RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — “Your final destination is Tel Aviv?” I’ve been a reporter in the Middle East since 1979, and those are six words I’d never heard in the place where I was standing about the place where I was going. I was checking in to fly from Doha, Qatar, to Tel Aviv, via […]
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The News Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said Monday that he planned to talk to Saudi leaders and other Gulf state officials this week during a visit to Saudi Arabia about the possibility of the kingdom normalizing ties with Israel. The Biden administration supports such a move, but it should not come at the […]
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One ultraconservative member of the Israeli government had pledged to abolish the Jerusalem Pride and Tolerance Parade. Another far-right minister with a history of homophobia, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who now oversees the police, is tasked with securing it. The Jerusalem parade is normally a relatively staid annual tradition. But the event on Thursday is taking place […]
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For decades, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, has been a champion of free-market economic doctrine. As finance minister 20 years ago, he cut welfare payments, curbed government spending, sped up privatization and promoted the country’s feted tech industry. In his autobiography last year, Mr. Netanyahu detailed how he had rescued the economy from an “antiquated […]
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The Jewish state turned 75 on Sunday, mostly in a sour mood. The country is governed by a coalition that includes political extremists, proud homophobes, ideological monomaniacs, and the merely corrupt. A proposed judicial reform that would have gutted the principal institutional check on rank majoritarianism has been paused, but not quite stopped, by some […]
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Pasit Siach, a high school teacher, says she dreams of an Israel in which everyone — ultra-Orthodox Jews, atheists and anyone in between — feels able to lead a lifestyle of their choice. Pinchas Badush, an ultra-Orthodox rabbi, has a different vision, one in which public life shuts down on the Jewish sabbath, civil marriages […]
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At 11 a.m. on Tuesday, Israel’s annual Memorial Day, the hundreds of families gathered in the military cemetery in the southern city of Beersheba fell silent as a siren wailed to honor the country’s war dead. Minutes later, a commotion broke out as Itamar Ben-Gvir, the ultranationalist minister of national security, began speaking on behalf […]
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Every Memorial Day, thousands of families who have lost brothers, sisters and siblings to Israel’s endless wars and terrorist attacks gather to remember the dead, a commemoration that was to have been followed this year by a jubilant celebration of the 75th anniversary of the founding of the country. But Israel is deeply divided as […]
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Last month, as demonstrations across Israel convulsed politics in the Jewish state, Jewish Democrats in the House who have made up the bulwark of Israel’s support on their side of the aisle met privately with the country’s ambassador. Representative David Cicilline of Rhode Island, a self-described progressive, was particularly blunt. In meetings with liberal groups […]
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When you host one of the world’s last over-the-air radio shows in Yiddish, fans occasionally get in touch. But you hear more often from critics. They write to Avraham Zaks, the 37-year-old behind the mic of a weekly program called “We Are Here!” to nitpick about his grammar. Or to complain about his accent, which […]
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Many of the new constitutions gave the high courts clear authority to safeguard the rights of minorities and the democratic system. Some of the courts vigorously wielded this power to set aside majoritarian decisions that appeared to undermine democracy over the longer run. In 1998, after a referendum for secession nearly passed in Quebec, the […]
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Since Israel’s government announced plans in January to overhaul the judiciary, the country has been gripped by growing turmoil in the streets, disquiet in the military — and warnings from its president, Isaac Herzog, of societal collapse and even civil war. But now Mr. Herzog, who is overseeing negotiations to find a compromise, has a […]
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JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel announced on Monday night that he had reversed his decision to fire Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, 15 days after Mr. Gallant was nominally dismissed for criticizing the pace of the government’s contentious plan to overhaul Israel’s justice system. Mr. Netanyahu had never formally confirmed Mr. Gallant’s ouster, […]
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Israel bombarded targets in Lebanon and Gaza overnight in retaliation for a barrage of rockets fired from Lebanon that was seen as the most serious escalation in years along Israel’s northern border. But much of the fighting had subsided by Friday morning and all sides appeared intent on containing the cross-border violence. In the Israeli-occupied […]
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WASHINGTON — Thomas R. Nides, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, was speaking in typically colorful fashion on the subject of the Israeli government’s divisive plan to reduce the power of the judiciary. U.S. officials had addressed the subject with cautious diplomatic language, using phrases like shared values and consensus building, in hopes of avoiding a […]
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JERUSALEM — The Israeli government agreed in principle on Sunday to establish a national guard, handing a political victory to the far-right minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who had long demanded the militia as a condition for supporting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The form and leadership of the national guard were yet to be determined and will […]
