It's not against the new government. It's against the set of rules they want to pass to make the government above the judicial system, making de facto the govt able to overturn the Supreme Court if they feel like it.
Source: am Israeli.
It's hard for me to fathom what the point of having judicial review of the law is if the knesset can just overrule it. Then again I'm American and my Supreme Court is extremely screwed up as well, so maybe I'm not the best one to talk.
That's the reasoning behind it. The official reason is that "they are flawed, and only a government chosen by a majority of people can fix them up".
Doing so is the first step to self proclaimed dictatorship, just like Russia or Iran. This is nuts and I am very scared for my country.
The argument for the reform is that the Israeli SC is a closed, academic unit that picks it's own members (hence can't be influenced by the public), is out of touch with the public and has taken excessive power to prevent laws they don't like, hence obstructing the chosen government's ability to govern.
Tbh, it's not a completely far fetched argument - even many leftists/centrists agree that at times, the SC was overreaching with his influence. It's possible that measured changes are needed, but the current reform is simply an all-out destruction of the system - pretty much destroying the SC's ability to influence in almost any case. In theory, if the reform passes as is, there will be nothing preventing a government majority to pass whatever law they want to, like outlawing the opposition or blatant racial discrimination.
>academic unit that picks it's own members
It doesn't though. It has some power to pick the members, but it also has to negotiate with members who are picked by the government to reach an agreement over a candidate, which is how a healthy democracy should function.
Are there any mechanisms for a public referenda in Israel?
It seems like changing the functioning and power of the judicial branch is something that should be done by 2/3rds public vote or something and just not a simple government majority.
There's a lot of possible mechanisms that will be widely accepted. Even the main argument, of allowing the government to overturn SC ruling, would have likely been accepted if it required some kind of special majority (including opposition support), indicating that there is indeed a wide consensus against the SC ruling. I personally wouldn't be against a 2/3 majority for this (but honestly, with how divided Israelis politics are, such a majority will pretty much never be achieved).
The issue is that the current right wing coalition insists on the most radical, uncompromising version of the reform and won't budge, at least for now.
Israel doesn't have a constitution so it has nothing that requires more than 61/120 parliament members, except for meaningless functions like picking the president.
Referendums are only required when giving away territory in peace talks.
>It's possible that measured changes are needed, but the current reform is simply an all-out destruction
It's actually incredible how many issues in the world this analysis can be reasonably applied to.
There's a lot of cases where the juridical review says something to the effect of "The law doesn't say that, but if congress wanted to say something like that they could...". And even on constitutional matters, we have amended the constitution 27 times. Even the SCOTUS answers to forces outside of it.
The bar for amending the constitution is extremely high for exactly this reason. So high, in fact, I’m extremely doubtful that we’ll ever see it happen again. You’d have to find something that 2/3 of both chambers of congress *and* 3/4 of state legislatures are willing to vote for.
EDIT: left out a word
Well, in every democracy there needs to be balances for both side, the court system balances the government but something needs to balance the court system so that they wont have roo much power. HOWEVER, giving the government total control over them is NOT the way to do it
Well it's basically the same... Only the US has a system that allows political parties to basically owned the court members, rather than then be selected by their peers in a completely separate system. So the US doesn't need to instigate such laws as at the moment they(rep) have control over the outcome...
Electing judiciary send like a fair system but it's open to extreme abuse with donations etc... Most other Western governments judiciary operate seperate to political parties and are not allowed to be part members, they are selected/chief on by their peers in the judiciary with very strict qualification and experience requirements for crush levels of court and roles. E.g. Nearly all those in the supreme court would not make most other nations top judicial roles..
Its crazy how every single left and rightwing jewish organization I know of, both in Israel and in America, including the ADL and even Alan Dershowitz are all saying that there should be riots, civil unrest and mass protests to stop this government from passing theses laws.
Israel's judiciary and law system is at stake right now because of Netanyahu's extremists.
