'THESE PEOPLE DON’T KNOW WHAT THEY’RE TALKING ABOUT '

Florida bill attacking critical theory in higher education has Jewish profs worried

Opponents say bill could make teaching courses in Jewish studies impossible — and would also outlaw many other academic fields

By ANDREW LAPIN   


27 March 2023,

The Smathers Library at the University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, May 8, 2021

. (Steven Martin via Creative Commons/via JTA)

JTA — The University of Florida has more Jewish students than any other public college in the United States — and earlier this month, one of them reached out to a professor, fearing that it would no longer be possible to study Jewish topics there.

Citing a graphic that had been making the rounds on social media, the student asked if it was true that a new bill working its way through the state legislature would remove all “Jewish Studies courses, majors and minors” in the state. The graphic was shared by several people with large online followings, including comedian D.L. Hughley, who has more than 750,000 followers on Twitter.

“I love my major and I can’t imagine switching to anything else,” the student wrote, according to Norman Goda, director of the university’s Center for Jewish Studies.

Goda wasn’t able to console the student. Like other Jewish academics in Florida who spoke to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, he doesn’t know whether H.B. 999 would affect Jewish studies on the state’s college campuses. Though the bill’s author — a Republican state representative — says that won’t be the case, the bill’s language is much less clear.

That’s because the bill’s current wording would forbid the state’s public higher education institutions from teaching or offering any major or minor based in “methodology associated with Critical Theory.” That prohibition, say academics and other critics of the bill, would make teaching courses in Jewish studies impossible — and would also outlaw many other fields in higher education.

Exactly what the bill means by “critical theory” is unclear. To academics, the term refers to a tool for analyzing society and culture, created in the 1930s by German Jewish academics, that encourages people to view the world through power structures and to consider why they fall short. To political conservatives, it’s a relative of “critical race theory,” a watchword for those who want to inhibit classroom instruction about racism. An earlier version of H.B. 999 mentioned only critical race theory, not the umbrella theory.

“These people don’t know what they’re talking about,” said a Jewish faculty member at a Florida university, who requested anonymity due to fear of retaliation from the state government, regarding the lawmakers behind H.B. 999. “You’re putting people who don’t know what critical theory is, but have heard the words — and now you’re putting them in charge of universities.”

You’re putting people who don’t know what critical theory is, but have heard the words — and now you’re putting them in charge of universities

A university that completely purged such ideas from its classrooms, the anonymous faculty member said, “would be non-existent.”

The bill in question is the latest example of conservative-led state efforts to snuff out culture-war modes of thought like critical race theory and gender studies, often referred to euphemistically by lawmakers as “divisive concepts” in education. Such efforts have occasionally ensnared efforts to teach Jewish history and the Holocaust.

Attempts to legislate the classroom are particularly potent in Florida, where Republican governor Ron DeSantis, a likely presidential candidate, has frequently stated his desire to ban “woke” concepts from being taught in the state. (DeSantis has stated he will wait to see H.B. 999’s final form before he decides whether to sign it, but in a discussion with college administrators last week he continued to rail against what he called the “ideological agenda” of campus diversity, equity and inclusion programs.)

The state recently rejected the curriculum for a new Advanced Placement African-American Studies course in high schools, forcing the College Board to rework the class. Florida is also home to several active conservative “parents’ rights” groups that have lobbied to remove objectionable books and clubs from public schools.

Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis holds his son Mason as he celebrates winning reelection, at an election night party in Tampa, Florida, November 8, 2022. (Rebecca Blackwell/AP)

While most legislation in this realm to date has targeted what’s taught in K-12 public schools, this bill and other efforts in Florida have gone a step further by seeking to regulate the world of state-funded higher education — creating what critics say are new and dangerous threats to academic freedom, with broad and vague wording that leaves efforts to research and teach a variety of disciplines in doubt.

“This bill would cripple the long-standing freedom universities have to design and teach a curriculum based on the development of academic disciplines,” Cary Nelson, an emeritus professor at the University of Illinois and past president of the American Association of University Professors, who has taught multiple courses on Jewish issues, told JTA.

