Today, in the final segment of our three part conversation with Professor Kandel, I sought to articulate, however inadequately, why I found his proposal brilliant but also unsettling. Is three semi-independent cantons really the state that we hoped it would be? Was it what the founders labored and died for?

What about limits? If the “Haredi” canton decided that women could not vote, would the rest of Israelis have to accept that? What about military service? Are the Haredim still not obligated to serve? What about Arabs and national service?

Is it called survival if what we do saves the country but breaks our hearts?

Those are the issues Professor Kandel and I discuss in this final segment.

Eugene Kandel served as a Professor of Economics and Finances at the Hebrew University, and previously taught at the University of Rochester and the University of Chicago. Since 2023, Kandel serves as the Chairman of the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. Kandel is also the Chairman of the ISFI, a non-profit aimed at increasing the resilience of Israel as a state. He chairs RISE Israel, a non-profit dedicated to supporting resilient and innovative Israeli economy. In 2015-2021 Kandel was the CEO of the Start-up Nation Central, a non-profit focused on Israeli technological innovation solving pressing problems around the world. In 2009-2015 Kandel served as the Head of the National Economic Council and the Economic Advisor to the Prime Minister of Israel and was actively involved in shaping the economic strategy and policy of Israel.

To learn about Professor Kandel, his proposal and this project, see the following additional resources:

Israel Strategic Futures website

Israel Strategic Futures YouTube Channel

Israel Strategic Futures LinkedIn page

Israel Strategic Futures Facebook page

The link at the top of this posting will take you to the full recording of our conversation; below you will find a transcript for those who prefer to read, which we are making available to all our readers and listeners.

If you would like to share our conversation about what Israelis are feeling and expressing at this unprecedented moment in our history, we invite you to subscribe today.

Okay, we are back for the third and final part of our long conversation with Professor Eugene Kandel, who, along with his colleagues at the Israel Strategic Futures Institute, is trying to think through very clearly, very strategically, very openly, and very honestly, what are the fundamental structural issues that Israel face that, frankly, make the war seem like a minor problem. Because if we don't fix those structural issues, it doesn't really matter who wins the battle between Israelis and Palestinians because we're not going to be here anyway. We're essentially, as he argued in the first conversation, doing Iran's work for it because we're destroying our ability to survive. In the second conversation, He described more or less the strategic direction or the structural direction, I guess I should say, that he and his partners at the Israel Strategic Futures Institute have in mind, which is to copy big chunks of what Switzerland has done to have a federal system, a canton system, and a local system. He outlined that for us in the previous conversation. In this conversation, I want to ask Eugene one question more about the actual nature of the solution. And then I'm going to move from the head to the heart for a second, and then we'll wrap it up. To go back to the previous conversation and talking just about how the idea itself works, I want to hear more about the judiciary, where the judiciary lies. So let's say, for example, the Haredi. I keep calling it the Haredi Canton, which I know you don't want to do. You want to call it the Torah primary Canton, but I'm just using liberal democratic for the middle, Arab for the left, even though it's not that it's a country of all of its residents. There could be Jews who are part of that also.No, it's more so that about half of our population would choose to be in the liberal.In the middle one. Okay, but I'm just I'm using very rough and dirty codes, but I just want to make sure our listeners understand that I'm dumbing down the nuance of the way that you've called these Alumot or cantons. But let's just say that I'm going to call the Haredi Canton for a second, even though I know you don't call it that. They decide, Oh, yeah. Okay. Women don't vote. We're going to have elections, and we are going to internally vote that women don't vote. Or if the The majority of the non-Zionist Aluma is Arab, and presumably, the more hardcore Arab, because the more moderate Arabs would join what I would call the moderate liberal democratic Aluma. So that also decides, Yeah, women don't vote or whatever. What happens then? Is that up to them?No. Certain basic rules of democracy that today are not really debatable. I mean, it's not like there is a strong movement of not letting women vote.In France, women got the vote in the 1940s, right? I think it was 1945 or 46.No, I think much earlier. I think in Switzerland. In Switzerland, it was much later.Okay, I'm not sure. But okay, go ahead. You're arguing that there's some basic fundamental democratic values. But the Haredi Canton doesn't buy into the democratic values. That's the whole point. But there is a very big difference, for example, between women not voting and, for example, not letting women ride on the bus in the front. There are certain things. And the difference is not as strict as some of us would have wanted, that you can easily say, this goes to here. But remember that in this world, we have to create, in some sense, win-win for everybody in order for everybody to agree to this change. This or some other similar change. So we have to separate. There will be negotiations, and certain things, if we cannot live with them at all, for example, you cannot, sorry for this, you cannot have sex with a 12-year-old. That will be definitely criminal offense, and the set of criminal laws will be embedded, and so they have to be backed by some issues that are clearly not okay.Even if that trumps Torah law?Yeah, but voting women does not. But if it really trumps Torah law, then it has to be left to them to decide. This is the first partition, but that partition is, there are certain parts of it are clearly black and white that we cannot just allow that, and certain things will have It needs to be negotiated. But there is additional safeguard, is that if you start, for example, suppose we would have allowed that, and they basically say, "We're not going to have women vote".In what I'm calling the Haredi Canton?How many families do you think will leave?I don't know.Well, those who care about this would say, I'm no longer willing to be part of that. I want to live in a society where I vote as a woman.Okay. So let's say two-thirds of the Haredi Canton leaves. You still have a canton.But remember that that canton now needs to finance itself. It has a huge problem.Let's say that they can have the women go to work and they can make it work economically. But we're going to say that, theoretically, at least, there is in this Canton a rule that women don't vote. I mean, Theoretically could happen is all I'm asking you about the system.But today in Bet Shemesh, in parts of Jerusalem, women are forced to wear full face covering. I mean, in France, it's illegal. In Israel, apparently, it's legal. You can't because the woman apparently decides to do that. Of course, the woman does not decide to do that on her own.She's being pressured.She's been within the culture. So in some sense, what are we talking about? With all the laws and all the protection, we have that. Women are not walking on certain sidewalks. Women are sitting in the back of the bus. There is a certain limit to paternalism.All right. Basically, what you talked about before, and I thought it was a very profound idea, what did you call it? The equity of values?Parity of esteem.Parity of esteem. So what you're saying is that Daniel Gordis has to learn not to be so paternalistic and condescending. And I'm saying this not facetiously. I have to look at that society, at that Canton that says women can't vote, or women have to sit in the back of the bus, or that women cannot walk on that sidewalk. And I have to say, it rubs me the wrong way. I would never want that for my family or my daughters or my granddaughters or for my sons or grandsons. I would just never want that. But I can't look down on it anymore. I have to understand that it comes from a world of values and a world of Torah that may consider be given by God, not negotiable. I have to simply learn to honor something that my liberal democratic education taught me to dishonor. I don't have to honor it in the sense of approve it, but I have to honor it in terms of the right of it to exist.The right of it to exist because failing to do that, if you say they have no right to exist, you're just giving them the right to say that you have no right to exist.Right. That brings us right back to where we started, and the whole thing falls apart.I'm an economist. In economics, everything is measured in...

Yes, it might survive that way. But would it still really be "the State of Israel"?

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