Communications

“For the first time in the history of relations between the two countries, the United States is concerned that Israel will no longer be a democracy,” said the Institute for National Security Studies, a leading Israeli think tank. “Tension in the special relations between Jerusalem and Washington is not new, but casting doubt on such a fundamental anchor of that relationship is...

“This is one of the deepest, maybe the deepest crisis, in the history of the US-Israeli relationship,” argued Chuck Freilich, a former deputy national security adviser and now a senior fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. “Biden is a true friend of Israel,” he continued. “I think he is simply appalled by what he sees.” It is not merely the...

The reaction to the proposed reform has been unprecedented in Israeli history: massive protests took place across the country, with as many as 200,000 people flooding the streets in Tel Aviv and over 500,000 countrywide; a countrywide strike was called out by Israel’s Histadrut trade union; and as many as 750 reservists of the Israeli Defense Forces stopped answering their...

״We’re currently living in this great world, in which the Americans ‘owe’ us four billion dollars a year – and that’s forever. But that’s not the case!” said Chuck Freilich, Israel’s former deputy national security advisor, and a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies, referring to the annual US foreign aid to Israel.

“There are more and more indications that normalization between Israel and the Arab countries is facing immense challenges, [while] Israel is gradually losing the support of its good friends in the U.S. and Europe,” says Shira Efron, director of policy research at Washington’s Israel Policy Forum and a senior fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv....

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...

“The foundation of the relations between Israel and other democracies is the shared values,” said Arkady Mil-Man, a former Israeli ambassador to Russia. “It makes sense that Israeli allies will be concerned.” Throughout the Blinken visit, and during visits by other American officials, the shared values were repeatedly underscored as if to warn against any change.

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...

“The accumulation of challenges and the capability to create new strategic opportunities are becoming more difficult,” Maj. Gen. (res.) Tamir Hayman, managing director of the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), said in a recent interview. The INSS held its 16th annual conference at Tel Aviv University last week.