In a recent subcommittee hearing on the bill, Republican state Rep. Alex Andrade, who co-authored the legislation, said, “I believe that state universities should be focused on teaching students how to think, not what to think.” He said the bill’s banning of “radical” ideologies referred to “a system meant to direct and promote certain activism to achieve a specific viewpoint.”

Efforts to limit the material taught to children and college students are underway in several states. But Florida has an especially large population of Jewish students. The University of Florida stands atop Hillel International’s ranking of public colleges with the highest proportion of Jewish students, and the University of Central Florida has the third-largest. Florida State University, Florida International University, Florida Atlantic University and the University of South Florida also rank in the top 60.

Former president of the American Association of University Professors Cary Nelson, 2010. (Photo credit: CC BY SA Flickr/Don LaVange)

H.B. 999 would affect education at those schools in other ways, too. The bill, which recently advanced to committee, would overhaul the state’s post-tenure review process, so that instead of checking on a faculty member’s research productivity every five years, as is currently the case in the state, tenured professors could face reviews “at any time for cause” including “violation of any applicable law or rule.”

The result, one academic in the state said, would be “open season on faculty,” who could be out of a job if their university’s board — which, in public schools, is beholden to the governor — disagrees with their syllabus.

Andrade rejected the idea that H.B. 999 would undercut Jewish studies in Florida.

“Outsiders are wrong. Ethnic studies are not affected by the bill either by the bill’s intent or the bill’s language,” Andrade wrote in an email to JTA, accusing the bill’s critics of “lying and claiming that Florida’s leaders have tried to ban teaching black history in schools.”

The state’s only Jewish Republican legislator, state Rep. Randy Fine, did not return a JTA request for comment on whether he supports the bill. Fine has promoted similar culture-war legislation in the past, including a bill he co-authored in February that would prohibit all K-12 schools in the state from referring to either students or employees by pronouns that do not correspond to the sex they were assigned at birth.

Outsiders are wrong. Ethnic studies are not affected by the bill either by the bill’s intent or the bill’s language

With a Republican-dominated House and Senate, some form of H.B. 999 seems likely to reach DeSantis’ desk. (A parallel bill in the state Senate does not contain wording on critical theory.) But there is strong opposition from the academic community. Groups including the American Historical Association, the American Association of University Professors and Florida’s statewide faculty union have harshly condemned the bill and urged lawmakers to oppose it.

The American Historical Association’s statement on the bill this month calls it a “blatant and frontal attack on principles of academic freedom and shared governance central to higher education in the United States.” More than 70 academic, historical and activist organizations co-signed the statement.

The executive committee of the Association for Jewish Studies signed a different statement authored by the American Council of Learned Societies, decrying the bill as an “effort to undermine academic freedom in Florida.”

“If it passes, it ends academic freedom in the state’s public colleges and universities, with dire consequences for their teaching, research, and financial well-being,” the statement said of the bill. “Academic freedom means freedom of thought, not the state-mandated production of histories edited to suit one party’s agenda in the current culture wars.”

Asked for comment on the bill, Warren Hoffman, the executive director of the Association for Jewish Studies, pointed to the statement.

The University of Florida. (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0, FightingRaven531)

Rachel Harris, director and endowed chair at Florida Atlantic University’s Jewish Studies program, is in her first semester at the university, having just arrived from the University of Illinois. “I’m now wondering if that was a terrible mistake,” she joked. (Harris is spending this term in Israel, researching on a Fulbright fellowship.)

Still, Harris said she was “confident” that legislators would “continue to support educational commitments in the state,” noting that Florida has a Holocaust education mandate for K-12 public schools. Her Boca Raton university is currently building an expanded center for Jewish and Holocaust studies, funded by private donors. H.B. 999 in its current form would prohibit universities from teaching critical theory concepts even when such programs are privately funded.

Despite what he described as a few students at the Jewish Studies center who are concerned about the new bill, Goda said he did not think the legislation would change the experience of Jewish students on his campus.

“Jewish kids these days are really choosing universities based on whether or not Jewish kids feel comfortable there,” he said. “And I would argue that [the University of Florida] is a very welcoming campus for Jewish kids overall. There are strong Jewish institutions associated with the campus.”

