I want to share a slide that the Israeli scholar Yonatan Levi shared with me and NIF’s board last month, put together by a professor of sociology at Princeton University. It’s about how democracies die today.

The questions, he said, that are asked when democracies are threatened are not about one policy or another. The questions are not “should we approach an issue from a more or less liberal or conservative perspective?” No. Policy is a thing about which reasonable people can disagree. The questions asked when a democracy is under assault from within are questions about how government functions and about who holds power at the most basic level. And in both Israel and America, we’re asking those questions. Frequently.

Read the list below carefully. Then think about the steps that both President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu have taken in the last few years, or even just the last few weeks.

In just the last few weeks, Netanyahu and his government allies have worked to fire multiple people who act as checks on executive power (the attorney general, the head of the Shin Bet), and passed a law to capture the judicial selection committee. Trump, last weekend, declared that he was not ruling out a third term and has begun attacking lawyers and law firms who work for his political opponents, undermining the right of Americans to sue their government and hold it to account. And both he and Netanyahu have begun to threaten civil society in earnest with legislation and executive action. This is not a drill.

To be clear: by now we know that authoritarianism will not descend by fiat. It will not appear as a violent coup or a putsch. It will come “legally”. Some of the laws that will be used are already on the books. Some will be new. In Israel, tactics that have been used for decades in the West Bank will sometimes simply slip into Israel. Because that is the 21st century way to kill a democracy. That’s how it’s gone in Turkey and Hungary. And that’s what’s happening in both Israel and the U.S, right now.

It’s time to shift our thinking. We have, for decades, seen ourselves as progressive or liberal, that is, we have viewed ourselves in “policy” terms, we have identified ourselves as motivated by values, and we have acted on those values. But the road ahead will demand that we think of ourselves not in the framework of liberals vs. conservatives or progressives vs. traditionalists, but as people who insist that the independence of the judiciary, a robust set of checks and balances, a free press, the freedoms of assembly and free speech, and above all, free and fair elections. These are the only guarantors of democracy, and the only hope for a decent future for our countries. We must reject oligarchy and authoritarianism, and resist them in every way we can.

Professor Scheppele, who wrote the list above, says that the question she asks to determine whether a country is still a democracy is not “was the last election free and fair?” but “will the next election be free and fair?” It is that question we must focus on now.

Israelis in the civil and civic space need us now. We cannot—we must not—abandon them or the shrinking democratic space they occupy. We must not fall into the trap of anticipatory obedience. Instead, we must push the institutions of society to stand together against authoritarianism and for the independence of the judiciary—to stand firm for democracy. Because, when the messianic and MAGA extremist elements think big, we will too. In contrast to their authoritarian model, we have a vision of a free, open, shared future. The lesson from Israel is that civil society is a key player. It is the player that helps all those who believe in freedom and equality hold on to that vision so that we can all, together, push back in the name of democracy.

We cannot shrink from this fight. We cannot wait for the storm to pass and hope for the best. We cannot wait for the cavalry to come and save us. We are the cavalry.