Hey Shalom from Kinect and welcome to the Anchor podcast.

Today we're joined by Professor Moshe Cohen-Eliya, known to many simply as the professor.

Moshe's story is fascinating.

He's the son of Iraqi and Syrian immigrants, grew up by Haifa's Talpiot Market,

served in Unit 8200, and went on to graduate law with honors at the Hebrew University.

He clerked in Israel's top legal cycles, worked as a human rights lawyer at the Association for Civil Rights

and even drafted the anti-discrimination law. He earned a doctorate in constitutional law, did a postdoc at Harvard, and founded one of the

world's leading journals on law and human rights.

For years, his resume looked like that of a future Supreme Court justice.

But in recent years, Moshe has undergone a dramatic transformation.

Once a merits voter and human rights champion, today he's one of the fiercest critics

of Israel's old elites and judicial establishment. He argues that the judiciary

not only sabotage compromise, but bears responsibility for weakening Israel's resilience,

even contributing to the failures that led to October 7th.

In this conversation, we'll explore four big themes with him,

wokeness, the changing elites in Israel,

the problem of juristocracy,

and the role of what some call the deep state.

You once embodied Israel's legal establishment,

and how did you become one of their fiercest critics?

I must say that from the early beginning,

when I written my PhD, I was a critic of the legal system.

...