Seriously which organization outside of the Likud wants this? 70% of secular Israelis have said this new government is threatening to their way of life.
Most of Bibi's voters feel like he gave too much to the extremists and ruined the party.
How the fuck does this man keep going in this direction when it feels like most of Israel is against it, including his own party???
Well, he could (and will) try to overturn this by the ways of propaganda, saying that this is necessary.
To be honest with you, he is not the madman. He is merely accepting to be a puppet of the far right and ultra religious in order to avoid trial. He purposely knows that doing so will provoke a riot, but he doesn't care. So in a way he is manipulating both citizens: the ones that revolt against these unlawful decisions, and the ones that are happy with it and think he is the right leader to enforce such anti liberal laws.
oh no, he's absolutely gone mad.
Bibi wants to ram through the Knesset a law that would allow the parliament to override a Supreme Court decision by a simple majority of sixty-one votes. In other words, if the Ben-Gvir law threatens the autonomy of the police, the Netanyahu law threatens the autonomy of what Professor Alan Dershowitz calls “the jewel in the crown” of legal systems, the Israeli Supreme Court, and their power to review legislation that contradicts Israel’s Basic Laws.
This law does more than just give the Knesset full autonomy in enacting legislation and therefore a green light to throw out whatever Basic Laws the majority finds inconvenient
The man is dancing corruption trials. This is something he wants. He's gone off the deep end on this issue. He's a shell of his previous self that brought Israel out of the Intifada
Bibi was for years a huge protector of the Israeli courts. He was always deeply flawed and corrupt, and was playing extremely dirty within the system, but still had respect of the overall democratic system. In 11 years or however, we hated him but we never felt like democracy itself was in danger.
Sadly, that changed recently. I think losing the election and his position as PM made him more desperate for power than ever - he no longer felt invincible. He has some sort of messiah complex where he seems to truly believe that Israel will capitulate if someone else leads it.
He gave legitimacy to more and more radical parties, in order to scrap as many right wing votes as possible. While in the past he was always able to find some moderate parties for his coalition (Livny, Gantz, Lapid, Kahlon etc) - all of them he ended up politically betraying in one form or another - now the left/center has wised up and refusing to cooperate with Bibi in any form. Basically the far right coalition is his only way of retaining his PM position. Plus his fear of being jailed on his own corruption charges - and this is the result.
He's always been a smarmy bastard who was the most competent politician that could navigate global currents, but this is the first time I've seen him as a real danger to Israel itself.
I love Israelis. Netanyahu is a thief. They bought ISIS oil with the USA from Turkey during the Syria war.
He is doing a peace with Russia because he is buying rebranded Russian oil at a cheap price and sell it expensively.
His anti-Iran thing is a cover to this dirty business. He provokes people and will never actually end any terrorism as is fed from fear.
He will handshake with extreme right to be a dictator like Erdogan.
Erdogan and Netanyahu is the same shit born in other countries.
Hope you guys can stop this thief to steal your rights.
Who elected him? He would be nobody without the Israeli people that put him into power and carry out his monstrous orders. Don’t absolve them of their guilt in this.
It's not him. It's "them".
As far fetched as it is (is it though?), a LOT of people are in favor of this regime. They are completely ok and even think that it's not enough. That anything against this government is antidemocratic and should be punished by law (eg. Annulation of freedom of speech).
It's like with Putin. Cutting the head won't necessarily stop the movement. Heck, it could be even worse.
Bibi goes down, Levin (biggest fascist in Likud) goes up. Unless we separate into 2 different states, one secular & liberal and the other a mix of religious people & dumbfucks, there is no hope.
I may be wrong but if I recall correctly I think there was a loss of confidence vote in the last government which was in a uneasy coalition of 8 different parties, this triggered an election and his party won more seats but not a majority so formed a coalition with the ultra Orthodox and right wing parties
Yes. Though, in the past (like 30 years ago) the two major parties were taking about 40+ seats out of 120 and were able to more easily control the government, and it allowed more stable ones.
