Season 2 Ep. 1 - Israel in Crisis

Podcast with Tamar Mayer

Charlotte Tate
From the Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs at Middlebury College, this is New Frontiers. I’m Charlotte Tate, associate director of the Rohatyn Center. New Frontiers podcasts highlight research undertaken by Middlebury Scholars and others on matters of international and global concern. Everything is fair game. From big tech, environmental conservation, and global security to religion, culture, and changing work patterns. In this episode, political geographer Tamar Mayer joins Mark Williams, director of the Rohatyn Center, to examine the state of democracy in Israel today. Their discussion is set against the backdrop of large-scale demonstrations taking place in Israel that have disrupted daily life and dramatically heightened tensions between Israel’s government and many of its citizens.

Tamar Mayer:
What you hear, constantly screaming, are “democracy, democracy, democracy. Democratia, democratia, democratia.” The second thing you hear is (in Hebrew), “Shame, shame, shame on the government. Shame on Bibi Netanyahu.”

Mark Williams:
For more than 20 weeks, Israelis have mounted, sustained massive and nonviolent demonstrations, at times 650,000 strong, to protest plans by the government of Benjamin Netanyahu to overhaul the nation’s judiciary. Backers of the judicial reforms argue that drastic change is needed to rebalance power between the courts and elected officials. Opponents meanwhile view the reforms as an existential threat to Israeli democracy. What exactly is at stake in Israeli politics today? Why have so many Israelis taken to the streets? And what are the prospects for Israel’s political future? To find out, I wanted to speak with Tamar Mayer, the Robert R. Churchill Professor of Geosciences at Middlebury College. Timi, as she’s known to us on campus, is a keen observer of Israeli politics. She’s authored numerous articles and book chapters on nationalism and gender identity, mostly in Israel and the occupied West Bank. She’s edited or co-edited over a half dozen volumes, including one that deals exclusively with the impact the Israeli occupations had on Jewish and Palestinian women in Israel. And her current book project examines the interplay among nationalism, homeland, and memory, with a special focus on stateless ethnic nations. It’s working title is “Territorializing a Nation? Where Is the Land of Home?” I was anxious to know what Timi thought about the demonstrations, especially about what caused them.

Tamar Mayer:
These demonstrations are really about the character of the state. Will the state be democratic? Will the state be Jewish? In other words, will it be a religious state or will it continue to be some sort of liberal democracy? The way that the current government is trying to create a judicial overhaul, this is moving very fast with changes of the judiciary. The changes will cause, undoubtedly, a move away from democracy into something that looks a lot more like theocracy, which means that the secular part of the population in Israel is pretty unhappy with that kind of move.

Mark Williams:
Intrigued by the idea that a theocracy might come to replace Israel’s democracy, I wondered what historically the role of religion had actually been in Israeli society and politics.

Tamar Mayer:
So, religion has always been incredibly important in the state. And that is because since the early days of the state, in order to create a coalition government, because we have a parliamentary system, in order to create a coalition government, almost every single majority party could not reach 50 percent or 51 percent of the vote and needed to have a coalition with other parties. And the religious parties were the ones that were the most perhaps natural partner. In order to be a partner, the majority party had to cave in to demands of the religious parties. How does it translate into Israel’s life? In the early part of the state, the majority of Israelis were secular. But with the demographics, there is a growing number and therefore growing in importance of the religious parties.

Mark Williams:
You’re saying that religion has always been an important part of Israeli society, even though officially it was not part of the state. But because of political dynamics, religion has begun to play a more important role with respect to politics and policies.

Tamar Mayer:
I’m saying that actually that role was there from the beginning. Now, it is a lot worse. It’s on steroids. The religious parties, in order to join the coalition in 1949 demanded several portfolios. Everything that has to do with births and deaths and divorce and who is a Jew, all of it is under the auspices of the rabbinate. And that is everything between people. They will tell you that you’re not Jewish because you haven’t been converted through orthodoxy. You can’t be buried in a non-religious way. You cannot divorce. You have to go in front of a rabbinical court in order to divorce. Something that have always been really anti-women. So religion was always a very important part of the state. Now there are changes, because the religious parties have become much more numerous and birthrate is higher for religious people, and so their impact on daily life is much greater. I’ll give an example. As of today, the Israeli Coalition, which is led as you know, by Likud and all religious far-right parties tried to pass a law about property taxes, that they will take property taxes from the municipalities and they’re going to give money to religious settlements in the West Bank. The ways that the religion is playing a part, it is definitely entering the economy. It is entering relationship between people.

