Ep. 209: Will civil strife destroy Israel before its 100th birthday?

About this episode

The episode discusses the potential for civil strife in Israel and efforts to unite diverse communities ahead of the country's 100th birthday.

Is it possible for Israelis to overcome the differences that nearly tore the country apart before the Oct. 7, 2023 Palestinian Arab terror attacks? JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin points out that the divisive debate about judicial reform which helped encourage Hamas to strike on Oct. 7, 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 that 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. Heller, a former journalist and historian of the Holocaust, says the point of the Fourth Quarter, which, he says, has hundreds of thousands of members, is to allow Israelis from different communities to experience each other’s pain rather than just…

People in this episode

Host: Jonathan Tobin

Guest: Yoav Heller

Topics covered

• civil strife
• Israel
• judicial reform
• political divide
• unity government
• cultural conflict

Keywords

• Israel
• civil strife
• judicial reform
• Hamas
• unity government
• political divide
• Yoav Heller

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Fourth Quarter, Hamas, Likud

Places: Israel

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