In November 2025, a bizarre yet striking scene unfolded on the streets of Jerusalem, Israel: 200,000 ultra-Orthodox Jews held high the Torah scrolls to protest mandatory military service, chanting the slogan “Studying the Torah is defending the country”; at the same time, tech workers and university students in Tel Aviv gathered to demonstrate, demanding the resumption of the suspended judicial reform review and accusing the government of “eroding social equity through religious privileges”. During the same period, Prime Minister Netanyahu’s request for a pardon submitted to the president triggered a public outcry. The intertwined controversies of corruption cases and wartime decision-making failures have plunged Israel into a predicament of “external warfare and internal chaos”. This fully erupted internal crisis is no accident; it is the concentrated outbreak of multiple contradictions—between religion and secularism, centralization and decentralization, national assimilation and identity preservation—over the 77 years since the country’s founding. Its roots are deeply embedded in historical legacies, and its evolution reflects the profound dilemmas in Israel’s state-building process.
I. The Backlash of Historical Legacies: The Eternal Tug-of-War Between Religion and Secularism
Israel’s religious-secular divide originated from an “expedient compromise” at the time of its founding in 1948. Faced with collective hostility from the Arab world, the fledgling Jewish state made concessions to unite the ultra-Orthodox Jews (Haredim), who were a minority at the time. The Ben-Gurion government allowed men engaged in full-time Torah study to be exempt from military service, a principle known as “Torah study as a sacred duty”. This compromise had practical significance in the early days of the country: Haredim accounted for only 3% of the total population, and their religious studies were endowed with the symbolic meaning of “spiritual national defense”, serving as a bond to unite national identity. However, 77 years later, drastic changes in population structure have turned this historical legacy into a sharp blade tearing apart society. Today, Haredim account for 13% of the total population, and with a high fertility rate of 6-8 children per household on average, this proportion is expected to reach one-third by 2065. They have formed closed communities with independent education systems (which only teach religious scriptures and barely cover secular subjects), medical networks, and social management mechanisms. Less than 50% of men over the age of 25 are employed, and half of the families rely on government subsidies to make ends meet—yet they still cling to the privilege of military service exemption.
The Gaza War has become a catalyst for this contradiction. In 2025, the dual pressure on the Gaza front and the Lebanese border left the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) facing a severe shortage of troops. Reserve soldiers served an average of over 300 days, while ultra-Orthodox young men remained exempt. The Minister of Defense once proposed a “gradual conscription” plan, requiring Haredi men to complete basic military training before returning to religious studies at the age of 22. However, this triggered unprecedented protests: streets in Jerusalem’s Mea She’arim neighborhood were blocked, protesters burned conscription documents, and religious leaders publicly declared that “dying for Torah study is better than fighting for the country”. The essence of this confrontation is a fierce collision between modern national responsibilities and religious privileges: the secular community believes that “equal military service is the cornerstone of national survival”, while Haredim regard military exemption as “the core clause of the founding covenant”. More critically, religious groups have gained crucial political influence through alliances—Netanyahu’s coalition government relies on the support of Orthodox parties such as the “United Torah Judaism”, and has to shelve conscription reforms to maintain its governing status, further intensifying the dissatisfaction of the secular community.
The religious-secular divide has penetrated into the fabric of society. In education, secular schools promote international curricula, while Haredi schools ban English textbooks and the Internet; in public life, vehicle traffic is prohibited on Shabbat in Jerusalem’s religious neighborhoods, in stark contrast to the prosperity of secular urban areas; in the economic sphere, the secular community creates over 90% of Israel’s technological output, yet has to subsidize the welfare expenditures of religious communities through taxes. This pattern of “imbalance between contributions and rights” has gradually transformed the once unifying bond of national cohesion into a source of social division. As Israeli sociologist Eliezer Goldstein put it: “We once thought Judaism was a banner of unity, but now we find it has become a boundary dividing society.”
