PIOTR SEMKA: You have just returned from Israel, a country that has faced one of the greatest crises in its post-war history. Benjamin Netanyahu's government has proposed a judicial reform whereby politicians would have a greater say in the selection of judges. It would also be possible to overturn the verdict of the Israeli Supreme Court through a majority in parliament. This sparked very fierce protests. There have been blockades of major routes in Israel.

There was conflict within the government itself. The head of diplomacy distanced himself from Netanyahu's draft changes, and it emerged that Israeli embassies around the world had launched strike action in solidarity with their minister.

Finally, a final element that has already caused concern among people on both sides of the political barricades. There have been calls for reservists to stop rotating in the military branches of the Israeli armed forces. This is appalling in a country that is under threat of aggression from its Arab neighbours.

The protests are taking place primarily in Tel Aviv. This is the stronghold of liberal and secular Israel. On the other side is Jerusalem, which attracts parties with a religious and conservative tinge.

The new Cabinet that Benjamin Netanyahu appointed, the very moment it emerged, caused a very large division in the Israeli community among Jews worldwide. The part of the Israeli community that identifies with the leftist and liberal tradition felt that this was a government that went beyond any bounds of acceptability. The Israeli right, on the other hand, has always resented. that the judiciary circles are dominated by liberals and leftists.

The result is probably a repeat of the same story we face in a few other places in the world, including America. The question being asked is whether judges do not constitute a kind of independent force that decides the shape of the state, when at the same time the parliament - which has full democratic legitimacy - has no influence on the judiciary at all. In short, Supreme Court verdicts can change politics, and yet, as opponents of this state of affairs point out, the judicial community, to a large extent, decides on its own appointments.

That is why Netanyahu's government wanted, firstly, for politicians to have a greater say in the selection of judges, and secondly, for parliament to be able to overturn Supreme Court verdicts with a 51 per cent majority. Have you observed this conflict on Israeli soil?

IGOR JANKE: Let me start where you also started, with two images - Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, because they say a lot about Israel. I was in both centres and in the West Bank preparing my reportage for the Open System.

These are two cities so different that it is hard to believe they are in the same country. When you walk through Jerusalem's Me'a She'arim neighbourhood, you get the impression that you are in 1970s or 80s Poland. It is a poor neighbourhood, with dilapidated buildings. At the same time, you can see religious Orthodox Jews everywhere.

And if you take a high-speed train, you can go straight from this super-traditional Jerusalem to Tel Aviv in 30 minutes. You enter a city of the 22nd century, which in parts is more modern than New York, Frankfurt, Warsaw or other Western metropolises.

PIOTR SEMKA: Lots of skyscrapers right?

IGOR JANKE: Lots of skyscrapers, lots of high-tech companies....

PIOTR SEMKA: Boulevards by the sea...

IGOR JANKE: Great boulevards bustling with life, nightclubs. A very liberal city with universities where future employees and creators of hi-tech companies study, 'hi-tech people', people who work in the high-tech sector and are very influential in Israel.

They make a lot of money, and that also means they pay a lot of taxes. They are people who pay for the state. And they serve self-sacrificially in the army. In our country, the army does not stick together with liberals, while there the liberal elites serve in the army. And they serve very solidly.

PIOTR SEMKA: Moreover, it is very often the line of contention that, as part of various political compromises, the orthodox exclude students of religious schools, known as yeshivas, from military service. And children of liberals serving in the army expose themselves to the stones of Palestinian demonstrators.

IGOR JANKE: Yes, the ultra-orthodox do not usually serve in the army. They earn little, pay low taxes and receive social benefits from the state, money that is earned by liberals working in Tel Aviv. But so far the consensus has been and almost everyone in Israel has tended to accept this.

PIOTR SEMKA: There was a balance.

IGOR JANKE: The people of the State of Israel felt that it may not have been a balance, but a kind of pragmatism, a gritting of teeth. "OK, we live differently, but we respect each other, we try not to touch each other". However, divisions and mutual irritations have recently started to grow rapidly. Radical parties received a lot of votes in the last elections. One is called 'Religious Zionism', another is called 'Jewish Power'.

