Three years that traversed a lifetime: A journalist's covering of Israel at war, crisis - comment

A week later, it fell apart, and an election was called.

As a new political correspondent, I was thrown into the deep end. And this was just the beginning. Over the next three years, arguably the most volatile in its history, Israel changed, and I, along with it.

I had a front row seat to momentous decisions.

I witnessed an unremarkable election campaign, the outcome of which was stunning. In the months following the election, I chronicled how parties attempted to maximize their gains in coalition negotiations.

I left my position in August, two months ago, in order to pursue a Master of Public Policy (MPP) degree in the United States. The following is an effort to make sense of what I witnessed, framed by the horrendous October 7 attack by Hamas and the launch of the war in Gaza – the key moments, the stories, the successes and disappointments, and the heart-wrenching moments alongside the uplifting ones.

The 2022 election campaign period between July and October, Israel’s fifth in three years, did not seem particularly out of the ordinary. The central theme in most party campaigns was the high cost of living, with then-opposition leader Netanyahu even releasing a video showing him holding a nozzle at a gas station, promising that prices would come down.

As in previous elections in April 2019, September 2019, March 2020, and March 2021, some new players entered the arena, such as former chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot. Some new party realignments emerged, such as a merger between Gideon Sa’ar’s right-wing New Hope party and Benny Gantz’s Blue and White party, forming what became known as the National Unity party.

In terms of actual votes, the elections ended in a virtual tie, with the right-wing camp receiving a sliver more votes than the center-left. Still, the fact that the left-wing Meretz and Balad parties did not pass the electoral threshold led to nearly 300,000 center-left votes being “wasted.” The result was that Netanyahu eventually formed a solid right-wing government, with a 64-56 majority in the Knesset.

On the bright side, I thought, at the very least, after years of political instability, there finally was a clear winner. Israel could finally move on from the political deadlock that had paralyzed its governing system for years.

I expected Netanyahu to quickly negotiate coalition agreements with his allies. But, despite the homogeneity of the soon-to-be coalition, he required a number of extensions, and negotiations lasted quite literally until the very last minute. During the new government’s confirmation hearing in the Knesset nearly two months later, the prime minister was passed notes, updating him about last-minute wrangling.

The delays occurred because of sectoral demands by Netanyahu’s partners – a sign of the dramatic events that were to follow. Finally, on December 29, the Knesset ratified Netanyahu’s new government.

In his confirmation speech, the prime minister laid out his government’s objectives: Prevent a nuclear Iran; create a bullet train to run the length of the country; bring about more peace deals with Arab countries; improve personal safety; and lower the high cost of living.

I observed the ratification vote from the reporter’s section of the Knesset plenum, and witnessed a symbolic, time-honored Israeli tradition: The Knesset plenum floor is organized in semicircular rows, with the innermost row reserved for government ministers. The outgoing ministers, led by Lapid, rose and entered their new seats in the opposition section, and the newly announced ministers took their seats.

I remember feeling hopeful. Here was a proud moment for a young democracy – the peaceful transfer of power, despite high polarization and a hard-fought election. Here was an example of the miracle that was modern-day Israel, I thought.

The announcement took me by surprise. Judicial reform had appeared on Smotrich’s party platform, but neither Netanyahu nor Levin had mentioned the reforms throughout the entire election campaign, nor did the reforms appear in Netanyahu’s victory and confirmation speeches. Smotrich immediately praised Levin’s announcement, as did his party member and judicial reform advocate, MK Simcha Rothman.

However, earlier in his career, Netanyahu had defended the need for the court’s independence, following in the footsteps of Likud founder Menachem Begin. But now, facing heavy criminal corruption charges, the prime minister remained silent.

Thousands of Israelis took to the streets that night, and a protest movement organized almost immediately.

However, my focus during the weeks that followed was on Rothman’s Knesset Constitution Committee. I sat in and reported on dozens of meetings. In addition to MKs from the opposition, numerous speakers came to the committee, such as senior academics, civil society leaders, former IDF generals, and former politicians – including from the Likud – and others. An overwhelming majority offered detailed rebuttals to the law proposals, and many suggested various alternatives.

In response, Rothman mostly expressed irritation and ridicule. He belittled and sometimes humiliated Knesset legal advisers and representatives from the attorney general’s office. He cut off speakers in mid-sentence when their allotted time ran out, and often expelled them from the committee when they protested.

Rather than substantial debate, the committee under Rothman often devolved into shouting matches. He rejected every proposal for amendment that did not come from members of the coalition, and few committee members from the coalition bothered to attend consistently.

Rothman’s conduct appeared nightly on news programs, further antagonizing protest groups, whose presence began to be unignorable.

At their peak, the protests outside the Knesset drew tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of angry demonstrators. The speakers and roars of the crowd (“De-mo-crat-ya”) could be clearly heard in some parts of the Knesset.

One evening, after a long day of work at the Knesset, I wandered over to the tent encampment that protest groups had set up in Sacher Park. There, too, I experienced a moment of pride. Here were people who cared deeply about the country’s character, and were exercising their right to non-violent protest – another fundamental pillar of democracy.