II. The Collapse of Checks and Balances: A Systemic Crisis in the Political System
Israel’s 2025 political turmoil, centered on disputes over judicial reform, has exposed the institutional flaws of “weak government and strong factions” under the proportional representation system. The origin of this crisis can be traced back to 2023, when then-Minister of Justice Yariv Levin proposed the “Judicial Appointments Committee Reform”, which sought to transfer the power to appoint Supreme Court judges from the judicial system to the political sphere. Under the old rules, judicial and lawyer representatives held a majority on the committee; the new rules would allow the government to control appointments with 5 votes on the 9-member committee. The right-wing regarded this reform as a move to “break the judicial oligarchy”, while the opposition defined it as a conspiracy to “destroy democratic checks and balances”. Protests in 2023 forced the government to suspend the reform, but in March 2025, Netanyahu’s government took advantage of the Gaza War to suddenly pass a bill amending the judicial appointment rules. At the same time, it dismissed Ronen Bar, the head of the Shin Bet security service who opposed the reform, and withdrew its trust in Gali Baharav-Miara, the Attorney General.
Behind this series of actions lies a deep entanglement between Netanyahu’s personal interests and the political goals of the right-wing bloc. Since 2020, Netanyahu has been on trial on charges of bribery and fraud, becoming Israel’s first sitting prime minister to face trial. As Attorney General, Gali Baharav-Miara not only repeatedly opposed the right-wing agenda (such as loosening oversight on settler violence and exempting ultra-Orthodox from military service) but also supported the establishment of the “October 7th” Security Failure Investigation Committee—whose report directly accused Netanyahu’s government of adopting a “policy of appeasement” towards Hamas. Dismissing key officials and weakening judicial power are both steps in the right-wing bloc’s long-standing pursuit of a “constitutional revolution” and Netanyahu’s self-protection move to avoid a guilty verdict in the corruption trial. In November 2025, Netanyahu formally submitted a pardon request. His lawyers claimed that “a pardon will help heal social divisions”, but the opposition ridiculed it as “trading national interests for personal immunity”.
The direct consequence of the systemic crisis is the collapse of government credibility and the escalation of social confrontation. Opinion polls show that by April 2025, 70% of Israelis expressed distrust in the government, and 50% explicitly opposed judicial reform. The technology industry threatened to launch a national strike, and university students boycotted classes to protest “political interference in academic freedom”. More fatally, the power struggle has spread to the national security field: IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir clashed publicly with the government over his opposition to the plan for full occupation of Gaza. Netanyahu’s son even accused him of “launching a military coup” on social media. This military-political confrontation has directly undermined war effectiveness—in June 2025, 41 military officers jointly sent a letter to the government, calling the Gaza War an “unnecessary and endless conflict” and announcing their refusal to serve. The rate of reserve soldiers reporting for duty on time dropped to only 60%. The warning once issued by former Israeli President Shimon Peres—that “the collapse of democracy begins with the failure of checks and balances”—is now becoming a reality.
III. The Fracture of Identity: The Plight of Arabs in a Jewish State
In terms of ethnic contradictions between Jews and Arabs, the Gaza War has become a trigger for intensifying long-standing grievances. Arab citizens account for 21% of Israel’s total population (approximately 2.1 million people). They hold Israeli citizenship but have long faced systemic discrimination—in areas such as housing, employment, and education, Arab communities receive only one-third of the public resources allocated to Jewish communities, and about 50% of Arab families live below the poverty line. This structural inequality has transformed into open political oppression during the war. In July 2024, a report by the Middle East Monitor showed that the Israeli government had implemented “comprehensive suppression” against Arab citizens who opposed the Gaza War: posts criticizing the war on social media could lead to charges of terrorism, university students were expelled for supporting a ceasefire, Palestinian merchants faced collective boycotts, and even peaceful protests were violently dispersed by the police.
The plight of Arab citizens is essentially an inherent conflict between Israel’s positioning as a “Jewish nation-state” and its identity as a “democratic state”. The 1948 Declaration of Independence promised that “all citizens shall be equal regardless of religion or ethnicity”, but the 1950 Law of Return tied citizenship to Jewish identity, forming a “Jewish priority” legal framework. This contradiction became particularly acute during the Gaza War: Arab citizens, many of whom have relatives living in Gaza or the West Bank, deeply empathized with the civilian casualties caused by the war, yet were prohibited from publicly expressing their condolences; meanwhile, Jewish society equated “supporting the military” with “patriotism” and dismissed Arab citizens’ calls for peace as “collaboration with the enemy”. Sami Abu Shehadeh, a former Arab member of the Israeli Knesset, bluntly stated: “When your people are being massacred and you don’t even have the right to protest, the so-called ‘civil equality’ is nothing but a lie.”