Instead, he feels the bill’s real effects would be felt in the state’s ability to recruit faculty and staff while its legislators jeopardize academic freedom, tenure and other lodestars of the humanities. He said, “The real question to me is how and in what way it’s going to be enforced.”

ISRAEL

100 Hebrew teachers for new immigrants file resignation letters in protest at wages

Resignations account for 20% of total number of tutors at state-provided language schools that are already suffering backlog due to lack of teaching staff

By TOI STAFFToday, 

Teacher Hanna Rabkin and three new immigrants from Ukraine attend class at Renanim Shuvu school in Nof Hagalil, Israel, March 23, 2022. (Cnaan Liphshiz/JTA)

100 Hebrew teachers at state-run language schools for new immigrants filed resignation letters on Sunday in protest at a lack of progress in negotiations for higher wages that have been going on for months.

The resignations will come into effect on September 1 with the start of the new school year.

Teachers at ulpans, the Hebrew term for specialty Hebrew-language schools, are primarily requesting salaries that are in line with regular school teachers, who have a powerful union and consequently receive substantially higher salaries.

An ongoing major shortage of instructors for ulpans has caused significant delays for thousands of new immigrants in learning the language. Yet the sector is struggling to find new teachers with activists blaming years of poor salaries and work conditions, leading many to leave for better-paying jobs as teachers in other schools.

The country currently only has around 500 ulpan Hebrew teachers and the resignations will have a considerable impact on a system that is already struggling to meet demand.

“I love the new immigrants and the country but I must provide for my family,” one Hebrew teacher, identified only by her first name Yafit, told the Kan public broadcaster.

The past year saw immigration to Israel, or aliyah, rise dramatically to the highest levels in over two decades, almost completely due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and its subsequent crackdowns and drafts back at home, which prompted tens of thousands of Ukrainians and Russians to immigrate to Israel.

Israel scrambled to absorb all of these new arrivals, renting hotel rooms and working with schools to prepare for the influx of children who would need language help and social assistance.

One area that was found to be a major weak spot, however, was Hebrew-language instruction for adults. New immigrants faced major delays in beginning these Hebrew courses, with some waiting several months before they could begin learning the language in a classroom setting.

MK Oded Forer, chair of the Knesset’s Immigration, Absorption, and Diaspora Affairs Committee, oversees a hearing on Hebrew teacher shortages on January 18, 2023. (Noam Moskowitz/Knesset)

Yafit claimed that the education and finance ministries are arguing over who should fund NIS 40 million ($12 million) needed to hire more teachers.

She said ulpan teachers’ wages have not been updated for 15 years and new tutors start on minimum wage.

“I am a teacher with the same training and education as all teachers, and anywhere else I could get much more,” Yafit explained.

Opposition Yisrael Beytanu MK Oded Forer, chair of the Knesset’s Immigration, Absorption, and Diaspora Affairs Committee, said in a statement that he has for months been warning the education and finance ministry that their “disregard will lead to the closing of ulpans.”

He noted that recent figures showed Israel is experiencing its largest wave of immigration in 20 years.

“It’s not too late yet,” Forer said. “I call on Bezalel Smotrich and Yoav Kish — stop the crisis in the Hebrew ulpans, equate the teachers’ conditions to the conditions in the entire education system,” he said referring to finance and education ministers respectively.

In January his Knesset committee met to debate the issue and lawmakers heard that new immigrants are sometimes waiting up to six months until they are admitted to an ulpan.

In an effort to relieve the backlog, Immigration and Absorption Minister Ofir Sofer — in one of his first acts — allocated an additional NIS 20 million ($6 million) for vouchers for private Hebrew-language instruction, doubling the ministry’s budget for private lessons.

However, Forer at the time knocked Sofer’s voucher proposal as it puts the onus of responsibility on the new immigrants, rather than on the state. When a new immigrant studies at a state-run ulpan, their tuition is automatically paid to the school by the government. If they study at a private ulpan, however, they pay their own tuition and then request reimbursement from the government.

Yad L’Olim, a group that advocates for immigrants and which is also lobbying for the ulpan teachers, told lawmakers the teachers are demanding to be paid on the same level as other Education Ministry employees, to receive restitution for their years without pay raises, and to be considered full-time employees, instead of as the part-time workers they are designated today.

