Israeli society is undergoing a disturbing process. Bodies that for years served as the guardians of Israel's institutions, its gatekeepers, and its caretakers from the ivory tower continue to hold onto positions of power while neglecting their duties. While they may be well-versed in radical jargon, their political wheeling-and-dealing has absolutely nothing to do with social or political critique.
Members of the academia, and in particular those in the social sciences entrusted with espousing criticism of power structures and the use of anti-establishment theories, have become engrossed with political and moralistic thinking. In the dispute between the Right and the Left, they will defend the Palestinians and BDS activists and staunchly oppose governments on the right. But when it comes to centers of power – the police, the State Attorney's Office, and government institutions, all you will hear from them is silence.
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The struggle against Ariel University serves as an example of this politicization. This is if course a classic political struggle, within the framework of which other universities adopted a clear ideological line in opposition to the establishment of a research university in "the territories." In contrast, when it comes to the problematic takeover by Finance Ministry officials of the budgeting model and education ethos in its entirety, these same universities opt to surrender to the establishment, provided the bureaucracy helps stave off political influences from the Right.
A similar situation also prevails in the media. Journalists who purport to serve the public interest and protect democracy through the exposure of the injustices of the establishment offer to treat the prime minister with kid gloves should he adopt policies aligned with those of the political left. Others willingly become the spokesman of the systems they are meant to critique, and in many cases, are willing to go so far as to cooperate with those systems in violation of the law.
The ground, for example, did not exactly shake following Judge Hila Gerstel's report criticizing the State Attorney's office. In fact, the section focusing on the State Attorney's Office's ties with the National Center of Forensic Medicine was shelved, and to this day, no journalist has "succeeded" in exposing the full contents of the report. On the other hand, we are inundated with illegal and politically motivated leaks from the investigations into Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on a daily basis.
It's the same thing with the judicial system, which created the concept of the "judicial review." This system always took care to remain outside the political arena and the debate between Left and Right. Recall how the late Prime Minister Menachem Begin proudly remarked that "there are judges in Israel." He made the remarks following a ruling on Beit El that determined the Samarian civilian settlement was legal as it was part of the security system. But in recent rulings on issues such as illegal immigration, the Israel Defense Force's use of the so-called "neighbor procedure," in which Palestinian civilians are asked to assist the military in the arrest of wanted persons, the allocation of state budgets, decisions regarding home demolitions or the evacuation of settlements, politics are always at the forefront.
In this climate, Israel does not have a genuinely critical media, academia, or judicial system. What it does have are powerful and biased systems that have turned criticism into a hollow concept. Criticism is dead, and in its place, there has arisen in our parts a "new conservatism," the principles of which are the "preservation" of the gatekeepers, the protection of the centers of power, and absolute loyalty to government officials and red tape.
