Nahanni: Hi, it’s Nahanni Rous. Welcome back to Can We Talk?, the podcast of the Jewish Women’s Archive, where gender, history and Jewish culture meet.  

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Rachel: What does it mean to live in a Jewish democratic country? We don't have the answer for it yet, and I think this is what we're trying to figure out now.

Moran: No one will break the government just because of women's rights. That's what we fear of.

Shula: If we are talking about democracy, there is no democracy without equality. There is no democracy as long as there is an occupation.

Nechumi: There's this waking up to realize that the country is going in directions we haven't planned.

Nahanni: Israel turns 75 this week. It’s a period of unprecedented upheaval in Israeli society and escalating violence between Israelis and Palestinians. 

In January, Prime Minister Binyamin Nentanyahu's far-right coalition government proposed a series of judicial reforms to weaken the power of the Supreme Court and effectively remove judicial restraints on the government. 

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Mass demonstrations broke out across the country and have continued for three months. Around one and a half million Israelis—more than one in five Israeli adults—have poured into the streets, waving flags and chanting “Democratia!” or “Democracy!”

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The judicial reform legislation was put on hold for the Knesset’s spring recess. That recess ends this week—just after Israelis celebrate the 75th anniversary of their country’s independence.

In this episode of Can We Talk?, we hear from four Jewish Israeli women about how the country arrived at this tumultuous moment.  They’re from diverse backgrounds—Ashkenazi and Mizrahi, secular, Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox, grassroots activists, a professor, and a former Knesset member.

They’ll talk about their hopes and concerns for the country and what the protests have meant to them. 

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Moran: My name is Moran Zer Katzenstein. I'm 40 years old. I have three young boys. I live in Holon, Israel. Most of my career, I worked for an international brand. I was Coca-Cola’s brand manager. I was a head of consumer apps in Google. I had my own company. And right now I'm focusing mainly on Bonot Alternativa activity.

Nahanni: Bonot Alternativa, or “Building an Alternative,” is a women's activist group Moran started in 2020. During the pro-democracy demonstrations, the group has organized marches of hundreds of women dressed in eye-catching red robes and white hoods. With their heads bowed and hands clasped, they evoke The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood's novel about female subjugation.

Moran: I mean, this is very basic. We're talking about discrimination. We're talking about representation and the fight against the violence against women. 

I don't think our entire government is misogynist or stuff like that, but I really think that there are some that are very extreme. And my problem is that the other ones are keeping a quiet voice, you know? They're not objecting.

There wasn't even one rule pro-woman that was approved in this coalition since it started, okay? So we see where they're heading. So we don't need to have a smoking gun, because all of the evidence are right here. We know what they're saying. So we don't want to wait. 

You can look from the political point of view and say that everything is very dark, but I want to look on the bright side. I'm seeing the most beautiful Israeli people, going out [into] the street and protesting and doing it in a non-violent way. And I see women that are woken about their rights and I see people that don't agree anymore that their rights will be taken from them. So I choose to see the good things. 

We have women from all across the country, and I’m talking about more than 70 cities and towns that are participating. I’m talking about from the north to the south, until Eilat. So it’s everywhere.

The narrative that they're trying to demonstrate is that we are white women from white neighborhoods like Tel Aviv or something like that. So, I'm not a white woman [laughs] and I'm not from a white neighborhood. I live in Holon, it's not considered a white city. And that's part of the narrative…so you know, saying those things, it's to disrespect the women that are taking part.

I think every democracy should defend itself. I love my country. I served my country for six years as a lieutenant, and afterwards as well. And I think right now—the same as I was a soldier and an officer—right now, I feel like I serve my country, not only for women, but everyone. And I think a lot of us feel so, and I can't imagine the way that so many people are out on the streets, in the name of the love of their country, and it'll go to waste. It has to, we have to win for all of us— and afterwards, we need to heal.

