Communications

Pnina Sharvit, head of the law and national security program at the amply funded think-tank the Institute for National Security Studies, scolded, “Israel should be extremely cautious about breaching the delicate balance between the Jewish-nationalist component and the democratic-liberal component of its essence, as enshrined in the Declaration of Independence.” Likewise, the...

In the last decade, public tension in the State of Israel has been dealing with the relations between the central government authorities. This tension exists in the light of two polar views regarding the principle of the rule of law; this is the one that demands adherence to the rule of the law, no matter how unjust and unfair it may be, and this is the one that requires the...

Chuck Freilich, a senior researcher at The Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Tel Aviv who served for over 20 years in Israel’s national security establishment, said that Israel is at a historical “inflection point,” in which “extreme measures may have to be taken to endure Israel’s fundamental character of democracy.”

Israeli protesters have been demonstrating against the Netanyahu government’s controversial efforts to radically overhaul the judicial system for nearly three months. And while the protests regularly bring out more than 100,000 people to the streets across Israel, few Arab faces have appeared among the demonstrators.

Yoram Schweitzer, a former member of the Israeli intelligence community who now heads the Program on Terrorism and Low-Intensity Conflict at the INSS, a prominent think-tank, sees Netanyahu’s judicial plan as a serious threat to Israeli democracy. What Netanyahu and his extremist allies are trying to do with this so-called judicial reform is “unequivocally a regime change,”...

The Netanyahu-led government’s ongoing efforts to erode the independence and power of the court system now pose a strategic threat to the state of Israel, one of the country’s leading security think tanks issued a warning on Tuesday, declaring that legislation to overhaul the judicial system “must be stopped immediately.”

The Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) think tank issues a first-of-its-kind statement cautioning that the government’s judicial overhaul as currently being advanced “will seriously harm the functioning of the IDF, will reduce Israel’s ability to deal with its enemies, endanger relations with the USA and sabotage the economy.” In what it calls an “urgent strategic...

President Isaac Herzog’s outline that was presented last week is indeed a brave attempt to reach a compromise between the two sides and especially to put an end to the deep rift in the people of Israel in the last two months. The tumultuous demonstrations, the calls for refusal to serve and the continued polarization causes our enemies to rub their hands with pleasure. As we...

As protests and political tensions in Israel reach large-scale proportions, the Israel Police is, once again, back in the limelight, acting as the country’s emergency room. The protests are just the latest challenge to the police’s ability to juggle its multiple and unusual responsibilities—a challenge that must be answered by the formation of an Israeli national guard.

Former senior IDF Intelligence Col. (res.) Eldad Shavit has written in an INSS post that Israel must view US statements on the judicial overhaul issue, taking into account that if the US assessed “that the shared values have been damaged,” this could “have a direct effect on the relations between the two countries – particularly in this sensitive period, when the security...