Mark Williams:
Even tax laws.

Tamar Mayer:
The tax laws. The way the religious parties are robbing the public finances. So it has always been there. But when religious parties were a minority in the government, it went okay, you know. Yes you couldn’t drive on Shabbat, you couldn’t have buses on Shabbat. Airplanes wouldn’t land in Israel on Shabbat. So I think we are looking at tension that has always existed between religion and secularism in Israel. Secularism was always associated with liberal thinking. The religious thinking has always been very much messianic. With that kind of long view about what should happen to the state. And I think that is getting, really, worse because they are pushing for the overhaul, for the judicial overhaul.

Mark Williams:
So the influence of religious parties has grown. You’ve mentioned demographic change a couple of times already. Can you talk a little bit more about why the demographics are changing and to what extent has the change occurred over the last, oh, couple of decades?

Tamar Mayer:
Yes. The orthodox population, which survived Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, when it came to Israel, the numbers were very small because most of the population was decimated in the Holocaust. So there were really a small percentage of the population. They have been fulfilling the command of be fruitful, and they have multiplied by many, many times. The demographics in Israel is now so crazy, really, that by 2060, one in every two kids, Jewish kids in Israel, will be educated in the Haredi, in the ultra-orthodox community. Those people marry young. At the age of 18, 19, for men, they then have a long time to be in the reproductive cohort, shall we say. It is not unusual for them to have 10 and 12 children. Then each of them married young again. And so it’s exponential, exponential growth and that is very upsetting. But here is what is the most upsetting. They’re not really contributing to the Israeli economy. They’re not serving in the army except for very small number. And that is an agreement that had been signed between David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister and the religious people. That was one of their demands, that they will be studying and not going to the army. And he said, okay. So they don’t serve in the army. They don’t contribute to the Israeli economy because they don’t study math and science and Hebrew or English or anything like this. They only study Torah.

Mark Williams:
Do they hold jobs, employment?

Tamar Mayer:
More than 50 percent of the men do not. The women do. They’re the poorest segment of Israeli population. So they’re not serving in the army while the rest of the people are serving. The secular Jews are serving in the army. They’re so poor, they don’t pay taxes. The rest of us, we do pay taxes. Lots of the funding are diverted to their communities. They get handouts from the government on a regular basis. And so your first question was, what is this demonstration? What are they about? It is also about all of these things. Literally all of these things. We want to see equality in the burden, and we don’t have that.

Mark Williams:
If I’m hearing you correctly, I think you’re saying that there’s a view that the obligations of citizenship are not being equally shared.

Tamar Mayer:
Correct. I would even take it in a little different direction. There are many who do not serve and basically say that they contribute to Israel by studying Torah. That’s their view. And they say, why go into the army, why is that more important to serving the country than sitting at home and studying Torah? Which of course, you know, that’s their view, but their view is they’re studying Torah because they’re hoping to bring Messiah. So there’s two populations in Israel that are coming from totally different perspective into statehood.

Mark Williams:
That’s really fascinating. You spoke in the beginning about the demonstrations having been spurred by government plans to reform the judiciary. Could you talk just a little bit about judicial reform and what it might entail from the government’s perspective?

Tamar Mayer:
So Israel is a parliamentary democracy, as I said. We do have three different branches, but the judicial overhaul is about an attempt to make the legal system and the judiciary subordinates to the Knesset. The things on the table are the following: the Knesset wants to change the way the judges are elected.

Mark Williams:
From what to what?

Tamar Mayer:
Currently, judges are elected by nine members. One of them is the minister of legal affairs, two Knesset members that the Knesset actually chooses, two members of the bar, the president of the supreme court, and two supreme court judges. They want to change it and have the number of Knesset members be the majority. That way they will choose who the supreme court judges are going to be. This is a huge change.

Mark Williams:
This move would concentrate selection authority in fewer hands, as opposed to having it distributed amongst actors.

Tamar Mayer:
Correct. And who is the head of the Knesset? The prime minister. And so the prime minister will have a say as to who is going to be selected to be a supreme court judge. Now we need to ask why? Right? And why so fast and why now? And I think that very much it has to do with all the indictments against Netanyahu, against the prime minister. And he wants to be able to choose his own judges. Basically. That’s what the bottom line is. And how do we know that? Or why do we assume that? It’s because the guy who is crafting this judicial overhaul has been trying to push it for about 15 years, and in every turn Netanyahu said no. So why all of a sudden does he say yes? Is it because he’s afraid of the smell of the jail? The thing that we need to remember is that, actually from this entire government Netanyahu is the most liberal guy. And he was educated in America, and he knows that that’s not right, but he’s pushing ahead with it.