That was estimated to cost roughly NIS 40 million ($12 million).

In addition to being a source of immediate frustration, the long wait times could have significant negative impacts on immigrants’ ability to settle in Israel in the long-term; knowledge of Hebrew has been shown to be a key factor in successful long-term integration into Israeli society.

ANALYSIS

Things fall apart

The firing of Defense Minister Gallant brings to a climax an astonishingly fast and wholly self-inflicted collapse of the Israeli right

By HAVIV RETTIG GUR 27 March 2023,

Israelis opposed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's judicial overhaul plan block 

a highway during a protest moments after the Israeli leader fired his defense minister, in Tel Aviv, Israel, 

March 26, 2023 (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

The Israeli right is gripped in a deep malaise.

It has its argument about the over-powerful High Court. It believes that argument. It’s been making it for decades. Now, suddenly at the helm of a wholly rightist coalition that no centrist or leftist faction can fell, it believed it had a moment of opportunity.

The government was sworn in at the end of December. By January 4, the great judicial reform was announced by Justice Minister Yariv Levin. The opposition, everyone understood, would rail and rage; old elites watching their displacement would not go quietly into the night. But in the end, the frustration of three decades of judicial overreach, now hardened into a grim determination, would see the coalition through.

That was the plan. Then everything started to go wrong.

It wasn’t the usual things. Former justices did indeed rage on cue. Law scholars signed petitions. But the right-wing coalition was ready with answers. The Israeli court had swollen far beyond anything comparable in the West. On dry but fundamental questions — the power of the court in vetting appointments to itself, the expansion of standing (who can appeal) and justiciability (what issues the court can take up), and on and on — the Israeli court was not, as the right has it, “a judicial dictatorship,” but it was an outlier in the democratic world.

It was wholly reasonable and legitimate to seek to rein it in, and indeed it was once a serious contention of scholars on left and right alike.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with Justice Minister Yariv Levin during a debate and a vote in the Knesset plenum, March 6, 2023. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

For two long months, the right misunderstood the events. The strategy was simple: Pull the Band-Aid off fast, without blinking or wavering. The main problem, Levin and his partner in the reform MK Simcha Rothman believed, would be Benjamin Netanyahu, who has always favored quiet over meaningful, controversial action.

So the decision was made: No debate, engagement or negotiation until the very end of the legislative process would create as few opportunities as possible for a right-wing collapse. Justice Minister Levin refused to give interviews. Calls went out for the opposition to negotiate — but negotiate over what? Levin refused to slow the legislation. The original proposal was extreme even according to its own authors (speaking off-record, of course).

To the half of the country that hadn’t voted for the coalition, the extreme version was the goal, not a tactic on the way to a more moderate version. One doesn’t negotiate the dismantling of democracy on the breakneck schedule of the dismantlers.

In mid-February, one senior figure closely involved in the reform told this writer, “It’s not yet time to compromise.” The early protests, the calls even from supporters of judicial reform to moderate, to explain, to seriously address the growing sense in the streets that this was a full-blown assault on democracy — were rebuffed by right-wing political strategists.

The old elites, they explained, were angry that their cheese was moving.

Anti-government protesters carry a giant Declaration of Independence as they march through Bnei Brak on March 23, 2023. (Carrie Keller-Lynn/Times of Israel)

’I don’t want to defend you’

By the time the political right had grasped the scale of its mistake, it was too late.

It happened at different points for different people, escalating over the past month and reaching a noticeable climax last week, when even impassioned supporters of judicial reform — of this judicial reform — started to rail against the government.

“A self-immolation like this on the right hasn’t been seen around these parts for a long time,” the right-wing columnist Sara Haetzni-Cohen, head of the activist group My Israel, wrote over the weekend.

Calling the reform “one of the most important and significant legal and policy initiatives the right has brought to the table in many years,” she then turned ferociously on the government she’d loyally supported.