There are more of these parties, but their very names tell what type of political movements they are. They have existed for a long time, but until now have functioned on the fringes. Now they have gained so many votes that the Likud party, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, has had to take them on as coalition partners.

PIOTR SEMKA: And the more patchwork the coalition forms a government, the harder it is to keep the radicals in check and develop some coherent logic of action.

IGOR JANKE: Yes, because the radicals, as minority shareholders in this company that is the ruling coalition, exert more influence because they see that the survival of Netanyahu's cabinet depends on them. The orthodox parties in this government are playing hardball. Benjamin Netanyahu has to reckon with them because he wants to retain power at all costs. And corruption charges are weighing on him.

PIOTR SEMKA: Well, that's right, and maybe Netanyahu wants to destroy the courts because he himself has a lot behind him. Is that the case?

IGOR JANKE: Yes. Whether he's got something wrong, really or not - he's in danger of losing the trial and going to jail. As long as he is prime minister, there is no such danger. So he is fighting for his freedom. That is a fact.

How much weight this has in political decision-making we will not decide, but the personal conflict of interest is strongly evident here. However, we need to understand well where the problem of the Supreme Court in Israel came from.

PIOTR SEMKA: From where?

IGOR JANKE: Firstly: there has never been a constitution in Israel.

PIOTR SEMKA: It is a little strange, because, after all, those who created the state of Israel were, one might say, classical democrats from the Bund or Poale Zion parties. It would seem that they should be attached to European models of democracy.

IGOR JANKE: However, they did not enact a constitution, but came up with something close to one. Basic Laws. There was no single Basic Law, but a couple of separate Basic Laws. But this has not yet caused any special controversy.

Serious changes began to take place in the judicial system in the early 1990s, when Aharon Barak, incidentally born in Kaunas, Lithuania, in 1936 as Erik Brick, became head of the Supreme Court. It was a high-profile judge at the time who introduced the first law defending human rights.

PIOTR SEMKA: Was he a representative of the liberal camp?

IGOR JANKE: Yes. At that time all the judges were representatives of the liberal camp, because Israel was ruled for years, until the mid-1970s, by left-wing parties. And the judges were indeed mostly liberal or very liberal, left-liberal, and so it went on.

Aharon Barak made some pretty big changes, one of which was that the Basic Laws have just such a role as a non-existent constitution in Israel. That the Supreme Court could challenge laws voted by the Knesset if it felt that they did not comply with these Basic Laws.

PIOTR SEMKA: And so a classic dispute ensued. Judges with very unclear and complicated democratic legitimacy can block a parliament that is elected by all citizens.

IGOR JANKE: Yes. The fact that constitutional courts can challenge laws and check their constitutionality is something accepted and in force in many countries in the democratic tradition. That in itself is not controversial. However, this change in Israel was not the result of a democratically elected parliament deciding that this was the way the legal system of the state should be. The decision was taken independently by the Supreme Court under the leadership of Judge Barak.

PIOTR SEMKA: So the judges themselves have decided that they are now the most important.

IGOR JANKE: In the big picture it looked like this. And there began to be talk of the phenomenon of judicial activism. Judges could interpret various laws themselves, and the Supreme Court was the body that had the final say.

PIOTR SEMKA: Well, and then the right wing came to the conclusion: " oh, then why are there elections when everything the Knesset enacts can be blocked at any time by a group of judges who are politically one-sided, left-wing and can invalidate everything".

IGOR JANKE: They annulled some laws and imposed their own regulations. Opponents point, for example, to the nullification of decisions regarding the sentencing of people accused of terrorism. This has outraged traditional settlers in the West Bank, as well as voters of right-wing and radical parties.

But these policies are criticised by people from all sides. I spoke to people who are opponents of Netanyahu today, and they admitted that this system is not good. They think it should be changed, and they are open to that. On the other hand, when the new coalition came to power, they did not look for compromise solutions, but hit the political axe very hard.