Mark Williams:
So you’re saying that Israel’s democracy is in a genuine crisis. I’m curious how serious a crisis is this really, on a scale of one to five, where do you think this crisis would fall and why?

Tamar Mayer:
I actually think we’re going to be at five. If they pass the laws, there will be no checks and balances in Israel. Zero. And if there are no checks and balances, there cannot be any kind of democracy.

Mark Williams:
Whoever is prime minister holding that position would have almost unlimited authority.

Tamar Mayer:
Absolutely. And the coalition, their governing coalition will have the utmost authority. And since this is the most far-right government ever in Israel’s history, and they’re changing the laws in a speed like F 35, it will be really difficult to undo all of this later. It will almost be impossible to undo. So there’ll be a problem. If you have a religious people who want to put women at the end of the bus, literally. Who do not want see Arabs run for anything or even be able to vote. It’s going to be some kind of living by Jewish law for the religious people. And the rest of people will be totally rejected.

Mark Williams:
So the absence of, if I’m hearing you, the absence of checks and balances as some perceive it, the unlimited authority that this would grant to the prime minister and the coalition government is why you would place this crisis at the top of the scale of five?

Tamar Mayer:
Absolutely.

Mark Williams:
Well, can I ask a personal question? I know that you visit Israel frequently. Have you been to any of these protests during one of your visits?

Tamar Mayer:
Oh, yes.

Mark Williams:
Okay. Can you tell me what is the flavor of the protest? What seems most animating and of greatest concern to the people who are out in the street?

amar Mayer:
What you hear, constantly screaming, are “democracy, democracy, democracy. Democratia, democratia, democratia.” The second thing you hear is “busha, shame, shame, shame on the government, shame on Bibi Netanyahu.” You see lots of different signs, lots of different flags. You have Arab speakers. It’s also about the occupation of the West Bank because people recognize that the evil really is the fact that we have had now an occupation of 55 years, since 1967. So you see a lot of “end the occupation” banners. You have a lot of things about “Bibi the thief.” You have lots of gay pride and trans flags. There is an incredible staged demonstration of women who are dressed like the Handmaid Tale. Yes. We are not going to be your slaves because the new laws are going to put women literally at the back of the bus.

Mark Williams:
Can you give an example of,

Tamar Mayer:
Yes, there is a law that the men sit at the front of the bus. I mean, as simple as that. There are lots of examples. So gender issues, gay rights issues, Arabs. If the supreme court gets to be weakened, that’s the only check and balance in Israel, the supreme court. An Arab can come to the supreme court.

Mark Williams:
By Arab, excuse me,

Tamar Mayer:
Israeli Arab. Israeli Palestinians.

Mark Williams:
Israeli citizen.

Tamar Mayer:
Exactly. Those who remained after 1948. Several times, also Palestinians from the West Bank appealed to the Israeli courts because the settlers uprooted trees, confiscated their land, and oftentimes the court sided with the plaintiff. So if the supreme court gets annulled, really, then not only Jews are going to suffer. Not only Israeli Arabs are going to suffer, but even Arabs in the West Bank are going to suffer. Now, granted, the court is not always siding with the Arabs, but there have been several cases that the Palestinians from the West Bank, not just Israeli citizens, but from the West Bank, have appealed to the court because of what the soldiers have done to them. Or what the settlers have done to them.

Mark Williams:
And so one could imagine that if a legal peaceful recourse to redress grievances is stymied or impeded, and those grievances and complaints remain, that alternative means of seeking redress might be sought.

Tamar Mayer:
At the Hague, maybe. Now, if the Israeli supreme court does not hold the Israeli government responsible for anything and everything will come to the courts in Hague, all the Israeli soldiers, and everybody’s conscripted right, every Israeli soldier can be, at any time when traveling outside Israel, can be arrested. Now the people who are doing the overhaul, what do they care? They don’t serve in the army. But for the majority of Israelis, we do serve in the army. And so to fear to get on a plane in London and basically you’ll be arrested because you were in the army at this and this age. You are this age, so clearly you participated in bombing Gaza. This is human rights violation. So every Israeli citizen will be accountable.

Mark Williams:
That’s a frightening prospect. I’m wondering, what do you think is the actual root cause of Israel’s crisis of democracy? Is it more a reflection of Netanyahu’s anti-democratic values, the fear of imprisonment? Or do you think that the crisis might have even deeper roots than that?