Chairman of the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee MK Simcha Rothman votes during a committee hearing, March 27, 2023. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

“It turns out that the right-wing coalition we elected and for which we prayed doesn’t understand the greatness of the hour,” she charged. “Almost every day we awaken to another idiotic bill or embarrassing public statement produced by this coalition. The list of narrow and self-interested bills, whose purpose is to preserve power or serve narrow interests, grows ever longer. The gifts law [allowing unchecked gifts to public servants], the French law [immunizing the prime minister from prosecution], the law against recordings [prohibiting journalists from publicizing recordings of politicians without consent], the Deri law [to allow convicted politicians to serve as ministers], the Police Investigations Department law [weakening oversight of police in cases of police violence], the law to seize control of the Central Elections Committee, the Western Wall law [that stipulates prison time for women dressed immodestly at the holy site], the hametz law [allowing hospitals to bar food that isn’t kosher for Passover], and more.”

It was a long column, a litany of accusations. “There are laws that are populist to the point of dangerous, like the ‘immunity for IDF soldiers’ bill, which actually could deliver our best sons and daughters to The Hague. It all looks like it’s being done flippantly, with arrogance and hubris, driven by whims and the desire for momentary media headlines. MKs who we elected to bring change and a new message have brought us mainly embarrassment.”

The bottom line: “I’m embarrassed, because for all that I believe in this reform, in this correction, in the power that must return to our representatives — there’s a limit to how much I can explain their idiotic and irresponsible behavior in the Knesset. And you know something, dear coalition? I’m sick of it. I don’t want to defend you when you embarrass me, don’t want to support the irresponsible initiatives you permit yourself to propose, without understanding that every little movement on your part creates waves of protest and disgust on the outside.”

It was a sentiment that seemed to suddenly overtake the right. Some spoke of a “competition of folly” among lawmakers.

A protester lies on the ground and acts dead during demonstrations against the judicial overhaul in Tel Aviv, March 23, 2023. (Jack Guez/AFP)

Some even noticed that it may not be enough to criticize merely the look of the thing. Of the 141 bills advanced by the coalition (at last count), there were those that would allow police searches of private homes without warrants, appoint 12 additional MKs to the coalition beyond the 120 elected lawmakers to allow the coalition to ignore the parliamentary opposition altogether, and give the ruling party control over the Central Elections Committee.

And all of that is distinct from the actual judicial shakeup, whose most radical and problematic version was still on the Knesset docket until just the past two weeks, and was barely modified even after that.

For a coalition that insisted to anyone who would listen that its reform was about advancing democracy, it seemed to go out of its way to convince any but its most loyal supporters otherwise.

Dr. Bibi and Mr. Netanyahu

No one really knows what’s in Benjamin Netanyahu’s heart. He has a long, illustrious record of serious and successful policymaking and a long paper trail of broadly liberal views and commitments.

But he’s also insisted for three long months that he’s “got both hands on the wheel” of this government, that he’s responsible for it and fully in control of the situation, that he owns everything that’s taking place.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, during a discussion and a vote in the Knesset, Jerusalem, on March 22, 2023. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

He’s also the main force behind some of the most troubling bills, such as the “gifts law” advancing at breakneck speed through the Knesset Economy Committee this week that would allow almost unchecked and literally anonymous gift-giving to public servants and politicians. The bill is unquestionably a personal one; it would let Netanyahu, already a wealthy man, keep $270,000 given to him by a late cousin. That it is advancing faster than almost any other item on the coalition’s agenda, faster in fact than much of the judicial reform, signals a new kind of Netanyahu.

The Netanyahu, in fact, that many saw in Sunday’s sudden firing of Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and who systematically gutted Likud’s internal democracy and institutions and now brooks no disagreement in the party ranks.

If Netanyahu is indeed in control, it’s becoming increasingly difficult — and not just for the opposition — to find the old, liberal Netanyahu buried under all the mess.

The right turns

It’s curiously difficult to determine precisely how many Israelis actually support judicial reform. Polls put levels of support at anywhere from 17% — a weekend survey that asked about the specific reform now being pushed by the government — to 90%, a figure drawn from internal polling on the right that seems to have played a part in the government’s strategy planning and presentation of the reform back in January.

The way you ask the question seems to produce radically different answers. And the answers themselves are a moving target, as the idea of remaking the judiciary has left the realm of substantive debate and become a touchstone of political identity.

