editorials
Keep the Free Inquiry Rule
I n 2020, the Department of Education issued the
Free Inquiry Rule, which requires public and private
institutions of higher education that receive Education
Department grants to uphold free-speech principles
on campus. If a court fi nds a violation of the rule, the
off ending institution is subject to sanctions from DOE,
including possible loss of federal funding.

Many Jewish communal advocates — and particularly
pro-Israel campus advocates — applauded the rule.

They saw it as a means to assure protection for
Jewish students on campus, and particularly pro-Israel
students, who were ostracized, forced out of student
government or otherwise coerced into silence because
of their religious affi liation or public expressions
of support for Israel. Now, with the rule in place,
universities need to be more vigilant and sensitive to
anti-Israel and other biases on their campuses, or risk
losing government funding.

In February, DOE sought public comment on a
proposed revision to the rule that would remove the
added layer of protection for religious student groups
on campus. The stated rationale for the change is that
extra protection for religious groups is not necessary
because universities already have fully compliant and
enforceable free-speech protections in place. And,
proponents of the revision argue, the additional layer
of protection imposed by the current version of the rule
will only generate more litigation.

Among those commenting on the proposed change
is the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, a
public interest advocacy group that has represented
Jewish students who claim religious discrimination
on campus. (Brandeis Center is not affi liated with
Brandeis University.) In a fi ve-page letter to DOE, the
Brandeis Center explains why the religious student
group protection under the rule is necessary; how
Brandeis Center has used the rule and its religious
group protections as leverage in representing aff ected
students and groups; and why it makes sense to
hold universities accountable for the First Amendment
protections they promise their students — and liable for
any breach of that promise.

We agree with the Brandeis Center. And we are
puzzled by what is driving the DOE’s concern.

DOE is (or should be) well aware of the disturbing
spike in antisemitic activity on college campuses
and the targeting of pro-Israel student advocates.

DOE should be doing everything it can to stop such
behavior and encourage meaningful responses to
such activities, including insistence on full enforcement
of the rule’s religious protection provisions if that can
be helpful. But DOE seems to be worried that the
rule gives religious groups too much protection. This
begs the question: Is there harm in giving religious
groups enhanced protection on campus? Are there
rights of others that DOE is worried would be infringed
or threatened if Jewish and other religious groups
on campus are protected against infringement of
their First Amendment rights? And shouldn’t it be the
responsibility of universities to protect all their students,
including religious students, who are targeted for their
exercise of otherwise protected speech?
These are not tough questions. DOE should not be
looking to roll back student protections on campus.

It should be fi guring out ways to enhance them. DOE
should retain the Free Inquiry Rule. ■
I n the 75 years of Israel’s existence, the Jewish
state has developed a strong, multi-faceted military
establishment, complete with an army, navy and air
force; a full-service domestic police system, including
riot police and SWAT teams; and a comprehensive suite
of military, security and political intelligence services.

Does Israel also need a national guard to help keep
internal order?
The answer is “yes,” according to the Netanyahu
government, which voted last week to create a national
guard. As part of the move, the Knesset directed that
funding for the guard’s more than 1 billion-shekel budget
be taken from 1.5% of the budgets of all of Israel’s other
ministries. And if things play out the way proponents
have suggested, the national guard will be placed
under the direct command of National Security Minister
Itamar Ben-Gvir, the fi rebrand hard-right leader who
demanded the creation of the guard and explained that
it would deal with “emergency scenarios, nationalistic
crime, terror and strengthening sovereignty.”
The idea for a national guard force has been under
consideration since 2021, when rioting broke out on the
West Bank and in Israeli cities with mixed Arab-Jewish
populations. But the plan was not pursued after the
government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
fell. Now back in offi ce, Netanyahu has moved the plan
forward to keep Ben-Gvir and his Jewish Power party
10 APRIL 13, 2023 | JEWISH EXPONENT
from a threatened withdrawal
from the 64-member governing
coalition and toppling the
government. Ben-Gvir sharply
criticized Netanyahu for putting
a pause on the government’s
divisive judicial overhaul plan,
and something needed to be
done to keep Ben-Gvir happy.

Ben-Gvir seems to have
Prime Minister
National Security Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu
Itamar Ben-Gvir
played his hand well. He is
now poised to be handed what
critics call his own private militia, which could give him not. But, in the meantime, the prime minister quieted
free rein to advance his right-wing agenda and hit hard his most extreme minister and bought himself some
at anti-government Jewish demonstrators, Israel’s Arab time.

citizens and West Bank Palestinians while providing
Netanyahu’s apparent payoff of Ben-Gvir is distasteful.

backup to his fellow settlers.

And if things play out as Ben-Gvir demands, it is also
Netanyahu knows that’s a potential problem. So, he dangerous. The national guard plan has generated
inserted some conditions and further levels of review opposition from both Israeli law enforcement offi cials
in the national guard process. As a result, Ben-Gvir and civilian critics, who warn against the formation of
won’t just be handed the new force — at least not yet. a unit that is independent of the police hierarchy and
It could take months to recruit the guard’s planned under political direction, which could “cause damage to
1,800 members. And even before that, a committee personal safety, waste [of] resources and break Israel’s
composed of all the Israeli security agencies will spend police from within.” These are serious concerns.