Tamar Mayer:
I think it has deeper roots than that.

Mark Williams:
Like what?

Tamar Mayer:
I think Israel was never really a full democracy.

Mark Williams:
Really?

Tamar Mayer:
Yeah. I think that it was a democracy for the Jews. And I think that for many years, and I would say even for now, it was not really a democracy for the Arab Palestinian citizens of the State of Israel. And I’ll give just a couple of examples. Until the December 1966, they lived under martial law. They were feared to be a fifth column. They therefore had a curfew. They could be traveling between six and six, 6:00 AM and 6:00 PM, by 6:00 PM they had to be back home. Now they are the people who built literally the houses, the communities, as Israel was growing, they didn’t enjoy any of this. So that ended in 1966. In 1967, six months later, Israel engaged in the Six Days War. And then we started to have a million other Palestinians that we had to deal with. And compared to the Palestinians in the West Bank, the economic situation of the Palestinians in Israel was actually pretty good.
But if you look at the villages that were built, let’s say in the Galilee, the Jewish settlements, where they were built, at the top of the mountains so that you can look at what’s going on underneath where the Arabs were sitting. Where you see that the villages on the top of the mountain had running water and had electricity and had paved roads. And you go down to the bottom of the hill and you see that they do not. You see that there’s no access to resources or to government services. Arabs have always been suspects. And just like in America, you know, driving while black; it is driving while Arab. And so they’re always picked up. They haven’t been treated very well.

Mark Williams:
So they’ve always been, you’re saying, subjected to closer state scrutiny?

Tamar Mayer:
They have been.

Mark Williams:
Curtailment of,

Tamar Mayer:
They have been.

Mark Williams:
Perhaps individual liberties.

Tamar Mayer:
Yes, right. But there’s more to that. One more point that I want to make about that. And that is that all the Jews are conscripted unless you are very religious. And many workplaces and many benefits, like in housing or college tuition has always gone to people who served. So the Arabs who do not serve could not get a lot of jobs that the Jewish population could get. So they were discriminated, really, professionally. Now, there are lots of attempts by good people to try to change it, but it still,

Mark Williams:
Is this because they were prohibited from serving in the military or because they chose not to?

Tamar Mayer:
Both. Both. When I was in service, there were no Arabs. But they’re now volunteers. They’re people who volunteer because they understand that is ticket to doing a little better in society.

Mark Williams:
So you see the root of this crisis preceding the advent of the Netanyahu government by some years.

Tamar Mayer:
Yes. By many years.

Mark Williams:
Well, given the totality of what you’ve said, how do you view the prospects for constructive change? Are the prospects good? Are they plausible?

Tamar Mayer:
No. And I’ll say that there are three things that must happen in order to have a change. One, to have a separation between state and religion. Two, to end the occupation. And three, to write a constitution. Unless these things happen, there will be no change. And I don’t see any of them, any of them changing.

Mark Williams:
You don’t think that the Israeli government will be responsive to the concerns expressed by the protestors?

Tamar Mayer:
They don’t care. They’re moving forward.

Mark Williams:
This brings up a question that’s really been gnawing at me, and it has to do with a question of timing. You’ve alluded to this a bit before, but why do you actually think that Prime Minister Netanyahu is doing this? He’s won national elections multiple times. He knows that Israeli democracy works, at least for a majority of the citizens there. Why is he pushing judicial reforms that so many people believe are going to damage Israel’s democracy so badly?

Tamar Mayer:
I really think that he’s afraid of jail. I really do. Because in the past when there were conversations about the need to overhaul, Netanyahu saw this and he said, no. Netanyahu is so smart. So why is it that in the past he was against these legal things? So the only possible explanation is that he needs to have this coalition government in order to avoid going to jail. And the way he will avoid going to jail is that there will be a reform. Then he and the Knesset will be able to appoint who the judges are, and they’re all going to be comfortable judges that do not think that he did anything wrong. There’s no other explanation. You know and he’s silent. He’s silent when there are all these demonstrations right now.

Mark Williams:
Well, how does he respond?

Tamar Mayer:
He’s not responding. He’s sending the minister of homeland security to club down the demonstrations. He’s not talking. He’s not out there. This is the time to appease. No, they are his front. He’s pushing them from behind.

Mark Williams:
Let me approach this from a different angle. What percentage of the population do you believe is in support of the judicial reforms? And I ask this because if this is just a case of Netanyahu serving the interests of an important domestic constituency, then some would say perhaps that this is just a form of democracy in action.