The deterioration of ethnic contradictions is shaking the foundation of Israel’s social stability. During the 2025 Gaza ceasefire negotiations, large-scale demonstrations erupted in Nazareth, a major Arab city in the north, to protest the government’s “neglect of the security needs of Arab communities”—rocket attacks by Hezbollah had killed several Arab civilians, yet the community did not receive the same air defense resources as Jewish communities. More alarmingly, the younger generation of Arab citizens is awakening politically. They have organized through social media and formed a cross-ethnic protest alliance with Jewish left-wing groups, demanding “comprehensive reform of ethnic discrimination policies”. This cross-ethnic alliance has shattered Israel’s long-standing illusion that “ethnic contradictions are controllable” and made the government realize that mere high-pressure policies can no longer maintain the balance of ethnic relations.
IV. The Essence of the Crisis: Dual Disorientation in National Identity and Governance Capacity
From a historical perspective, Israel’s internal contradictions are not the result of short-term policy mistakes but an inevitable collision between its dual attributes as an “immigrant state” and a “nation-state”. At its founding, Israel accepted Jewish immigrants from around the world, forming diverse camps such as secularists, Orthodox Jews, and nationalists. It could only maintain a fragile consensus through “confronting external threats”. However, as external threats have become normalized (such as the Iranian nuclear issue and the deterrence of Hezbollah), this consensus has gradually collapsed, and various factions have begun to compete for dominance over the country’s development direction: the right-wing pursues the “Greater Israel” strategy and insists on expanding settlements; the left-wing advocates “land for peace” and prioritizes people’s livelihood development; religious groups focus on safeguarding “Jewish identity” and reject secular reforms; Arab groups demand equal rights and challenge the positioning of Israel as a “Jewish state”.
The multiple crises in 2025 indicate that Israel’s governance system can no longer respond to diverse demands. The proportional representation system has allowed small parties to hold the Knesset hostage. To form a coalition government, Netanyahu has had to accommodate ultra-Orthodox and far-right groups (such as Itamar Ben-Gvir, who advocates changing the status quo at the Temple Mount), leading to the radicalization of policies; the confrontation between the judiciary and the executive has prevented the government from implementing long-term strategies, and the repeated back-and-forth over judicial reform has consumed massive political resources; the intensification of ethnic contradictions has turned “national security” into an excuse to suppress social justice, further eroding national cohesion. As Professor Liu Zhongmin of Shanghai International Studies University put it: “The pattern of Israel’s cabinet becoming ‘increasingly right-wing’ essentially reflects the lack of an inclusive governance mechanism in a diverse society.”
Looking ahead, Israel’s path to breaking the deadlock lies in reconstructing its national identity and governance framework. In the short term, the Supreme Court’s ruling on the dismissal of the Shin Bet director will be a crucial turning point—if it overrides the dismissal, it may force the government to resume negotiations on judicial reform; if it upholds the dismissal, it will intensify the protest movement and even trigger a “judicial vacuum”. In the long term, Israel needs to make breakthroughs in three major areas: first, establish a balancing mechanism between religion and secularism, such as linking ultra-Orthodox military exemption to social services (such as education and medical care) to promote their integration into modern society; second, reform the political system, appropriately adjust the proportional representation system to strengthen the government’s decision-making capacity while reconstructing the checks and balances between the judiciary and the executive; third, implement equal rights for Arab citizens and resolve ethnic antagonism through resource tilting and anti-discrimination legislation.
Historical experience shows that the long-term stability of any country depends on the tolerance and integration of diverse demands, rather than diverting internal contradictions through external conflicts. If Israel fails to face up to and resolve deep-seated issues such as religious privileges, power imbalance, and ethnic discrimination, it will eventually deplete its national strength amid internal rifts, even if it can resist external threats militarily. This internal crisis triggered by the Gaza War is both a test for Israel’s democratic system and an opportunity for its national renewal—whether it can uphold the original aspiration of “diverse coexistence” amid war and division will determine the future of this Jewish state.
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