The Knesset has 120 MPs. Netanyahu's coalition announced that if someone is able to muster 61 votes in parliament, they can overturn any decision of the Supreme Court. This caused a lot of excitement because, indeed, this is a radical decision. And at the same time, tensions have increased because the rules for the selection of judges have been changed. They are now chosen by a committee in which the judges have a majority and a smaller part is made up of people nominated by politicians.

PIOTR SEMKA: And there is an accusation that this is a system of co-optation into the group to allow it to maintain its dominant position.

IGOR JANKE: Both sides have serious arguments in this dispute. And one can understand the right-wing parties wanting to bring about such changes, but they are doing so in a very controversial way. In addition, these changes are being demanded by politicians who, on other issues, preach views that are unacceptable to some. For example, the leader of the 'Religious Zionism' party, who proclaimed publicly that he was a proud homophobe, and when gay parades were organised, he would hold goat and animal parades, arguing that if you can do it this way, you can do it that way.

This creates huge emotions in the liberal part of society. There is no lukewarmness in Israel. People are very radical on one side and the other. When I was walking around Tel Aviv, talking to students at Tel Aviv University and asking what their attitude was to what was happening, I basically didn't meet anyone who wasn't involved in the dispute. No one who wasn't going to the demonstrations, saying that their world is collapsing, that democracy is collapsing, that the state is under threat, that it's impossible to live in this country, that Israel is about to fall apart.

The level of emotion there is very high indeed. At the end of March, half a million people demonstrated in various places, there were calls for protests, strikes were announced at airports, there were threats that planes would not take off. It was announced that military pilots might stop flying and army reservists might refuse to serve.

It probably won't happen, because Netanyahu has taken a step back. In any case, he has stopped. Perhaps for a while these protests will calm down, although I don't think it will settle down quickly. It could be a very long process.

PIOTR SEMKA: Igor, you said that Netanyahu was changing. Well, that's right. He is a politician who has had many of his various images. Once a paratrooper who was a symbol of the slogan 'they fight for the homeland', then a very capable politician, then a prime minister who wanted to base Israel's security on good relations with Moscow, which distanced Israel somewhat from the United States. America used to be a 100 per cent guarantor of Israel's security. Then the flirtation with the Russians began.

Some argue that Israeli democracy began to change for the worse with the arrival in Israel after 1991 - estimates vary, say between one and a half and two million - of former USSR citizens. Did these new citizens bring a different type of mentality? Different from that generation that we symbolically associate with David Ben Gurion, with Golda Meir, with Shimon Peres?

IGOR JANKE: It is difficult to answer this unequivocally.

PIOTR SEMKA: A delicate subject, isn't it?

IGOR JANKE: Once that it is delicate, two that this reality is extremely complicated. There is no place on earth that is more complicated than Israel. Even the United States is not as complicated. This big wave that has come from Russia, from the former Soviet Union is certainly very significant. But there is also a large group of immigrants coming from the south, from Africa.

And in the 1950s, 1960s, many of the politicians who played some role in Israel's history had Polish origins.

PIOTR SEMKA: They also spoke Polish.

IGOR JANKE: Even today, as I was talking to the diplomats, to people who play some role there now, almost every one of my interlocutors said: "my aunt came from Poland or my uncle, my grandmother" etc. etc. etc. But that group is starting to leave, new generations are coming in.

I cannot answer the question of how much impact the wave of Russian immigrants is having. Certainly a considerable one. Because more or less 20 per cent of Israel's population has come in the last 20-30 years. But, as I mentioned, not only from Russia, many also flowed in from the south.

PIOTR SEMKA: What do you mean by 'the south'?

IGOR JANKE: Countries south of Israel, African ones, Eritrea, Sudan.

PIOTR SEMKA: Are they really Jews, or people who ascribe to the Jewish people because they really want to end up in Israel as their promised land?

IGOR JANKE: It varies. There are those who have Jewish roots, and they can probably prove it, but there are also a great many immigrants simply for work who come to a country that is richer than African countries.

PIOTR SEMKA: It seems that Israel is very careful to prevent such an immigration wave.