Tamar Mayer:
Right, right. He was elected democratically. The religious parties, they were elected democratically. Nobody who voted for Likud thought that there is a judicial overhaul on the way.

Mark Williams:
So this was not part of a campaign promise?

Tamar Mayer:
Not at all. There were three things that he talked about. And the day after he was elected, he said, this is what my government is going to do: Iran, cost of living, and something about Israeli security. And then two or three days later, when he’s finally able to put together his coalition, they’re talking about judicial overhaul.

Mark Williams:
Then where did this come from? Did it come from Israeli

Tamar Mayer:
From the religious party. The religious parties have a very clear agenda, very clear. If these things do not happen, they will withdraw from the coalition. Were they to withdraw from the coalition, the government will fall. Government will fall, there will be new elections. Netanyahu may not win. Netanyahu will end up in jail.

Mark Williams:
Let me shift gears a little bit, Timi. Let me ask you this question. How can the people who are demonstrating against the government call for the defense of democracy when Israel doesn’t actually have an actual constitution?

Tamar Mayer:
Israel doesn’t have a constitution because of historical reasons and inability of the religious people and the secular people to agree on what the character of the state would be. That was already 1948. Israel did have a liberal democracy. Yes, not for everybody, but for a lot of people. For the majority of people.

Mark Williams:
But not based on an actual democratic constitution?
T
amar Mayer:
No, based on basic laws. In lieu of constitution, they came up with a series of basic laws that they said that once there will be a constitution, it will be built on these basic laws.

Mark Williams:
Oh, I see.

Tamar Mayer:
So there is a series of basic laws that are not that difficult to change and are not that difficult to enact.

Mark Williams:
Can you give us an example of a basic law and what it might cover?

Tamar Mayer:
Israel has at its creation, had a declaration of independence. The declaration of independence clarified that Israel is going to be based on democratic principles. And there will be equality for all regardless of gender and religion and ethnicity and creed and all of that. In 1992, they figured out that it is not enough to have it in the declaration of independence. They needed to have a law for that. So they created a law, which was a very progressive law.

Mark Williams:
Do you mean the Law of Human Dignity and Liberty?
T
amar Mayer:
Correct. And it is Israel’s basic human right law. Excellent. In 2018, the government decided to pass another law, another basic law, given the fact that there were more religious people in the government at the time. And it is called a nationality bill, declaring that Israel is the state of the Jews. Period. What does it mean? Up to now, there was at least some kind of consideration that there should be equality for all because we have the human dignity law. No more. They’re not even mentioned. There is the anthem, the flag, the language, the calendar, the symbols, national symbols, all Jewish. Arabic, in fact, that was one of the two official languages of Israel was degraded. So you have now a law that declares, this is a basic law, that declares that Israel is a state of the Jews, not just Jewish state, a state of the Jews.

Mark Williams:
How does one reconcile the 2018 law with the law of the 1990s? They seem at odds in some respects.

Tamar Mayer:
They are.

Mark Williams:
Both are eventually to be somehow incorporated into a constitution?

Tamar Mayer:
Yes. Yes. There’s not going to be a constitution. There literally cannot be a constitution in Israel because the religious people since 1948 say we cannot accept a law that was written by people. We only accept God’s law. That’s why when you asked me before, what are the ways to get ourselves out of this pickle? And I said, one of them has to be writing a constitution. One of them had to be separation of state and  religion. But I think that the inability to agree what the constitution will have, the inability to separate state from religion, and the inability to end the occupation are going to mean that we’re never going to be able to talk about democracy for all. And therefore, Israel has to make a decision what it wants to be.

Mark Williams:
How will that decision be made, do you think?

Tamar Mayer:
It will be made by whoever is in power.

Mark Williams:
Not by the people who are in the streets.

Tamar Mayer:
No. No, because none of these things is coming to a vote. They’re going to make the decision. And if you have a lot of religious people in the government like you have now, it’s a real majority. And they can decide, God gave us this land. West Bank is part of biblical land of Israel. God gave it to Abraham. We’re never going to leave. If they’re never going to leave, what do you do with the Arabs? They don’t care what will happen to the Arabs. Leave if you want, but this is ours. That’s why I say I don’t see any way out of it. That’s why I’m, I’m depressed.

Mark Williams:
It seems to me that what you’re describing is averse to principles of pluralism. I’ll put it like that. The 2018 law seems more exclusive, inclusive for one group, but exclusive of others. And therefore, it cuts against the grain of democratic pluralism.

