago. And about 150,000 people showed up in the pouring rain in Tel Aviv to protest. This was the first one. And I happened to be there. And you have to understand that Israelis are pretty tough. But when it comes to bad weather, they are not at all.

So, you know, this sea of umbrellas, just that they were out there was something to behold. each week, things have become more and more intense, bigger and bigger, spread throughout the country. For a few weeks, the government was calling all of the demonstrators, myself included, leftists, anarchists, terrorists. And as one former IDF chief of staff said, every time you call us terrorists, you ensure that another 100,000 will come out. Who's organizing, leading? Who is the face of these protests? five former chiefs of police. I can't count all the former IDF chiefs of staff,

ministers of defense, Nobel laureates, economists, CEOs of, you know, multi-billion-dollar startups, the heads of all the major banks in Israel. I could go on and on and on. This is not a bunch of nutters. I was just on TV a few minutes before we began our conversation, watching a former IDF chief of staff and minister of defense with whom I interacted when I was ambassador. His name is Moshe Yal-Lon. And he is pretty, he's a solidly-cundick,

like a solidly-cundick. And he was speaking in very distressing terms that, you know, we're past, we've tripped the wire. We're past the point of no return. This is a former IDF chief of staff saying, of course we have to serve, of course our reserve soldiers have to come show up for duty and our pilots, but I understand why they're not.

I mean, there's nothing more important in this country than in the Army and the Air Force. And that's one of the things that we've seen recently is that they've been resisting call up for reserve duty. And that would be the end of this country. So you ask also the question, and I think this is really interesting. talking about this for two months with various people. I had a really conversation today with someone who's very plugged into Likud. And I asked him, you know, they're under enormous pressure. We know that Bibi's getting phone calls constantly, both, you know, from Israel and from America.

I think that, you know, Bibi, who is a magician and brilliant and there is no more masterful politician than him. he's out-bibied himself. He has nowhere to turn. He's lied to too many people in his own party. He's lied to too many people in coalitions. Nobody trusts him. His own party members have a knife to his throat.

We know that he's been having conversations within his party and saying, come on, guys, maybe we should just walk this back a little compromise, you know, so we can carry on and stay in power. And his minister of justice, who's driving this like a bulldoze, said, no, I'll step down. And Bibi doesn't really have anyone to back him up anymore. Hey, Monk podcast listeners, I wanted to let you know about our other weekly audio program. It's called Friday Focus. And hey, guess what? It comes out each and every Friday. It's half an hour long and it provides you with a masterclass on international events, all the big issues and ideas

shaping our world. We've got the that for you each and every Friday here at the Monk Debates. Simply access via our website, triplew monkdebates.com. Click on Friday Focus in the top right navigation. You'll get all the details or check out a sample of the program in the same podcast feed as the main Monk Debates podcast. I hope you'll join us for the next edition of the Friday Focus podcast. Now back to our program. So Vivian, people are talking about civil war. What does that mean in the Israeli context? Because, you know, a civil war can happen within civil society. In worst case scenarios, it's something that involves violence and violence at scale between, you know,

different groups. What is your sense of where this goes if the government, as it seems right now, pushes these changes through, which all that are required simply is a vote in the Knesset. There's no complicated, you know, amending formula like the Canadian Constitution to affect these changes. So it's very possible, is it not, Vivian, that this legislation will pass and it will pass sooner or not later? That's the million dollar question that we're all waiting to find out.

If this legislation does pass, it still has to be signed into law by the president. That is Isaac Herzog, who is probably the most reasonable person you will ever come across in every kind of, you know, sense of the word. And he last weekend made a speech in which he was just despairing. And he was saying, you know, like my fellow Israelis were at the abyss. You know, we're about to fall into the abyss. Like people are really, they're freaked out. This is really, really serious. So you're saying, okay, so what happens?

