Zeev Sternhell

The individual has ceased to be at the core of Israel’s democracy, with the right-wing majority aggressively pursuing legislation that turns the country’s non-Jews into second-class citizens. Anyone who allows this to happen will be complicit in the country’s fate.

Unlike Europe, where the right has significantly grown but is still not in power, in this country the racists, the extreme and clerical right is the government, with only a vacuum opposing it.

If the Labor Party doesn't supply a real alternative to the Likud ideology, which rules that poverty is natural and exploitation has a substitute, it will depart the political scene slowly but surely.

What will remain of the Jewish identity Yehoshua describes if the conjunction of religion and tribal nationalism become anachronistic?

There is no doubt that the social protest movement has reached a turning point and must decide on its identity and aims.

Even if some day the right is no longer in power or Israel is forced to give in by dint of international sanctions, policy in the territories will not change substantially, because the rioters are in control.

Justice is not merely the right to decent housing for Jews, it is also the right to freedom of a nation under occupation.

The young demonstrators would do well to remember May 1968 in Europe; a protest that does not find immediate political expression is destined to disintegrate.