• Book: The Land of Hope and Fear: Israel’s Battle for its Inner Soul
• By: Isabel Kershner
• Publisher: Scribe
• Year: 2023
• pp: 370

Introduction

Over more than 75 years, the State of Israel has absorbed millions of immigrants, weathered economic crises, and thrived despite continuous struggles for its very existence. However, despite all the difficulties and hardships, Israel in 2025 finds itself in what may be the deepest and most significant crisis since its establishment.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s return to power and the formation of his sixth government at the end of December 2022, led Israel into a social and political crisis and a struggle over the country’s character in the wake of Justice Minister Yariv Levin’s launch of judicial reform. The social upheaval—including mass demonstrations and concerns for Israel’s future as a democratic country—and the rifts within society, demonstrated the fragility of Israeli democracy. The social crisis caused by the judicial reform intensified following Hamas’ attack on October 7, 2023, and the ensuing war, which has continued for more than 17 months.

To understand the tensions within Israeli society, we must examine the contradictory interpretations of the country’s identity, focusing on the ongoing tension between its Jewish character and the democratic values enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. In this context, the book by Isabel Kershner, a New York Times correspondent in Jerusalem, paints an intimate, multi-layered portrait of the State of Israel. Through journalistic coverage, intertwined with insights and descriptions of the various groups and “tribes,” both Jewish and non-Jewish, that make up the country’s diverse social fabric, she describes the processes that have contributed to the crisis in Israeli society.

The book was published in May 2023 amid the turbulent demonstrations that tore Israeli society apart and intensified the processes that Kershner has identified in Israeli society, which she writes about in depth. The book presents a snapshot of modern Israel—a country full of contradictions and tremendous successes, including the prosperous high-tech economy that brought Israel’s GDP per capita up to a rate similar to that of Western Europe despite the internal tensions and political divisions. Kershner’s book is an excellent work of journalism, and even though the author herself is clearly identified with the liberal Zionist camp, she avoids definitive statements about the future that awaits Israel. This is despite the concerning signs that she notes, including the rapid growth of the Haredi population, which does not identify with Zionism or the state, and the deepening internal rift between right and left. However, through the portraits of tribes and parts of Israeli society that Kershner presents, she provides the international audience—which is perhaps less aware of the complexity and tribalism of Israeli society—with an excellent and comprehensive picture of Israel’s reality. For the Israeli audience, the book will be less of a revelation, but it provides a description of reality from the eyes of a woman with a comparative perspective like Kershner. The insights from the interviewees confirm common assumptions in Israeli society, though some have not been empirically examined.

Israel and its Tribes

Isabel Kershner was born in Manchester and studied at Oxford before moving to Israel in the 1990s. In this book, she combines the experience of a veteran journalist who is very familiar with Israeli politics with an external perspective that allows her to explain Israel’s complexity to an international audience, and it is clear that she succeeds. More than a few books have been written about the history of the State of Israel, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the internal rifts and complexity of Israeli society. In the previous decade, many books were published about Israel, some of them more sympathetic (Ari Shavit), with others advocating increased Western pressure on Israel regarding concessions to the Palestinians (Nathan Thrall) and describing the deterioration of democratic norms (Greg Carlstrom). Kershner takes a nonjudgmental stance, although she expresses sympathy for the ethos of the values of Israel’s founding fathers, who defined Israel as a Jewish and democratic state while supporting practical and egalitarian approaches. Using her journalistic skills, Kershner describes and analyzes the various processes and streams in Israeli society that led to what she defines as Israel’s “national unraveling.”

Kershner’s primary prism is the one former President Reuven Rivlin outlined in his famous speech at the Knesset, in which he described Israel as being divided into four tribes: secular Israelis, religious Zionists, Haredim, and Arabs. Within this tribal composition are many sub-groups, each with a unique identity and background. The book’s first few chapters analyze the primary tensions and arguments in Israel between David Ben-Gurion’s labor movement and Ze’ev Jabotinsky and Menachem Begin’s revisionist movement. The story begins in the arid desert in the cooperative village Ein Yahav, and the village itself serves as an allegory of the decline of the values of the socialist and egalitarian spirit that characterized the country’s founders, with Israel’s development into a fractured, modern, capitalist country.