By March 2023, the social strife was beginning to create waves in the defense establishment as well. Volunteer reservists began issuing ultimatums threatening to cease service if they perceived the country as non-democratic.

In addition, highly unusual intelligence reports from various security agencies began to emerge, warning that the social strife was being perceived as a significant weakness and was eroding military deterrence.

By late July, however, the coalition was ready to pass the “reasonableness clause.” The Knesset was poised to head for its three-month summer recess, and Netanyahu decided to pass this law as a gesture of intent toward his coalition partners, who were frustrated that the reforms had stalled. The reasonableness law was considered the least damaging of Levin’s four provisions. Still, in Constitution Committee meeting after meeting, its implications became clear – removing the clause would remove a tool the court used mainly to prevent cronyism and corrupt appointments in the public sector.

As was Netanyahu’s custom, the vote on the reasonableness clause was not a guarantee until the very last minute. On the day of the vote, July 24, I remember seeing an unusual number of high-level IDF generals in the Knesset corridors, including then-head of IDF intelligence, Aharon Haliva.

It later became apparent that Haliva had come to the Knesset to warn that the bill’s passage was dangerous, as it would increase the discord within the IDF’s ranks. During the plenum in which the vote eventually passed, I noticed Gallant, Levin, and Netanyahu engaged in what was obviously a heated discussion. Gallant, it later became apparent, was asking Levin and Netanyahu to delay the vote. The prime minister refused, and the bill passed.

There were stormy protests that day outside the Knesset, but I remember thinking that, if the reasonableness clause was all that came out of Levin’s reforms, perhaps the crisis would finally abate with the damage contained. The Knesset headed for its recess, and I took a leave of absence to spend the summer traveling in South America and the United States. I left the country in early August, with my flight back scheduled for mid-October, in time for the Knesset’s winter session.

From afar, I kept tabs as Israel’s focus turned to an emerging opportunity for normalization with Saudi Arabia. Although the judicial reforms had not been declared defunct, they seemed to have receded, replaced instead by the exciting prospect of a major strategic agreement.

As it did for all Israelis, October 7 changed everything.

By the time I woke up in North America that fateful morning, it was already afternoon in Israel. Horrified, I remained glued to my phone as updates on the Hamas massacre poured in, along with bloodcurdling pictures, videos, and desperate pleas for help.

The day after coming back home, I headed to reserve duty as a logistics officer near the border with Gaza. I spent the next two and a half months there, returning to the Post in mid-January 2024.

I returned to a different Knesset than the one I had left in August.

Gantz’s National Unity party had entered the government. The coalition had committed to only passing measures that were related to the war effort, and the Knesset’s committee meetings and plenum votes usually passed with cross-partisan support. I learned and reported that legislators from the coalition and opposition had even formed a “war-room” that operated for approximately two months, in which the MKs and their teams fielded requests from civilians in need and collaborated in order to link them to relevant government agencies.

By the time I was back at my Knesset beat, the government had passed a number of measures to address a series of significant issues that had arisen in the wake of October 7. But it had taken the government a number of weeks after the massacre to get moving. In the interim, groups such as Brothers in Arms, which had previously been one of the fiercest anti-government protest groups, morphed into a volunteer group supplying equipment to soldiers and evacuees.

So-called “civil war rooms” to care for the needs of evacuees sprang up across the country. The solidarity and innovativeness of Israeli society in the face of trauma made me hope that the civil strife of the past year had ended.

But cracks in this renewed solidarity were quick to appear. By the time I was back at work, the Prime Minister’s Office was bucking responsibility for the disaster and consistently claiming in its press statements that only the IDF and Shin Bet were to be blamed.

Journalistic work changed as well – previous opportunities for journalists to ask questions, such as outside Sunday morning government meetings, no longer existed. The government no longer wanted to deal with the press’s probing questions into its handling of the months preceding the Hamas attack and in the months after.

By April 2024, the Knesset had again become combative.

Families of hostages, heartened by the first hostage release deal in late November, were beginning to question why the government was prioritizing an invasion of Rafah over a deal that would bring home their loved ones. And relatives of October 7 victims were wondering why there was no state commission of inquiry to examine the failures that led to the massacre.

In addition, the government began an effort to avoid drafting haredim (the ultra-Orthodox) into the IDF, instead passing new legislation to legalize the haredi exemption. Reservists who had served for over six months were beginning to question the government’s intent to relieve the burden of service, and pro-haredi-draft groups began appearing in the Knesset as well.

By August, Levin and others were calling for a return to the judicial reforms.

The worsening political atmosphere took a sinister turn after the discovery of the bodies of six slain hostages on August 31 near Rafah. They had been murdered just days earlier, likely due to the IDF’s advance. Demonstrators again took to the streets for the most significant wave of protests since October 7.

On September 2, after months of avoiding the media, Netanyahu held a press conference to stave off the pressure. I attended the press conference that day at the Prime Minister’s Office.

Using slides, the prime minister presented a document that had appeared the previous day in a German newspaper. The document, which he said had been written by Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, appeared to show that the protests were assisting the terror chief in applying pressure on Netanyahu to agree to end the war.