IGOR JANKE: And this is also one of the points of contention, because the judges also took a stand on this issue: who can stay, who is allowed to be expelled, of those who stayed in Israel longer than they had a work permit.

PIOTR SEMKA: And very often there is an argument - you must not deport, because when these people return to their countries, their lives are in danger.

IGOR JANKE: On the other hand, I have heard radical right-wing Jews say that they feel again as they did during the Holocaust. because these immigrants in the suburbs of Tel Aviv are threatening them and shouting "you dirty Jew". This was told to me by an activist, formerly left-wing, now right-wing, who has just gone to the other political side as a result of this wave of immigration. A very interesting story.

PIOTR SEMKA: And very often there is an argument similar to the one in America, that it's us lower middle class people who are clashing with immigrant neighbourhoods, and all you liberal supporters of admission nonetheless live in some gated neighbourhoods and haven't even seen an immigrant in your life who can shout "we're going to finish you all off".

IGOR JANKE: If we talk about fenced settlements, it has several meanings in Israel. Because in Tel Aviv itself, the settlements are usually not fenced off, although there is indeed a mass of our neighbourhoods like Wilanów, inhabited by liberal elites, well paid, well educated, who set the tone for life in this city.

PIOTR SEMKA: In such places, the amount of rent protects against poor immigrants, right?

IGOR JANKE: Tel Aviv is actually a very wealthy city, extremely expensive. It's very costly to live there, it's one of the more expensive cities in the world. But when you talk about gated settlements, in Israel it's associated with the West Bank settlements.

PIOTR SEMKA: Well, you have been to the West Bank, I too once had the opportunity to visit it, and I remember well the first thing that made me realise what exacerbates the conflicts there. The settlers who can carry machine guns and the Arabs who cannot have these weapons. It is a situation of imbalance.

IGOR JANKE: I have not seen these rifles carried by civilians. But I know that many of them have them at home.

PIOTR SEMKA: The situation in the West Bank is a story that is very difficult to understand?

IGOR JANKE: Imagine we are standing at the top of some small hill. We see next to it a nice, friendly town, a settlement with kids running around, peaceful people walking around, watering their beds. People care about their children, about their work. But there is something strange there, because at the end of this settlement there is a barbed fence or a wall. To enter this village or town you have to go through an control.

And when you stand on the edge of a town like this, or on some of the highest hills, you can see some other settlements that are around, and these are settlements that the people of this town cannot enter because there are Arabs living there who can do them harm. This is a real threat.

PIOTR SEMKA: For these Arab villages, on the other hand, this Israeli town on a hill is such a defiant symbol, like a castle or a palace used to be for the serf peasants, right?

IGOR JANKE: Absolutely yes. And these settlements are sometimes attacked, and there are also attacks by Jewish settlers on Arab villages. Of course, they always have a reason and you always hear: because they shot earlier, they killed someone for us, we are about to do this and that. It is a never-ending story.

PIOTR SEMKA: And now such stories go to the Supreme Court, they go through all the instances and then there is a dispute about whether and how to judge a settler who considered himself threatened and shot a Palestinian. And the question arises. Did this settler have the right to fear that someone - I don't know - made a movement with his hand and that person reached for a rifle, or not. And the leftists say that it cannot be that the settler shoots everyone. And the right-wingers reply: well, yes, but sit in such a town and exist with the local Arabs, and you will see how nice it will be for you

IGOR JANKE: I was on both sides of those barricades, those fences, and heard many equally dramatic, heartbreaking stories. On both sides I met nice friendly open-minded people who reiterated that they wanted to live in peace. "We want to bring up our children normally. We want to live, we have nothing against them if they don't attack us," said both.

PIOTR SEMKA: We have the West Bank, which claims to be an independent Palestinian State, and it is recognised by the UN and its 122 member states. But there are lands in this territory that special Israeli settlement agencies have purchased and created settlements for Jews there. What does this look like formally? Do they come under the Israeli state or the Palestinian Authority?

IGOR JANKE: It is very complicated, there are different zones with different rules. But even these official laws are circumvented and the state of Israel turns a blind eye to this circumvention.