With those caveats, it’s still possible to hazard a basic outline of Israeli public opinion: A significant majority appears to support some kind of judicial reform, and a significant majority opposes the specific reform being pushed by the government.

Israeli police use a water cannon to disperse demonstrators blocking a highway during a protest against plans by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to overhaul the judicial system, in Tel Aviv, Israel, March 27, 2023 (AP Photo/Oren Ziv)

In a weekend poll by the Globes business journal, for example, just 17% said they supported the reform as-is, while 25% said they supported “some of its elements,” and 43% opposed the reform entirely.

It’s clear, too, that the opposition is far more afraid and mobilized. Asked if they’d personally attended a protest, an astonishing 19% of respondents said yes — one in five Israelis. Just 2% of Israelis said they’d attended every protest. Most of the protesters (15% of all respondents) attended between one and four times. That is, protests that regularly draw 200,000 people represent at least five times as many protesters in the broader population.

Firing Gallant

It was in this heady moment, with an increasingly bitter right-wing activist base that believes that the government, not the opposition, created this moment, and facing a growing protest movement already actively joined by one-fifth of the population, that Netanyahu fired his defense minister on Sunday over his call to pause the reform.

It was the catalyst that revealed just how much larger the protest movement could grow.

Hebrew-language Twitter began to fill up with a new voice: right-wingers, Likud voters, even reform supporters, suddenly grown weary of the government and looking to take a stand.

Anti-government protesters opposed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul plan set up bonfires and block a highway in Tel Aviv, Israel, Monday, March 27, 2023, after the premier fired Defense Minister Yoav Gallant who had called on Netanyahu to freeze the push, citing deep divisions in the country and turmoil in the military. (AP/Oren Ziv)

And it hit the political echelons almost immediately.

“We’ve paid a heavy price,” Likud’s Miki Zohar lamented, for “failing to explain” the reform. Wary of facing Gallant’s fate, Zohar didn’t call for a freeze, but called to support Netanyahu if he should do so.

The view that the government, not Netanyahu’s “left” or “anarchists,” was responsible for the disaster was suddenly obvious to all.

“We must admit honestly — we’ve gone astray!” said Likud’s Amihai Chikli, the minister for Diaspora affairs. “Our mistake isn’t over the burning need for the reform — it’s more necessary now than ever before — but in its implementation.”

Likud’s Economy Minister Nir Barkat sounded a similar sentiment. “I will support the prime minister in a decision to stop and reconsider. The reform is important and we will do it — but not at the cost of civil war.”

Some of the most supportive right-wing journalists reached the same conclusion.

File: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (right) and then-immigrant absorption minister Yoav Gallant hold a press conference at the Knesset, January 9, 2019. (Noam Revkin Fenton/ Flash90/ File)

Squandered

Where does the right go from here?

It declared a dramatic change to Israel’s constitutional order as one declares a war. It advanced in a blitzkrieg through a deeply divided country, while signaling at full volume that it intends to do away with basic liberal protections. It started with a radical version of its own reform which some its own advocates now claim was a mere tactic, but which in practice would have gutted the Supreme Court and dismantled most of the political system’s checks and balances.

It didn’t debate, didn’t listen, didn’t try to convince until very late in the game, until it had grown frightened of the blowback. Until it was too late.

And it did all that in a country where polls show broad support for some version of judicial reform.

Never in the history of the country has so much political capital and hard-won electoral success been so swiftly and comprehensively squandered. Every minute that has passed since January 4 has been a neck-and-neck race between the Levin-Rothman-Netanyahu legislative stampede and the right’s hemorrhaging of its political capital.

Everything is still in the air. No one quite knows where the pieces are going to land. But no matter who wins that race, the damage wrought by the past three months of folly and hubris will not be quickly mended.

 'I AM UNWILLING TO CUT THE NATION IN TWO'

‘There can be no civil war’: 

Full text of Netanyahu’s announcement on overhaul pause

After major protests and strikes following his firing of the defense minister, the PM halts the judicial shakeup to allow for dialogue, while vowing reform will be enacted

TOI  Today 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks to the nation, March 27, 2023. (GPO Screenshot)

Following is the full English translation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s televised address on March 27, 2023, as provided by the Government Press Office, in which he announced he was delaying his government’s planned far-reaching overhaul of the judiciary.