Goes to a vote. Everybody ignores the chaos in society at the moment, controlled chaos, but still chaos. what happens? Well, one possibility is that Herzog refuses to sign it into law. He says, I'm sorry, I'm the president, this is going to, this is about regime change. It's not some sort of legal reform. That's a possibility. I think what's more likely to happen, and I hope happens, is either that there will be some kind of compromise, negotiated. But I think what's more likely to happen is that all we need are five or six members of this coalition. They have a 64 majority. All we need is for them to come down to 59

to defect and say we're no longer supporting this coalition. This is what Ariel Sharon did. This kind of thing happens all the time in Israeli politics. And then the government effectively false. And, you know, it may sound crazy that I'm sitting here crossing my fingers for a sixth election in whatever three or three and a half years, but I am because I think that things have become so serious and so frightening that we would actually have a proper debate and national discussion about important issues this time. So that's what I think is most likely to happen. And I can tell you from speaking with people over the last few days that there is, significant dissent within Likud.

And that would be the best outcome. And I think it's the most likely outcome that we'll have five defections from that party. Makes sense. You mentioned earlier that there are IDF members, primarily reservists, but I think it's important to understand that Israel, you know, reservists are not just casual weekend warriors. These are people that are essential to the country's national security. that in many cases in terms of the Israeli Air Force are, you know,

crack pilots that are relied upon by the IDF to carry on missions in Syria, Iran, and elsewhere. You're starting to see, you know, senior cadres within this reservist group, indicating that they feel that they could no longer accept and act on the orders of what to them would be an illegitimate government in light of these laws being passed and the court reformed or defenestrated along the lines of of Lakud and Netanyahu's prescribed plan. Is there a role here, Vivendi, is there any expectation that the military quietly can exert authority over Netanyahu over his government in terms of probably being the single most important institution in Israeli society. And if they're not happy and if they're worried about this national security implications of this,

surely that becomes a break, a red line that the Netanyahu government trips over and falls on. I think that those conversations and that pressure is being applied in a very, very extreme in a very extreme way now. and has been for some time. It's significant that the current, the Minister of Defense, Joav Galant, who was the chief of staff previously, he's been quiet.

He's been very quiet throughout all of this. And what that says to me is that he's kind of holding himself in reserve so he could step up as some kind of compromise, you know, mediator, representative middle person to kind of broker some sort of consensus in the future. But right now we also know that he's very unhappy with the fact that Netanyahu has, in effect, split the command, the central command of the IDF.

He's kind of given a chunk to one of his extremist cabinet ministers and another chunk to another. This has already caused huge problems in terms of terrorism and Jews. Jewish vigilante attacks, which are also terrorism. So yes, Netanyahu and the government are under extreme pressure to ensure that this critical, fundamental, most trusted institution that is the glue of this country, both in terms of social cohesion, but as you quite rightly point out in terms of actual territorial security and integrity, it cannot fall apart.

If we lose that, we've lost. And it was just about a week ago when a squadron of super elite Air Force pilots were called up for reserve duty and they said that they were refusing to do one day of training. Now, they're going for the rest of their reserve duty. It's very kind of, you know, symbolic what they're doing. important. These guys, men and women now, they are the cream of society and they serve most of them 30 to 60 days a year of reserve duty. That means they leave their families, they leave their jobs, they don't get paid, and they are tremendously important to the security of this country.

So, you know, when they said we're doing this, that really sent a shockway through the country, you know, because these people understand their duty and how important it is. There have been a number of former commanders of the Air Force who have been on interviews on TV this week, and they've been asked the question over and over, what happens if? I mean, you know, what happens if we have to strike Iran, Syria, what happens if we are attacked? And they all said, if they are required, if it's necessary for national security, they will absolutely do their duty. We're not concerned about that.

But they're being pushed to such a degree that they have to make this statement that I expect for them psychologically is just tearing them apart. And there's one chunk of the sort of so-called, there's a word in Hebrew, the refusers it translates into. There's also the elite combat troops.

I mean, you know, Sayyert-Modakal is an elite combat unit that actually Bibi served in for five years. His brother, Yoni Netanyahu, who fell in the Antebbe raid in 1976, who is a national hero, was also in Sayre Ahmadqal. And this, I'm told, hits Bibi very, very hard because this is his unit. When your unit in the army turns on you,

that hits very, very deeply here. So that should be a very, very interesting discussion. And I would not for a moment suggest that Netanyahu is not feeling the pressure. He's under extraordinary pressure. I just don't think he has a solution right now. Vivian, let's say this law is blocked for one of the scenarios, for reasons of one of the scenarios we've discussed. Can Humpty Dumpty be put back together on the other end?