I was driven around the West Bank by a very nice man, a Jew. Familial, friendly, kind. He told the dramatic story of his father, who was a settler here many years ago. He set up house, irrigated the land, chipped the life out of this dry land and managed to create numerous crops. These Jewish towns are such oases because water has been brought there and they are not doing badly.

And this Israeli tells me proudly the story of another Israeli settler: "He's a very brave man, a fantastic farmer who sets up organic farms. And he, on this hill, established his crops. The Arabs attacked him, but he fended off the attacks and that's how the super-organic farm works. And then he set up another crop. And another farm. We all hold him in high esteem. Now the Minister of Agriculture is learning from him how it should be done."

Okay, but how was it, I ask. Did he set up this land because he got it from the state, or did he buy it, or did he lease it? And my Jewish guide says: "No no, you know he occupied it. He just seized it. He planted here, then he put up a fence and occupied it. So we think it's already Israeli territory. It's already ours." There's a state of ambiguity where it's mainly decided by force.

I hear the story of how the Arabs set fire to these settlements. I was also told the story of the fate of a man there who lives heroically in very primitive conditions and with hard work has made his farm a little bigger, built himself a house, but has to face the Arabs every year whenever it gets dry, who set fire to crops and other cultivations.

And on the other hand, it is said that it is precisely these Jews from these beautiful farms who are attacking the Arabs, who are, after all, the same people, who have the same children, the same families, and who want to live peacefully. And each story sounds plausible, stirs the emotions. It is not for an outside observer to decide who of them is right. Because everyone is right, they just can't be reconciled.

PIOTR SEMKA: And in addition, the backdrop of hatred and resentment is access to water, which is not plentiful there. So if a Jew comes from New York, becomes a settler - and it happens - and then proudly says that he has set up a beautiful orange orchard, the local Arabs say: 'aha, so he has water from somewhere. And if he has this water, there may not be enough for us'.

IGOR JANKE: Water is a very serious problem. Some have it, others do not. Israeli settlements are much wealthier than those Arab and Palestinian villages and towns, although not only because of the lack of water, but also because of a great many other factors. And the tensions there are incredible.

PIOTR SEMKA: When I took the bus to the West Bank, everyone had eyes like saucers. Nobody could understand what I was doing on that bus.

IGOR JANKE: I spoke to the man who drove me around historic Samaria and he told me: "I have been driving past Nablus every day for many years, because I drive this way to work. And Nablus is a big city.

PIOTR SEMKA: Arabic.

IGOR JANKE: Arabic. "But you know," he says, "I can't go in there. The man was in his sixties. I ask him when was the last time he was in Nablus, which he passes by every day. He replies: "in the 1980s". Imagine that. Several decades he cannot enter a city where others, i.e. Arabs, can. He can't because he is Jewish.

We drove on a road where both cars with Palestinian plates and cars with Israeli plates normally drive. On the road they can drive together. But not everyone can turn off this road into every village. When I said to him, let's turn left maybe, show me this Arab village, we couldn't. "I also want to leave this village, and I wouldn't leave."

PIOTR SEMKA: The final theme of our conversation is an issue that has recently receded into the background a little, but very much surprised Poles unpleasantly a few years ago. That is, the sharpness of the dispute over the amendment of the IPN (Institute of National Remembrance) Act. This is about the 2018 legislation prohibiting the blaming of Poland for the Holocaust.

After their adoption, both sides felt misunderstood: the Jews did not grasp why the Poles did not understand their concerns that making statements about the difficult co-existence of Poles and Jews during World War II could be penalised.

The Poles, on the other hand, felt that it was one thing to establish the truth, about what the reality of the Holocaust was like during the war, and another to be free to use large qualifiers indicating that all Poles have blood on their hands, that all Poles must account for the legacy of crimes against Jews. Is this a current theme in Israel today?

IGOR JANKE: Like all the themes we raised earlier in the conversation, this is extremely complicated. It's not a simple story and it's not a story that we're going to solve with some single inter-state agreement.

PIOTR SEMKA: Is Poland now considered an unimportant country by the Israelis?