Tamar Mayer:
Absolutely. I think that they’re not even trying to pretend anything about pluralism. It is very, very clear. This is a Jewish state. Period.

Mark Williams:
If one listens to the advocates of judicial reform in Israel, the government’s basic argument seems to be that drastic change is needed to rebalance power between the courts and elected officials. Obviously the protests, which at times bring 650,000 citizens into the streets, demonstrate that this isn’t a consensus view. In fact, opponents of judicial reform argued that Israel’s democracy itself hangs in the balance. So I wondered what might happen if those protesting the planned reforms were actually to prevail. What would victory for the protestors actually mean in terms of Israel’s political fate?

Tamar Mayer:
I think this is a great question because I think that the demands that the demonstrators are asking for cannot really be met. One of them is end the occupation. The other one is write a constitution. And there are people who are saying separate the state from religion. So these things are not going to happen. So what are they trying to do? I would say for the many people who are in the streets in Israel, it is to go back to the kind of liberal democracies that they believe they had. But I said before,

Mark Williams:
Which itself had limits.

Tamar Mayer:
Exactly. And I said before, it’s only for part of the population, it’s not for everybody.

Mark Williams:
From my own observations, I knew the composition of the demonstrations had changed over time in terms of class and age and social makeup. I also know their numbers had continued to grow. So I was curious if Timi had seen any evidence of organizational power that might be leveraged even more effectively than sheer numbers. Would creating a more unified structure of opposition to government plans also be a more effective way to help defend democracy? Her answers surprised me.

Tamar Mayer:
I don’t know who the organizers are. And I don’t know that there is a national organization per se. I think that to have a coherent, a narrow, coherent agenda will mean that the demonstrations will fizzle away. I don’t think they can. I don’t think they should.

Mark Williams:
You don’t think they can be organized?

Tamar Mayer:
I don’t think they should because I think that the beauty of this, of these demonstrations, of having eight percent of the population out in the street, is because people are upset about the big picture.

Mark Williams:
I see.

Tamar Mayer:
And if you’re going to start looking at the small pictures, let’s deal with gay rights. Well, you know, most people don’t care about that. Well, let’s talk about trans. For sure they’re not interested in that. Women, a lot of them don’t care very much. I think that if you start sort of parceling what are all the messages are and not think about the big picture, the demonstrations won’t survive. I think they have to continue to talk about the judicial overhaul, the power that the government is exerting and in literally robbing the public coffers. And they must continue to talk about equality and burden.

Mark Williams:
Do you have any final thoughts on what needs to be done in terms of going forward? What Israel might do to sort of see its way out of this crisis?

Tamar Mayer:
The occupation must stop. The occupation has corrupted Israel. I wrote about it in 1989. The occupation corrupts and now you have two generations that have grown up with a big Israel, with the understanding that they are the masters of the land. I mean, I always go back to the beautiful things about Judaism of how humanistic it is. And we sort of forgot what that is. So the occupation must end, in my view, must end. A constitution must be written. And I grew up in a home that my father already in 1960, I remember, talking about the need to separate religion from the state. I was a little girl and constantly I heard this. I didn’t even know what he meant. But that’s the direction. That’s what has to happen. And now as the religious people’s power is growing, really because of demographics. And because of that demographics, even if you look right now, you look at the Arab kids, you look at the Haredi kids of the religious kids and the other less Haredi, they’re going to schools, they don’t know anything about democracy. Or about Zionism or, they don’t learn any of these things. How will they ever know anything, that they should fight for democracy? How would they know what democracy looks like?

Mark Williams:
These are structural issues. You’re talking about that are going to cast long shadows into the future. Well, this has been a fascinating discussion. It really has. And I think that the topic is really, really important. Timi Mayer, thank you very much for visiting us today, and thank you for making time to talk to us here on New Frontiers.

Tamar Mayer:
Really, my pleasure. Thank you very much.

Vivian Svengo ‘25:
Professor Timi Mayer lives in Middlebury, Vermont. Outside of the classroom, students might find her doing power walks around campus or writing articles and book chapters in the local coffee house. Known for her stylish apparel, accessories, and eyeglasses, Professor Mayer grew up in Israel. She lived for good while in China conducting research, and these days is a new and very proud grandmother.

Mark Williams:
This episode of New Frontiers was produced by Margaret DeFoor and me, Mark Williams. Our theme music is by Ketsa. If you like the show, leave us a rating or review on Spotify, Amazon, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This can help others to find us too. We’ll be back with another episode of New Frontiers. Thanks a lot.