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Shula: I'm Shula Keshet. I live in the Neve Shaanan neighborhood in South Tel Aviv. I'm an activist, I'm a Mizrahi feminist. 

Nahanni: Shula founded Achoti, or "My Sister," in 2000. It's a Mizrahi feminist movement focused on marginalized communities in Israel. They have many projects, including a press and a fair trade shop.

Shula: As a feminist movement, we are focusing, of course, on the issue of gender—the women's rights—but also on the discrimination based on ethnicity and nationality. Our goal is really to make change within the power structure of society.

Through the 75 years, for the State of Israel, we can see that the gaps are going and becoming bigger and bigger. The power structure in the Israeli society remains that the hegemony in Israel is basically the minority, mostly Ashkenazi Jew. And the underprivileged communities, you know, like the Palestinians or the Mizrahis, and throughout the years, more communities added to that, such as the Ethiopian community, the Russian speaking community, the migrant workers or asylum-seekers. And the underprivileged communities are communities of color, whether Jews or non-Jews.  

The old order needs to be changed. But the model of this government is nothing to do with equality or democracy. The new government, they want to make, as they say, legal reform. It’s basically taking all the power to the government from the court. 

So we have, you know, a lot of protests, like hundreds of thousands, which is very important. But those demonstrators, they are, again, from the Ashkenazi hegemony. They see themselves as left or center, but they want to maintain the situation. 

You know, the protesters, they see that their vision for democracy is Tel Aviv! But me, as the one that lives in South Tel Aviv—it looks like a liberal city or a free city or whatever, but there are crimes against men and women in the city of Tel Aviv, in South Tel Aviv or in Jaffa, day after day, if you are not a Ashkenazi Jew living in the white part of the city. Of course, also violence against women that is very, very high. 

Our experience regarding, you know, the way that Mizrahi are, you know, looked at in the Israeli society, in the eyes of Ashkenazis as arsim or frechot or criminals. And then we have, you know, the Palestinians, they're terrorists, and the asylum-seekers as rapists, et cetera. These things are eating our society. 

What I want to see for Israel for the future is that children, no matter—you know, not only Jewish children, or not only Ashkenazi Jewish, but children from all the underprivileged communities, whether Jews or non-Jews—will have a good future here in this country, they will feel safe. Ending the occupation and living with peace within us and out and around us—and with equality.

We will not give up. We will continue to struggle for equality, democracy, freedom, for everyone. 

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Nechumi: My name is Nechumi Yaffe. I'm a Haredi woman. I'm a faculty at Tel Aviv University. I'm actually right now the only, the first and the only, Haredi faculty. And I teach, obviously, about the Haredi community from a sociological and from a theological perspective. But I also teach about my research that is very much focused on power relations. 

Nahanni: Haredi means ultra-Orthodox. Nechumi has participated in many demonstrations this spring.

Nechumi: It's nice to feel like you're doing something for an idea you believe in. There's music, there's a great atmosphere. It's really nice [laughs]—it's like a festival.

I see it as a big awakening in a very good development of so many people that were just taking so much of what's going on for granted, taking the democracy as for granted, taking the advanced systems that we all enjoy as for granted, and just waking up to reality that realizing that a) it is not for granted, b) is it really reflecting what they want their life to look like? So I really think it's—I see a lot of positive in it. 

So I think Israel, in many, many ways, is a flourishing, smart, nuanced, advanced country. And I think at the end of the day, it is a very Jewish country. I think part of this fighting for democracy, for being an egalitarian society, being a just society, I see as Jewish. As a reflection of Jewish energy. So I think it’s just—we have a great country, and we have problems.  

I think we have a major problem, a real Jewish problem, with so many human beings — I mean, the Palestinians— having no human rights. Like, you know, full human rights and full citizenship rights, the way we think from a Jewish perspective people should have. You know, they should have sovereignty, they should have a full way of expressing who they are. And I think we will never have quiet, and we will never have safety, and we will never actualize what we want to actualize without attending to this problem. 