In contrast to the values of the labor movement stands the figure of Yoske Nahmias, a revisionist and supporter of Ze’ev Jabotinsky and Menachem Begin. Through him, Kershner describes the dominant rule of Mapai (the “Land of Israel Workers’ Party”) during the State of Israel’s early years, including the difficulties that Nahmias encountered in finding work as a former member of the Irgun. But despite his criticism of Mapai’s political control, Nahmias expresses a nostalgia similar to that of Ein Yahav residents when he describes how Israeli politics has deteriorated and how the values that defined the Revisionist camp and the Likud party in the past—a combination of liberal nationalism and a commitment to democratic values and the rule of law—have eroded.

Kershner moves from nostalgia to the present and focuses on the issue of the ethnic divide between Ashkenazim and Mizrahim. She uses the conflict at Kibbutz Nir David over the use of the Asi Stream, during which residents of Beit She’an sought access to the pastoral stream that flows through the kibbutz, as a lens through which she describes the ongoing tension in Israeli politics. The Likud’s rise to power under Menachem Begin in 1977 was largely made possible through the widespread support of Mizrahim in the periphery in places like Beit She’an, which is adjacent to Nir David. The dispute surrounding access to the Asi Stream reopened the argument about the privileges of the kibbutzim and the Ashkenazi elite over the Mizrahi residents of the periphery, who were excluded and disadvantaged for years under the rule of Mapai. Kershner connects the historical injustice with the political tension in the present and shows how the support of Mizrahim in the periphery for Begin and the Likud in the 1970s continues to shape the party’s political base to this day.

She analyzes other groups in Israeli society, including the immigrants from the former Soviet Union, who came en masse at the beginning of the 1990s and had difficulty integrating into Israeli society. She also relates to the immigration of Jews from Ethiopia and to the fact that racism and social gaps, as well as incidents of police violence, have led to an awakening and activism by young Ethiopian-Israelis, which were expressed in demonstrations against the state, among other things.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not at the core of the book. However, Kershner also dedicates chapters to Israeli Arabs and, in particular, to the city of Lod, which was a focal point of violent incidents during Operation Guardian of the Walls in May 2021. The author notes the complexity for Israeli Arabs—their inability or choice not to use their political power. On the other hand, in addition to the tensions, there are positive trends among the Arab population, including the expansion of higher education and increasing integration in the labor market. There is also a chapter dedicated to the bourgeois settlers from the community of Esh Kodesh, who produce quality wine in the mountains of Samaria but are conspicuously disconnected from the reality of their Palestinian neighbors. The settlers from Esh Kodesh illustrate the evolution of the settlement enterprise, which combines biblical aspirations with a twenty-first-century lifestyle.

A Look to the Future

The book includes a warning about demographic processes, especially when discussing the status of the IDF as the people’s army given Israel’s changing demography. Kershner notes that today, almost 50% of first-grade students in Israel are Arab or Haredi, thus sowing the seeds for a significant demographic change that may harm national security. Kershner laments the erosion of the “cherished, sacrosanct ideal of the people’s army” and gives the example of pop singer Noa Kirel, who was drafted into the IDF and immediately flew to Thailand for a vacation. Kershner describes the substantial gaps between those serving in the IDF, who see Israel as a Zionist country, and the Haredim, who maintain a separate way of life that does not include identification with the Israeli ethos, a connection to the twenty-first century, or skills for competing in Israel’s labor market.

Despite the tension that exists and is deepening in Israeli society, Kershner chooses to end her book on an optimistic note. She claims that despite all the difficulties and problems, Israel continues to succeed in raising standards, taking initiative, and fostering innovation. At the end of the book, she states that the characters in the story of Israel are not going anywhere because “the Israelis – Jews and Arabs, religious and secular, Eastern and Western, immigrants and veterans, liberals and zealots—are all by now intrinsic elements of the landscape.” And perhaps this understanding offers hope that this divided society will return to the ideals of the founding generation of this complex country, to guide it away from national disintegration toward a better and less toxic future.