This article describes Israel's latest conflict--plummeting government spending and strikes by faculty members and students which are threatening the stability of the country's universities. The founders of the modern state of Israel considered higher education to be so important that they established the country's first two universities long before the country itself came into existence in 1948. Today Israel's higher-education system is in crisis, brought to a standstill twice this year alone by student and faculty strikes over tuition, salaries, and controversial government reform programs. In the past six years, the government has slashed its higher-education budget by 20 percent even as student numbers have soared. Consecutive governments, along with some heavyweight thinkers, have offered conflicting visions of the future: One group imagines an American-style system in which students shoulder a large proportion of their educational expenses, while another argues that the country's vitality rests on its intellectual capital and thus the government should support higher education generously. As the debate rages, many academics here fear that the People of the Book have lost the plot.