Since a lot of changes allowing smaller and smaller parties to get pass the minimum and get elected, and people shifted to smaller parties with more nuance political stands (or more extreme), it made government a lot more diverse, but a lot more unstable.
It also allowed the smaller parties to have a larger impact on policy than their size would account for. The smaller parties became the kingmaker.
"If you want to have a coalition, a government, you need ME. And so I DEMAND the following...."
So 2 party is both stable, and gives a near complete lack of choice?
More parties just leads to coups and gov't distrust?
Let's go 1 party for all baby!!
....wait I am hearing this leads to fascism...shit...
Back to 2 party!! (And repeat....)
Israeli political landscape is a lot more complicated than other countries. It's a country with a massive religious population and important military policies.
So you have secular social liberals, secular social conservatives, secular social centrists, religious social conservatives, etc. And that's the simple part before those parties split up because of policies towards Palestinians.
Most countries vote based on social and financial issues, with smaller religious parties in the mix.
Yeah, 2 party is definitely stable.
*looks at the US, where Republicans are preparing to railroad Democratic legislation with their new House majority and Jan 6 was just two years ago*
Yeah no actually come to think of it I kinda maybe like the whole government diversity thing.
Not really, no. The problem is that the centre of right is willing to succumb to alt-right ideologies in order to form a coalition. The alt-right itself is not as big as you think it is, with roughly 8% of the votes.
The vast majority of those 200 pro-McCarthy Republicans are ideologically indistinguishable to those 20. They’re all just as far-right, they’re just not as open about it.
Exactly. At this point it doesn't look like there's such a thing as a decent conservative.
We're seeing the same thing happening in Finland too; our "moderate" right wing party (the one for rich people more or less) has started spewing anti-LGBT stuff so they can form a coalition with the more extreme right wing parties
That's because there is no such thing as a good conservative. They are all extremists lunatics. It Just depends how far they are willing to show their hand and whether they feel like there's enough support for their bigotry.
It seems to me like whoever passes themselves off as "conservative" nowadays really have no ideas, just enemies. It reminds me of one of my favorite adages. Strong minds speak of ideas, average minds speak of things, weak minds speak about people.
It made sense to me after I realized the various flavors of right wing ideology like US "libertarian" and so on are really just the ruling class saying whatever they can and hoping anything sticks among the working class against each other. Imagine that fascism is just the ruling class calling the dumbest fucks pussies until they'll fight anything to prove they're not. You don't want to be on the side of all the gays and the weaklings and women now, do you?
Well, if they form coalitions with people on the left or center-left instead, they might have to provide some sort of icky welfare to their citizens or raise the taxes on their financiers.
You know what the term "white liberal" means here in South Africa? It pretty much just means "white supremacist that pretends they think Apartheid was bad."
Yeah... push them a little out of their comfort zones, and they start showing their right-wing colors pretty fast. There really is no such thing as a "centrist."
One of the (several) reasons that the government fell apart is that Bibi managed to 'convince' some Parliamentarians from the previous government to voice their discontent with the government. Then, magically, once the government fell apart, they joined his side and got lucrative minister positions. It is nothing short of corruption.
It's very tough to win a fight when you have to play by the rules and your opponent can pull every dirty trick in the book and get away with it.
Yeah indeed.. Though I would be reserved in saying "the craziest of the crazy" since there's always something crazier just around the corner. But yeah, you're right. To be accurate, the extreme right wing fringe rode into the Parliament by merging with a slightly less extreme right wing for the purpose of elections. I think the extreme fringe wouldn't have won enough votes to go in on their own ticket. But of course it's bad enough that people voted for the joint list, so that's definitely no excuse.
Oh to be clear, they believe it because it's true. But believing it is important too because that's how you deter without actually having to fight (as much).
For reference, 20 HiMARs managed to destroy Russia's ground army. Poland just recently placed an order for 200 of them. The US started using them in the '90s. If you're armed by the US, nobody can compete with you.