Citizens of Israel,

Three thousand years ago, here in Jerusalem, the judgement of Solomon took place. Two women came before King Solomon. Each one claimed that she was the real mother of the infant. King Solomon commanded that a sword be brought and that the baby be cut in half. One woman was prepared to rend the baby in two while the other woman absolutely refused and insisted that the infant stay alive and whole.

Today as well, both sides in the national controversy claim to love the infant, to love our country. I am aware of the enormous tension that is building between the two sides, between two parts of the nation, and I am attentive to the desire of many citizens to dispel this tension.

However, there is one thing that I cannot accept. There is an extremist minority that is prepared to tear our country to pieces. It is using violence and incitement, it is threatening to harm elected officials, it is stoking civil war, and it is calling for refusal to serve, which is a terrible crime.

The State of Israel cannot exist without the IDF and the IDF cannot exist with refusal to serve. Refusal to serve by one side will lead to refusal to serve by the other. Refusal to serve is the end of our country. Therefore, I demand that the heads of the security services and of the army vigorously oppose the phenomenon of refusal to serve, not contain it, not understand it, not accept it – but put a stop to it.

Those who call for refusal to serve, those who call for anarchy and violence, are knowingly cutting the baby in two. But the overwhelming majority of Israeli citizens on both sides of the divide do not want to rend the infant. They are unwilling to cut the nation in two.

Citizens of Israel,

I am unwilling to cut the nation in two. For three months I have repeatedly called for dialogue and also said that I would leave no stone unturned to find a solution because I remember, we remember, that we are not facing enemies but our brothers.

I say here and now: There can be no civil war. Israeli society is on a dangerous collision course. We are in the midst of a crisis that is endangering the basic unity between us. This crisis requires all of us to act responsibly.

Yesterday I read Benny Gantz’s letter in which he promised in good faith to enter into a dialogue on all issues. I know that there are additional people who support his approach. To them I extend my hand and I do so after having received the consent of most of my colleagues.

When there is a chance to prevent civil war through dialogue, I – as Prime Minister – will take a time-out for dialogue. I will give a genuine chance for genuine dialogue. We insist on the need to enact the necessary changes in the judicial system and we will give a chance to achieving broad consensus. This is an incomparably worthy goal.

Therefore, out of national responsibility, out of a desire to prevent a rift in the nation, I have decided to suspend the second and third readings of the law in the current Knesset session in order to allow time to try and reach that broad consensus, ahead of legislation in the next Knesset session. One way or another, we will enact a reform that will restore the balance between the authorities that has been lost, by preserving – and I add, even by strengthening – individual rights.

From here, I would like to appeal to the supporters of the national camp: We have the Knesset majority to do this alone, with immense support among the people. Many of our supporters came to Jerusalem this evening in order to support the reform, to say: We need change, we need reform.

I would like to say to you: I am proud of you. You are not second-class citizens. I appreciate that you turned out today in the streets of our capital in order to make your democratic voice heard. Nobody will silence your voice, our voice.

I must say something else: You came spontaneously, unorganized and unfinanced, not pushed by the media, with all your heart and soul. You have touched me. I only ask of you one thing: Continue to act responsibly and do not be dragged into any provocation.

Our path is just. Today, the great majority of the public recognizes the urgency of democratic reform of the judicial system. We will not allow anyone to rob the people of its free choice. While we will not give up on the path for which we were elected, we will make the effort to achieve broad agreement.

Citizens of Israel,

We live in the generation of national revival. History has given us an extraordinary opportunity, unprecedented in the annals of nations, to return to our land and build up our homeland and our state.

Soon we will celebrate Passover, the days of remembrance and Independence Day.

We will gather around the holiday table – together.

We will mourn our fallen – together.

We will celebrate our independence – together.

And together we will thank the men and women of the security forces, who do not forget, even for a moment, their duty to defend all of us, all the time.

We all have a common fate and we all have a common mission, which is to ensure the eternity of Israel.

Thank you.