Because I've heard an argument, I like your view on this, that many of those elite units and much of the elite bureaucracy in Israel consists of the Ascanazi community. And I've heard analysis that that community is now in its own crisis, that it feels that for the first time, for lack of a better expression, it's being othered by the rest of Israel, by this orthodox, ultra-Orthodox community by the settler community. And there's a crisis going on within the kind of Ascanazi elite of Israel that traditionally have been the architects of the Israeli state. And that there's a worry here, a concern that however this is resolved, or whatever happens in the future, there are now cleavages in Israel that could become permanent and could create ongoing anxiety and

insecurity within these different communities, maybe always pre-existed in the settler or ultra-Orthodox community. Anxiety is about identity and their place in Israel. But now for the first time, this elite Ascanazi community is feeling. that it's having a hard time seeing its future in Israel in the same way that it was just assumed, you know, for the better part of three generations. Yeah, I think that I'd love to know who briefed you on that particular approach, but that is straight out of the playbook of the religious Zionist camp.

Their preferred narrative is that this is a race war. And that, as you say, the Ashkenaz Jews, people like, me, full disclosure, super privileged of East European descent primarily, that we have traditionally controlled the country, populated the elite army institutions, the Air Force, corporations, you name it. That was true about 30 or 40 years ago, you know, the whole, that the Ashkenaz were dominant and predominant in this country. To suggest that today, the same. The same reality holds is just it's nonsensical. It's just not true. You know, 30, 40 years ago also, if an Ashkenau's Jew married a Middle Eastern Jew, it was like, it was like the families did

know how to handle it, you know. And it's everything's all mixed up right now. I think that that's a very unfortunate attempt to create some kind of, you know, faux race war or conflict in Israel that really doesn't exist. And, you know, the irony of it is that most of the settlers are Ashkenaz. That's, you know, many of them are actually American Ashkenaz, American origin. So, no, I give absolutely no credence to that. And if you also look at, and there's statistics on this, this isn't just me sort of, you know, making some kind of ideological point because I don't have anything vested in going against the truth, but I've seen data. So when you look at the IDF, for example, and the Air Force generals are talking about this on TV every day, they don't care if you're

Ethiopian Mizrahi, which is Middle Eastern. All they look at are your psychometric scores and your physical profiles. These units just take the most intelligent, super fit, physical. fit, whatever it is, they get the cream, they get the most skilled for their particular unit, and they could care less about anything else. And the fact is, they are not dominated by the Ashkenaz. If anything, if anything, the elite units probably have a disproportionate number of religious Zionist, slash, in my view, many of them are extremists in their units. So, I mean, I just, I just think that I had an argument the other day. I was speaking with someone who was very close to Atmar Banfair,

who was really extreme. And he is currently the Minister of National Security. He has significant authority with respect to police. And this individual said that, you know, he couldn't believe that I was portraying them as extremists. And they didn't understand the rule of law and had no regard for the rule of law. And really, Vivian, don't you see, this is all about you Ashkenaz not wanting to lose your power? I said, no, I don't see it.

I walk in the streets, I don't see it. I go to the demonstrations. I don't see it. Everybody's there. Important point. I want to try one other contrarian argument out on you. It brings Canada into this conversation. There are critics of the Israeli High Court that say, look, it is disproportionately powerful.