You know, Ben Gurion laid down the ground from the beginning—he said, “Jewish and democratic.” And I feel like the only way we are gonna be able to thrive, is if the religious part and also the democratic part will understand that there should be a limit to their ambition to dominate the public sphere. You know, without the religious and the democratic parts of this state understanding that there is limit to their power and should be limit to their power, it will not be a democratic state. 

If this government manages to pass through the laws, I think as a Haredi woman, I'm quite vulnerable. Because the community, the Haredi community, hasn't matured to understand women's position, hasn't matured to understand womens’ rights. And our hope, and our allies, was the country, was the government, was a secular outside power that, kind of, could save us. And if those systems are not standing by us, we have no remedy. There is no way we can be safe.

It's from the very private to the very public. Because if there is domestic violence, that somehow you belong to a certain community that this rabbi thinks those matters should be solved within the domain of the house or the inner community, women in those communities are most vulnerable. Secular women also are vulnerable, but their community is not willing to accept it, so they're not as susceptible as Haredi women. If the government is kind of letting go, I think it's very dangerous.

I am hopeful that it's going to stop. The reform, the way it is, is for sure not going to pass and it's going to stop. And some more reasonable voices will, you know, take charge. That's what I hope/think. But I don't know. We are really on a, you know, on a very dangerous crossroad.

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Rachel: My name is Rachel Azaria. I am currently running Darkenu, which is an organization that represents the moderate majority in Israel, and we're working to promote democratic values. I had eleven years in Israeli politics, deputy mayor of Jerusalem, Jerusalem City councilwoman, member of the Israeli Parliament. Mother of four, live in Jerusalem, Orthodox—feminist Orthodox. 

Nahanni: Rachel is frequently a speaker at demonstrations.

Rachel: There are few ways to describe what's happening in Israel now. One is the very political, specific story of this very dramatic legislation, the judicial overhaul that the coalition is trying to pass. And a lot of people are afraid because there are a lot of consequences for this legislation, regarding our democracy. And there are a lot of people protesting out in the streets against this legislation.

You know, you see in these demonstrations, people that have—this is, like, the first time they ever went on a demonstration, that they've ever demonstrated. In Israel, mostly Ashkenazi Jews are more on the liberal camp, and Mizrahi Jews are more in the right-wing camp. I have to say that myself, I’m mixed: My father's from Tunis, my mother is American. So I always saw both of these areas. We do see that in these demonstrations there are more Ashkenazim, which—they're the usual suspects. But we do see many more Mizrahim than we would expect. And that's, like, that's the interesting part, because I think that people realize that this is a very important moment. 

When I speak at different demonstrations, it's interesting that one of the moments that people get very, very emotional and excited, is when I say, you know, “We took back the flag.” Okay, because, like, the center left, the liberal people felt less comfortable with the flag—it was owned by the right-wing. So I say, “We took back the flag, we took back the anthem, and now we're going to take back and feel responsible for Judaism in Israel.” And the way the crowd reacts, it makes it clear that this is like—people who want to live in a Jewish democratic country. They want the Jewish, democratic country to be a liberal Jewish, Zionist, democratic country. 

For the first time in many years, the liberal people in Israel feel they have a voice. Liberal values are important to us. It's values of equality, women's rights, LGBTQ rights. For many years, the moderate majority, the liberal people in Israel, kind of, you know, said, “Okay, we can give away a bit of our values for making it work for everyone, and we have to be able to also see multiculturalism, we have to see other groups.” And what happened now was that suddenly this group woke up and it was like a sleeping bear. And suddenly this group is out there.

We are going through a cultural, civil war, and it's trying to figure out what does it mean living in a Jewish, democratic country? And we’re a very complicated country. We have people that came from all over the world—Jews coming from all over the world, after 2,000 years trying to establish this country with 20 percent Arabs. People with very different views about what this country means. And what's happening now is that we're actually, for the first time, trying to define who we are and what we stand for. 