IGOR JANKE: Certainly Poland has not received as much attention in the Israeli media over the last 10 years as we in Poland have given to Israel. Poland is a country that is on the radar there, but it is not a very important one. Of course, it evokes a great deal of emotion. Because on the one hand, as I mentioned before, you constantly meet someone who was born in the Republic itself, or his parents were born in the Republic, his family comes from here. These stories come up all the time. On the other hand, the stories that these people, and these families, bring with them are different. This is a situation that is difficult for us to understand. We know that not all Poles sold Jews, that it was just a group of criminals, degenerates, but in the stories of the Israelis it sounds various.

PIOTR SEMKA: Such thinking: "For my great-grandmother the most important thing was the blackmailer. And the fact that Sikorski's soldiers fought against the Germans was something I found out by accident"?

IGOR JANKE: Yes. When I talk to my Israeli family they said to me: "but you're from Poland well yes, of course, we have roots in Poland, yes, our grandmother ran away, but you know, we don't have good memories of that time from Poland. Grandma was running away somewhere and some Pole denounced her, or she was afraid that this Pole would denounce her. He might not even denounce her, but she was afraid he might do it." This has remained. It is the strongest memory that she later passed on to her whole family. I had the opportunity to talk to many Jews and I understood how strongly this is in their personal stories zakodowane. SIGN UP TO OUR PAGE And on the other hand, there is no full knowledge in Israel of how Poles helped, because we did not take care of it for years. After the war, it was someone else who told our stories. Poles were not allowed to report on what really happened in Poland.

PIOTR SEMKA: All right, but now we hear that the Polish government, after perhaps two years of stopping educational excursions for schoolchildren from Israel to Poland, have finally agreed to reinstate them. Except that the Israeli authorities can no longer attach armed bodyguards to such tours without consulting Poland, and that the Poles have a greater say in diversifying such visits, so that the programme includes not only concentration camps, but also Kraków's Kazimierz or other traces of Jewish culture on the Vistula River. Do you think that this worst phase of relations between our countries, which we have experienced in recent years, is over?

IGOR JANKE: I have the impression that we are. Maybe not completely, but we are closer to each other than further apart. That is my impression. A new image of Poland is slowly breaking through in Israel, of a modern country that is worth visiting not only to see Auschwitz. Many people have told me, for example, about our mutual colleague, former journalist, former Polish ambassador to Israel, Marek Magierowski. As you know, he was informally expelled because when he went to Poland on holiday, one of the ministers said publicly: "you may not come back".

[This decision was made by the Israeli authorities when Poland adopted an amendment to the Code of Administrative Procedure, according to which after 30 years have passed since an administrative decision was issued, it will be impossible to proceed to challenge it, which would limit further restitution of former Jewish property. Magierowski is currently the Polish ambassador to the US - ed.]

PIOTR SEMKA: And now he's missing a bit, right?

IGOR JANKE: I heard from a great many people who admitted that this was a big mistake by one man from the Israeli Foreign Ministry. They regretted it very much. All right, but this big mistake of one man came from something. From a certain mindset. The state of Israel is built on the myth of the Holocaust. This pain is not relieved, it is even heated. They keep saying: we have to fight, we are constantly threatened by something.

As a result, they still remember that it was in this Poland that the camps were. And it is still blending together for them, this history is very difficult and will be difficult. In my opinion, it must take many, many generations for these wounds to heal and for us to know our history well, to research it well, but above all to do other things with each other than just dealing with difficult history, but we still have to work through this history too. We need to talk to each other a lot.

It is optimistic that today, planes between Tel Aviv and Warsaw and other Polish cities run several times a day. Most Israelis come to do their shopping, not just to visit Auschwitz. And they see a different, modern, interesting, open Poland.

– Igor Janke was interviewed by Piotr Semka
- Translated by Tomasz Krzyżanowski

TVP WEEKLY. Editorial team and jornalists

Igor Janke visited Israel in January/February 2023 preparing material for 'The Open System', the trip was funded by advertising revenue and funds from patrons of the podcast.