It's ambit and authority over the legislature and Israeli society is outsized compared to other democracies. And look at Canada. Canada has a notwithstanding clause. It has checks and balances on the court. And all Israel's doing, all the Netanyahu government is trying to accomplish here, is to move Israel in line with the rest of the modern democracies of the 21st. century and have a court that has to have a relationship with a legislature that acknowledges some parliamentary supremacy on the behalf of the Knesset. What's your take on that? You know the Canadian,

you know the Canadian context well, and you know that Canada has been raised in this conversation in this debate in Israel. Yes. And I also know from direct experience that there is a very close relationship between the High Court of Canada and the High Court at Israel, very regular and intense working meetings. And the Israeli High Court has traditionally looked to Canada as a model jurisdiction with respect to how to handle and manage minority rights. So there's an unusually strong relationship there. But just step back. I agree, and I think every Israeli agrees that judicial reform here is badly needed, that the Israeli Supreme Court has been activists in the extreme and that we need new sort of rules of the game. But this reform is not going to address that

in any way. So why do I say that? What this reform is doing are three main things. Number one, totally politicizing the appointments of any judge at any level. Now, you know, judicial appointments are always politicized, but it's a matter of how politicized. And the elected officials sitting in the Kness at the legislature would have total control over who would sit on the Israeli Supreme Court. Number one. Number two, they would pass a law stripping the court of the right to judicially review any legislation, any law, or to interpret it in any way. So, you know, many of us are sitting here asking, why do we even have a court? What do we need it for? Because they're not going to be doing anything. You should see some of the editorial cartoons on this.

And this is where the rubber really hits the road. And I wrote about this a couple of weeks ago. What this is about is the override clause, what we call the notwithstanding. clause in Canada. What the override clause that they would like to pass, what it states is that if 61 members of Knesset vote, yay, that the law passes. So that means there could be, you know, and Simharatman, who is driving this legislation through the constitutional law and justice committee was asked just the other day in committee. So if someone, if the Knesset, wanted to pass a law, introduce a law that said, we're from now on, we're only going to have elections every 10 years. And you had 61 votes. That would pass, right? He said, well, yeah,

but we're not going to do that. Trust us. And I say, no, actually, I won't trust you. That's not what government is. That's not what democracy is. So we have this override with 61. Then what happens? In Canada, you've got a second. You've got the Supreme Court. You've got a whole bunch of checks and balances. In Israel, you've got nothing. There are no checks and balances. Everything sits and rests with those 61 members of Knesset. And in fact, when Bibi was interviewed about a month ago or so by Jake Tapper on CNN, and he pushed him. And Tapper asked him, what about the checks and balances? And Bibi said, ah, there's lots of checks and balances. Don't worry about it. There aren't.

So, you know, Netanyahu in that interview with Tapper also really, he said, look, you know, I mean, all we're doing is trying to kind of make our democracy stronger and better and more robust. And he actually says, you know, let me tell you something. Look at Canada. Would you say that that's not a democracy? Of course not. They have the same clause. Well, news flash, we don't have the same clause. It's a very different clause, the Canadian Outstanding Clause. It was convincing. It was. conceived under very different circumstances. It's invoked under various different circumstances. And on top of everything else in Canada, we have a much more mature democracy with checks and balances. So I think that that anyone who suggests that these so-called reforms are anything other than a soft coup, either doesn't understand how it's going to work or has a very, very hard political agenda that they want to jam through. Yeah, I think it's important to understand the notwithstanding clause does not apply to a lot of basic rights and freedoms in the Canadian Constitution. It is, you know, prescribed. And as I understand it, the Israeli legislation would get at what's called your basic law.

So literally the fundamentals of who possibly who could vote. Maybe, you know, it leads to the disenfranchisement of is Arab Israelis. It's conceivable. There are so many minorities who would be hurt intensely by this. And apropos, you know, the basic laws, the basic laws are sort of as close as a constitution, the closest thing to a constitution that we have in Israel. There are statements of principle, you know, recognizing, for example, equality, recognizing freedom of expression. But, you know, guess what? Most of the members of Knesset in this coalition do. disagree vehemently with the basic laws. And in fact, the ultra-orthodox are determined in one of their first moves to have a new basic law passed that would make it illegal to try to force ultra-orthodox Israelis to serve in the army. Wow. I mean, yeah, you can see where this goes. There have already been some crazy bills that have been introduced into the Knesset that would, you know, criminalize. if women chose to go to the Western Wall Plaza,

which is the second holiest site in Judaism, if they chose to go there and they were not, you know, attired in a very, very religiously modest way that they can be charged criminally. There's a lot of wacky stuff going on here. Not funny. So Vivian, let's end just on... Well, it kind of is funny.