We don't have a constitution, we have no protection. So that's why the Supreme Court always protected our rights. That's the way it was established in Israel. 

As a woman, I'm terrified. Um, you know, almost all of our rights, we got from the Supreme Court. Our system has a lot of problems, and one of the challenges is that our political system is much less liberal than Israeli society because of the need of coalitions. And in the coalition you almost always have more Orthodox groups that it's very important to them to pass non-liberal legislations. So a lot of the rights that we got as women, LGBTQ—like our rights, a lot of them, we got through the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court is what evens out the political system.

Um, personally, I went to the Supreme Court quite a few times in my life. When I was a member of Jerusalem City Council, when they wouldn't have my poster on the bus during an electoral campaign, because I was a woman. And there was a group of ultra-Orthodox that put a lot of pressure on the bus company not to have posters of women. I went to the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court's verdict made it very clear, and I had my posters on the bus. 

And then I heard of buses that women have to sit in the back of the bus. And together with the other feminist groups, we held a campaign against that. And there were ongoing discussions in the Supreme Court and at the end, the verdict was that you can't tell anyone where to sit on the bus.

So I saw from upfront how the Supreme Court really, really saves my rights. We're not imagining anything; women are terrified. It's very much in the forefront—very, very much. This is a major reason that people are demonstrating so strongly against these legislations.

Something that over the past 20 years that was led mainly by Netanyahu—less than 20 years—was that if security in Israel is important to you, you have to be right-wing and you have to be of more conservative values. Like, liberal values mean that you don't care about Israeli security, and Israeli security is a major issue in Israel. And what happened in these demonstrations is that for the first time, the former generals are very clear about their liberal values. And suddenly it's not obvious that if security is important for you, you need to be in the right-wing. So this is, kind of, a game-changer for Israeli politics. 

An issue that we talk about at Darkenu is that the Supreme Court is the shield of Israeli soldiers from the international court in Hague, because we live in a country that's occupying Judea and Samaria, occupied territories. So this is very important to our soldiers to know that only if we have an independent judicial system, only then will our soldiers be tried in Israel, and they won't have to be tried in international courts in Hague, in case something happens—in case they do something they're not supposed to be doing.

Nahanni: In other words, if Israel no longer has an independent judicial system, the International Criminal Court may begin arresting members of the Israeli military, and trying them for war crimes if they travel outside the country.

Rachel: And this is a big issue that got a lot of the Israeli crowd out to the streets, because they realized that basically they're jeopardizing themselves. Because so many people in Israel were in combat units. One of the reasons our pilots are leaders in these demonstrations is because they will be the first ones that could be challenged in the international court in Hague. 

I think the demonstrations will react to what's happening in the political system. People are not going to let these legislations pass. They're just not going to let it happen. I think this is a real movement, and more than it’s  a movement—something changed in the way people perceive reality, and the way people perceive their power to change reality in Israel. So these are actually challenging, but very exciting days in Israeli society.

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Nahanni: That’s Rachel Azaria, former member of Knesset and deputy mayor of Jerusalem. She’s now the head of Darkenu. You also heard from Moran Zer Katzenstein, founder of Bonot Alternativa, Shula Keshet, founder of Achoti, and Nechumi Yaffe, faculty member in Public Policy at Tel Aviv University.

Thank you for joining us for Can We Talk?, the podcast of the Jewish Women’s Archive. This episode was produced by Jen Richler and me. Our team also includes Judith Rosenbaum. Our theme music is by Girls In Trouble. Special thanks to Ned Lazarus for help with this episode.  

You can listen to Can We Talk? online at jwa.org/canwetalk, or wherever you get your podcasts. Please help us spread the word by sharing this and your other favorite episodes with your friends, and share your feedback about Can We Talk? with us at jwa.org/podcastsurvey.

I’m Nahanni Rous. Until next time.

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