Last week, I wrote that we are at war. Not the war of Israel against Iran or Hezbollah or Hamas but the war being waged inside Israel and in the occupied West Bank by religious right-wing extremists and their violent settler agents. Palestinians are the immediate victims, but the real target is Israel itself – democratic Israel.
They are defeating us because they know what they want, and we do not yet act as if we know what to defend.
They want a messianic, halachic kingdom of God. We want a democratic state: an Israel with a Jewish majority, rooted in Jewish history, Hebrew culture, and Jewish self-determination – but a state that belongs equally to all its citizens, as promised in the Declaration of Independence. They want Jewish supremacy. We want equality before the law. They want land without Palestinians. We want a state that protects every citizen and every person under its authority.
This is a struggle over whether Israel remains a democracy; whether the army serves the state or a messianic movement, whether the law protects everyone or only Jews, and whether Judaism in public life is moral responsibility or a weapon of domination.
No democracy with occupation
It is time to wake up and acknowledge that there is no democracy with occupation. A state cannot permanently rule over millions of people without equal rights and still call itself a democracy. The occupation corrupts the army, the law, our politics, and our moral language. It creates the space in which violent settlers become instruments of policy. Ending the occupation is not a concession to Palestinians. It is a necessity for saving Israel.
To win, democratic Israelis need moral clarity. Violent settlers are not “hilltop youth.” They are political actors using violence to achieve ideological goals. When ministers defend them, soldiers protect them, police fail to arrest them, and prosecutors fail to indict them, the state becomes a partner in the crime. Jewish terrorism is terrorism. A state that does not protect Palestinians under its control betrays itself, not only Palestinians.
We must defend Palestinians because that is how we defend Israel. The test of Israeli democracy is not how the state treats Jews in Tel Aviv. The test is how it treats Palestinians in Hebron, Masafer Yatta, the Jordan Valley, Huwara, Burin, and the South Hebron Hills. If the army controls their lives, the state is responsible for their safety. If the state permits settlers to terrorize them, democracy is already being destroyed.
We also need legal warfare. Every settler attack must be documented. Every failure of the army or police must be recorded. Every illegal outpost must be challenged in court. Every budget line funding criminality must be exposed. Every official who enables violence must be named. Legal teams, human rights organizations, former security officials, lawyers, journalists, and citizens must work together every day.
We need political organization. The extremists have parties, rabbis, youth movements, donors, media channels, yeshivas, ministers, and a clear ideology. Demonstrations are necessary but not enough. Protest without organization fades. We need a democratic political front whose mission is to save Israel from messianic authoritarianism.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a major part of the danger but not all of it. The deeper danger is the ideological movement seeking to replace democratic Israel with a religious-nationalist regime.
This front must be Jewish-Arab. There is no way to preserve Israeli democracy while excluding 20% of Israel’s citizens from political power. Arab citizens are not guests. They are citizens. Arab parties are Israeli parties. Arab votes are Israeli votes.
Any democratic coalition that treats Arab citizens as outside the legitimate political camp is already accepting part of the extremists’ logic. The next democratic coalition must include real Jewish-Arab partnership as equal partners in a shared civic project.
Israeli citizens must go where the state is failing: accompany shepherds; help Palestinian farmers reach their land; bring cameras, lawyers, members of Knesset, rabbis, diplomats, and journalists; and stand between violent settlers and Palestinian families. Nonviolent presence matters. Witness matters. Protection matters.
We must take back Judaism from those who have turned it into a weapon. Judaism is not a license to dominate another people. Jewish history does not justify Jewish supremacy. Religious Israelis who believe in democracy and human dignity must speak louder. A state with a Jewish majority that loses its moral soul will not be saved by more flags, more settlements, more guns, or more biblical slogans.
The IDF belongs to the state, not to the settlers. Soldiers are not private guards for violent extremists. The army must protect every person under its control. Former chiefs of staff, Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) heads, Mossad heads, generals, and police commanders must say publicly and repeatedly: Settler violence is a strategic threat to Israel.
And we must defend free and fair elections. We must not allow Netanyahu or anyone else to postpone them, manipulate them, distort their results, or create a crisis designed to prevent the public from deciding. The next election on October 27 must be a referendum on whether Israel remains a democracy.
Defending elections begins now: protecting the Central Elections Committee, resisting emergency measures abused for political survival, and exposing every attempt to delegitimize Arab voters, Arab parties, or the democratic opposition.
But winning an election is not enough. The next government must be ready from day one to dismantle illegal outposts, remove violent settlers from areas where they terrorize Palestinians, restore the authority of the police and courts, investigate state funding to extremist networks, and return the Civil Administration to professional control before it is eventually dismantled.
It must also put peace with all our neighbors, beginning with the Palestinians, at the top of the national agenda. Peace must become the organizing principle of Israeli policy, within a framework of regional security, economic development, normalization, mutual recognition, and partnership.
Israel’s long-term security will not come from permanent control over another people. It will come from ending occupation and building a regional order in which Palestinians and Israelis can both live in freedom and security.
The final requirement is courage. Many Israelis know what is happening. They know that Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and his allies are not merely another political faction. They know that the violent settler movement is changing the character of the state. But they are afraid – of internal conflict, of being called traitors, of admitting how deep the danger has become.
There is no unity with those who are destroying democracy from within. There is no peace with political violence. There is no democracy without confronting those who seek to end it.
We can win this war. The extremists are a minority. They are powerful because they are organized and because the majority has been passive.
To win, democratic Israelis must become a movement, not a mood. We must defend the law and we must defend Palestinians under Israeli control. Jewish-Arab equality must be part of our national identity. The army must not be politicized. We must stand up for the courts, moral Judaism, and the Declaration of Independence as the foundation of our common civic life.
This is a struggle for the Israel we still believe can exist: democratic, equal, moral, secure, rooted in Jewish and Hebrew culture, belonging to all its citizens, honoring and respecting universal human rights, ending the occupation, and at peace with its neighbors.
The war is already here. The question is whether we finally decide to fight it – and win.
The writer is the Middle East director of the International Communities Organization and the co-head of the Alliance for Two States.