I remember thinking it was inappropriate for the prime minister to use a piece of intelligence to attempt to turn public opinion against the protestors, including family members of hostages.

Two weeks later, Netanyahu aide Eli Feldstein was arrested for leaking the document to the German newspaper. Feldstein had first attempted to leak it to Israeli journalists, but the IDF censor had blocked its publication. The document, it turns out, had been obtained using highly secret intelligence methods, and the leak could have revealed modus operandi and endangered lives. It also turns out that the document had been misrepresented by both the German newspaper and by Netanyahu – it was written by a lower-level official, not Sinwar, and was not official Hamas policy.

Netanyahu denied involvement, but text messages between Feldstein and a second Netanyahu aide involved in the leak, Yonatan Urich, showed that Netanyahu had been “happy” to discover the information in the German newspaper.

But this was just the beginning.

A second criminal investigation that emerged in the coming months revealed that Urich, Feldstein, and others had provided public relations services to the Qatari government while in office. In briefings with journalists, the two, funded by Qatar, had drummed up Qatar’s role in hostage negotiations and downplayed the role of rival mediator Egypt. Netanyahu again claimed he had not known that the two were on Qatar’s payroll.

The situation in the final months of 2024 was therefore darker than I had previously thought. Not only was the end of the Israel-Hamas War and a return of hostages not in sight,  but the prime minister and his office were blurring the lines between politics and national security more than ever before. This was compounded by the fact that on December 11, Netanyahu entered a secure underground Tel Aviv courtroom to begin testifying in his ongoing corruption trial.

By December 2024, judicial reform had returned to full swing. This time, in place of Levin’s four bombastic bills, several smaller bills were introduced that did not attract as much attention. At that point, the government was also consistently ignoring the attorney-general’s legal opinions, which, according to precedent, are legally binding. De facto, the government had thus achieved one of the four pillars of the reform – to remove the AG’s ability to block government initiatives deemed illegal.

In January, the atmosphere at the Knesset deteriorated further. On January 14, Ben-Gvir said in a press conference what many had already suspected – that he and Smotrich had blocked progress toward a hostage deal on “numerous occasions.”

Still, on January 19, the government was able to strike a hostage deal that included what appeared to be a pathway to the end of the war. Ben-Gvir responded by quitting the government. Smotrich stayed on after receiving guarantees that Israel would return to war following stage one of the deal, unless an acceptable long-term truce was negotiated beforehand.

With a potentially long-lasting ceasefire in place, family members of October 7 victims stepped up their demand for a state commission of inquiry into the massacre. On March 3, the Knesset plenum held a largely symbolic discussion initiated by the opposition following the government’s refusal.

That day, March 3, was my most difficult on the job.

Fearing disruptions by protestors, Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana had previously signed off on an order to limit group visits to the plenum visitor’s section. Visitors view proceedings through a soundproof, bulletproof glass wall, but some protestors had thrown paint and other artifacts at the glass. Ohana did not want to risk disruptions and therefore refused to make an exception, even for bereaved parents who wanted to view the discussion from the visitor’s section.

I witnessed as Knesset guards used force to repel parents who attempted to push through. The parents were holding pictures of their loved ones who were murdered on October 7. Two one them were injured during the melee and required medical attention. Many parents lost their composure and began screaming and crying.

Sadly, I remember thinking that one of the things Israelis held most holy, the sanctity of family members of soldiers fallen in battle and victims of terror, had become holy no more.

With the haredi draft bill stalled, haredi parties that were demanding an IDF service exemption for their constituents left the government, and it lost its automatic majority in the Knesset. In an attempt to appease them, Netanyahu removed Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee (FADC) Yuli Edelstein from his position.

Then, Israel launched a successful surprise attack against Iran. For the first time since the 2022 election, Netanyahu, finally in a position of strength, sat for interviews with Israeli news outlets that were not his supportive Channel 14, and enjoyed a short-lived rebound in periodic public opinion polls. Since October 7, his 64-member coalition had consistently dropped to the 52-54 range. It continues to poll in that range.

I filed my final two articles on August 3. Their headlines were indicative of where Israel stands today: “From Temple Mount, Ben-Gvir says ‘entire Gaza Strip must be occupied,’” and “Gov’t set to fire A-G, Golan calls to ‘bring country to a halt.’”

The past three years in Israeli politics were some of the most divisive and dangerous that the country has ever seen. But while I witnessed many disturbing moments of misguided governance, I also had the privilege of meeting Israelis at their finest.

I witnessed a peaceful transfer of power, something not to be taken for granted. I saw families with young children at protests, learning a lesson in active civil participation. I witnessed protest groups morph almost overnight into aid groups. I observed as Israelis by the thousands volunteered to assist on October 7 and afterward to help their brothers and sisters in need. And much more.

Israel must heal, and to do so, its hostages must return home. I pray that by the time this article is printed, the hostages will be in the safety of their homes.

May the troubles of the past years be behind us, and the coming year be one of lasting peace. 