90 days discussing what powers the new force will
We trust that the inter-agency task force will examine
have and what its chain of command will be. The result these concerns and address them. Israel needs to keep
could be a dilution of Ben-Gvir’s intended infl uence, or politics out of its police force. ■
Netanyahu: State Department photo by Ron Przysucha/ Public Domain; Ben-Gvir: Photo by David Danberg
A Gift to Ben-Gvir?



opinion
In Israel, the People Speak,
But They Are Not Always Heard
Liora Moriel
T he last election in Israel resulted in the fi rst solid
government in fi ve years. Benjamin Netanyahu’s
Likud party, right-wing but traditionally secular, aligned
itself with several ultra-Orthodox, ultra-nationalist and
ultra-extreme parties.

Some of the potential Knesset members were so
extreme that the High Court did not allow them to
be seated. In addition, the leader of the Shas party,
Aryeh Deri, who had been convicted of a fi nancial
crime for the second time (he had served time for
the previous case), promised not to take on the role
of a minister in a new administration in return for no
jail time. However, as soon as the government was
sworn in, Netanyahu gave Deri a double portfolio.

This was the opening salvo in the formation of a
government far diff erent from any in Israel’s past. Even
when Menachem Begin came to power, in 1977, the
government did not include people who had been jailed
for insurrection by the Israeli police. In 2023, Israelis
were shocked to discover that the minister of fi nance
and the minister of internal safety would be religious
settler rabble-rousers who advocate the death and
deportation of Palestinians and even Israeli Arabs.

Yes, the people have spoken. They voted for
Netanyahu’s coalition. But let’s not forget that the Israeli
election system is not one person, one vote. Instead,
parties need to garner 3.5% of the total vote to be repre-
sented in the Knesset. Many parties fail and their votes
are wasted; others sign mutual agreements for the distri-
bution of such votes. Thus, since the Meretz and Labor
parties did not agree to unite or even to use one anoth-
er’s votes, Meretz just failed to get in and Labor lost two
seats. The people speak, but they are not always heard.

This is the background to the surge of protests all over
Israel for so many weeks. It is not because, as Jerome
Marcus of the shadowy Kohelet group wrote last week
(“What’s Really Happening in Israel”), some Israelis are
trying to use tainted tactics to overcome the results of a
legal election. No, the reason is that instead of working
toward the goals on which he campaigned, Netanyahu
gave the running of the government over to his minis-
ter of justice, Yariv Levin, who tried to ramrod a series
of laws that would cripple the judiciary and give the
government dictatorial powers to enact and dismantle
laws, as well as decide who the judges will be.

Israelis have learned to be apathetic after three years
of COVID and endless elections. They want to live
where they can aff ord the rent, the food, the life. They
want some calm, a sense of a future for their children.

They go to the army and work their way up, making
Israel a modern miracle of innovation. But they see that
the ultra-Orthodox do not serve but get paid for Torah
study, and that while they work hard to pay for child care
the ultra-Orthodox have many children at state expense.

Ordinary Israelis are fed up with such inequality.

Netanyahu promised free infant care and low
mortgages. He promised a better life for everyone. But
as prime minister, he let the extremists run the show:
The tax on sugary drinks was eliminated, single-use
plates and cutlery returned to stores, and everything
else either became more expensive or stayed the same.

Yeshivah student salaries increased.

There is no left in Israel. There is the extreme right
— Netanyahu’s current government — and a few center-
right parties, along with the Arab parties that feel
increasingly marginalized. The Kohelet group has fi xated
on the idea that “the left” is trying to undo the people’s
will. The truth is that Netanyahu, who is on trial for
corruption while acting as prime minister of the state,
has abdicated his role to the hard right. The nascent
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intifada is one result. The steady protest of Israel’s
citizens is another.

It is not hatred of Netanyahu and his allies that brings
hundreds of thousands of ordinary citizens to the streets
of almost every city and town in Israel every Saturday
night after Shabbat; it is a love of country. Many of my
family and friends, usually apolitical, go out every week
to protest what they see as an assault on democratic
values and long-shared understandings of what Israeli
democracy means. They are fed up with the inequality
of sacrifi ce for the nation. They are fed up with being
called unpatriotic. And they are particularly fed up with
being called left-wing terrorists.

What may be the worst ingredient Netanyahu has
infused into Israeli society over the past few months
is the cultivated division of the people in Israel into us
and them, good and evil. Netanyahu, with a straight
face, calls those who volunteer for military service
a month every year and pay high taxes “unpatriotic”
while embracing the poorest echelons, who cling to
him as the one who will lead them into prosperity,
as “patriotic.”
If Israel is to remain a light unto the nations, it must not
become a non-democracy like Hungary, where people
vote, but their choices are limited to those in power. ■
Liora Moriel, a former member of the editorial
board of The Jerusalem Post, was a lecturer at the
University of Maryland.

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