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In a triumph for democracy, a remarkable popular uprising has compelled Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to suspend his far-right coalition’s assault on the country’s judiciary. Over the last few months, Israelis from across the social and political spectrum — labor unions, Army reservists, diplomats, health workers and students — have filled the streets […]
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JERUSALEM — When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suspended his contentious plan to overhaul Israel’s judiciary this past week, easing weeks of unrest, he won the support of one of the most right-wing ministers in his coalition by promising to take the first steps toward forming a new national guard that the minister could control. Itamar […]
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As protests and unrest swept across Israel this week, many Israelis issued impassioned calls for moderation and dialogue to resolve one of the most serious domestic crises in the country’s history. But one government leader seemed determined to raise the stakes even higher: Bezalel Smotrich, the settler activist who serves as finance minister in Benjamin […]
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JERUSALEM — He was technically fired on Sunday night, prompting a surge of unrest that a day later led the Israeli government to suspend its deeply contentious judicial overhaul. Yet on Thursday, Yoav Gallant, the defense minister who was punished for criticizing the changes, was still in his position. Though the government announced his dismissal […]
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WASHINGTON — When President Biden bluntly warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he “cannot continue down this road” of overhauling his country’s judiciary, he touched off the kind of response usually expressed by America’s adversaries rather than its allies. “Israel is a sovereign country which makes its decisions by the will of its people and […]
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As Israel’s protest movement raged from January deep into March, sending tens of thousands of furious citizens to the streets against a plan to overhaul the courts, it seemed clear that something would have to give. But for much of that time, it didn’t seem like that something would be Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The […]
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Israel is in the throes of a grave political crisis that ballooned in recent days to envelop crucial components of society — the military, universities and trade unions — and has caused strains with Israel’s foreign allies, chief among them the United States. For weeks, protesters have taken to the streets to oppose the government’s […]
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Patrick Kingsley contributed reporting. Fact-checking by Susan Lee. The Daily is made by Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Dave Shaw, Sydney Harper, Robert Jimison, […]
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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel responded defiantly on Wednesday to sharp criticism from President Biden over his government’s contentious judicial overhaul plan, declaring that Israel was “a sovereign country” that would make its own decisions. As weeks of quiet diplomatic pressure burst into an open dispute between the allies, Mr. Netanyahu’s opponents in Israel […]
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Even Israel’s vehement critics might pause and marvel at what ordinary Israelis achieved this week. After weeks of mounting demonstrations against the government’s judicial-reform bills, hundreds of thousands took to the streets on Sunday night — proportionally, as if millions of Americans were on the march — when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that he […]
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WASHINGTON — A political crisis in Israel and setbacks to democracy in several other major countries closely allied with the United States are testing the Biden administration’s defense of democracy against a global trend toward the authoritarianism of nations like Russia and China. President Biden will deliver remarks on Wednesday at the second White House-led […]
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In proposing his judicial overhaul, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has said he was restoring the balance of power between elected lawmakers and unelected judges. “It is not the end of democracy, it is the strengthening of democracy,” Mr. Netanyahu said last week, before a huge wave of protest and civil unrest forced him […]
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In a sign of easing tensions in Israel after the suspension of a contentious judicial overhaul, the United States ambassador to Israel said on Tuesday that President Biden would host the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in Washington in the coming months. The announcement of such a meeting, long coveted by Mr. Netanyahu, came after […]
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Much of life in Israel came to a halt yesterday: Hospitals stopped providing nonemergency care, planes were grounded at the country’s main airport, and malls and banks closed. The disruptions were part of an escalation in protests against the government’s proposed judicial overhaul, which has plunged Israel into one of its gravest political crises ever. […]
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Thank goodness that Israel’s civil society has forced Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to pause, for now, his attempt to impose his control over Israel’s independent judiciary and gain a free hand to rule as he wishes. But this whole affair has exposed a new and troubling reality for the United States: For the first time, […]
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