Broken Society Meets the Swords of Iron War

What happens when a society already torn apart by constitutional crisis meets war? In Israel, the struggle over the Judicial Reform shatters trust, fills the streets with mass protest, and pushes basic questions about democracy, solidarity, and the rules of the game to the breaking point. Then comes October 7 and the Swords of Iron War.This book asks what these twin shocks do to a society from the inside. Does crisis deepen old rifts, or create new forms of cohesion? Can war restore solidarity, or does it sharpen exclusion, populism, and distrust? Bringing together scholars, activists, and public intellectuals who live through these events in real time, the volume shows you how politics, protest, judicial power, military service, visual culture, Palestinian citizenship, Haredi belonging, and grassroots action all change under pressure.You see not only institutions, but people: students building fragile spaces of listening, activists reinventing civic responsibility, and a survivor from Be’eri imagining a “Second Zionist Home.” What makes this book stand out is its rare combination of sharp scholarship and lived experience. All contributors were in Israel during the crisis and war. Together, they offer more than diagnosis. They give you a map of Israel’s fragmentation, its competing moral and political visions, and the unexpected solidarities that may shape its future.