I mean, you know, you do have to have a black sense. Tell me, Vivian, let's end just on what are you going to do? You're part of these protests. You have a voice in Israel. You're somebody here in Canada that we listen to. Let's say these laws are passed. What do you do? Do you stay in fight?

Do you acknowledge that Israeli democracy is something's happened? you're into a different state, a different nation. What's your plan? My plan right now is as ambiguous and unclear as the plans of many Israelis. I'll tell you what people are talking about. Everybody's talking about you have a second passport. Everybody's talking about where would you go? Am I thinking about those things?

You bet. Riskified, which is. is a tech company valued at $2 billion, just announced the other day that they are removing all assets and operations to Portugal because they're concerned that should these measures pass among other things, the government will start to limit the kinds of capital movement, the movement of capital, of money. And they might start to limit that the way illiberal democracies tend to do. I will wait and see how things pan out over the next year or two, but I will say this,

that I will not remain in a country that does not support liberal democracy and that is drifting towards becoming or becomes, an autocracy with theocratic leanings. I just everything about it goes against who I am, what I believe, and what I believe this country was meant to be, which was, you know, a liberal democracy. And not just a safe haven for Jews, but a safe haven for everyone.

This is a place, if anyone should understand the importance of treating minorities well, it's the Jewish people. And as you quite rightly point out, there are Arab minorities here. There are Arab minorities within the Arab minority. There are Jewish minorities within the Jewish minority. I just cannot abide what I'm seeing from this government. And I think that what will happen is many people like me will leave. And that will start to happen in two, three, four years.

One thing we haven't touched on that I'm just going to mention very briefly before we wrap, is the economic followed already. And it's serious. You know, I just mentioned riskified has moved out. We know of hundreds of millions of dollars that were intended to be invested in Israel, that is then the investments now deferred. We know that companies that were planning expansions are not expanding. We know that Moody's and Fitch have given Israel a warning that, you know,

you better get your act together or your credit's going to be downgraded significantly and on and on and on. The consequences for the tech innovation economy, which is so super competitive and where capital, both money and human capital, are so mobile, if this becomes an unfavorable or risky or kind of just difficult jurisdiction and unpredictable, it will be a flight of capital of every kind and talents yeah well vivian it couldn't be a higher stakes moment and you've laid it out for us beautifully so we'd love the opportunity to come back to you at some point in the future and check in see how this is played out if there are some kind of forks in the road that suggest a path of trajectory and we just we're all hoping for the very best for Israel. It's a vital beacon in the Middle East. It's a model nation. And yeah, wow, this

conversation is sobering indeed. So Vivian, thank you so much for coming on the monk dialogues today. And we'll include in our show notes, all kinds of information about Vivian's terrific substack, state of Tel Aviv, and her own forays into podcasting, which I've really enjoyed. So thanks, Vivian, again, for your time today. Thank you so much for having me. Well, that wraps up today's dialogue. I want to thank our guest, Vivian Berkovich. She certainly gave us a lot to think about. I highly recommend checking out her substack, state of Tel Aviv, and all the great podcasting she's doing directly from Israel, bringing all of us terrific on the ground coverage of this exceptional moment in Israeli politics. Well, if you have feedback or reflections on what you've just heard or any of our other podcasts, please send us an email to podcast.

at monk debates.com. Also, a reminder that our weekly current affairs podcast, Friday Focus, which comes out, yes, get that, how creative. Every Friday, it features me and Janice Stein, the founding director of the Monk School of Global Affairs, dissecting the big stories in the news each week. Take you around the world and back in 30 minutes. You can get it all as part of our Friday Focus podcast. Grab your edition right now on our website, triple-w monkdebates.com.

look for Friday focus in the top right-hand navigation and go from there. In the meantime, thank you for lending your time and attention to our efforts to bring back the art of public dialogue, one conversation at a time. I'm your host and moderator, Rudyard Griffiths. The Monk debates are a project of the Aurea and Peter and Melanie Monk Charitable Foundations.

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