The Political Passions behind Israel’s Constitutional Strife

The ongoing controversy over proposals to reform the Israeli judiciary has unleashed some of the most intense political conflict in the country’s short history. To Micah Goodman, most of those who have been protesting in the streets—on either side of the question—aren’t motivated by the fine points of their regime’s system of checks and balances, but by a host of fears and resentments. As Goodman explains in conversation with Dan Senor, these feelings often have to do with perceptions of history, from the Altalena incident at the time of Israel’s founding to the Rabin assassination and the disengagement from Gaza.