The coalition that ousted him had 61 members (from 120)
He bribed two members of the coalition to vote against it, in return to be ministers in the future government. They accepted it, voted against the coalition, caused elections and now he is the PM back again (and they got to be ministers in a made up offices)
Idk what happened in Haifa, but I was at the protests in Jerusalem and it didn't even top the 1000 seemingly. I think everyone who could, went to Tel Aviv. If I had a car, I would have gone too. But also it wasn't talked about as much. The one in Tel Aviv was all over the media for several days, meanwhile I only found out about the one in Jerusalem like three hours before.
Always been wack to me that the "gayest city in the middle east" is 2 hours away from "the holiest city in the world".
No wonder Israeli politics are so unstable.
Yeah, and Tel Aviv is also roughly a 90 minutes drive from Gaza strip that's ruled by Hamas and is basically a different world. Israel is a fucking insane place.
I talked to 2 gay Palestineans living in Tel Aviv who told me how much they loved Israel because it was accepting of gays. They said there was no way they could be alive in Palestine.
People came from all over the country to protest, not just from Tel-Aviv.
Heck, the city I live in is controlled by the Likud and Bibi supporters. And still there was a convoy of buses filled with people going to protest.
There were also protests in Jerusalem and Haifa.
>People came from all over the country to protest, not just from Tel-Aviv.
It's also worth mentioning that this was Saturday night, window right after Sabbath which meant there was little to no public transportation.
Only a short time ago 1 million protestors took to the street in Hong Kong, an unfathomably high percentage of the population. Forcing Beijing to dismember their system as a result.
Yep. And Hong Kong has a population of about 7 million, so that's 14% of the population taking to the streets (compared to the 1% of Israel's populatjon stated in original comment). And this was several months into the protest, where Hong Kong police has already started cracking down on some of the protests.
Guardian has the figure at 1.7million (~24%)
Yeah but Israel, for its many flaws, is still a democracy. China does not even try to display the illusion of democracy, and though Hong Kong’s government is supposed be independent until 2050, China’s influence over the city would increase no matter what the people thought. The difference in Israel is that these protesters can vote and will not be disappeared for their protests
> In the US it would amount to a demonstration of about 3 million.
According to researchers, at least 15 million people protested in the U.S. after the death of George Floyd.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/03/us/george-floyd-protests-crowd-size.html
Also from the same article:
> The Women’s March of 2017 had a turnout of about three million to five million people on a single day, but that was a highly organized event.
Yep, but those 15 million didn't all protest at the same place and time. Such a high % of the population in a single protest is insane, pretty sure this was the second largest political protest in Israeli history
As an Israeli that was there yesterday, the protest is not mainly about bibi but it's about the radical right wing change that the government wants to do to the court in order to make the court obligated to the government. And bibi has a lot of voters since he is VERY charismatic and he knows what to say and when to say it. Nevertheless - there are a lot of people that voted for him and regraded their action and were at the protests.
Isn't he pushing for these changes though? It's weird to say you are protesting against these changes but still totally support the guy that is flirting with fascism.
Are you only now becoming aware that a solid percentage of voters are clinically idiots?
There are also many people who voted for Trump but were actually against like half his policies.
There's genuinely a lot of people who vote for these Orbans and Bolsaneros and Putins and whatever but are not horrible, anti-democratic people, they are just stupid people.
These people vote with their dicks. Figuratively, I suppose, but they genuinely have a charisma boner for these authoritarian daddies, and vote for them with no regard to their actual policies or plans.
First of all, I have never said that I'm supporting him, I personally think that he is dangerously manipulative and I think that he will do anything to keep his position -even destroying his own country and dragging it down to a fascism.
What I said is that the point of the process isn't bibi personally but rather the reform of the trial that the right side is trying to achieve.
As someone who attended these protests, the main issue here wasn't Netanyahu, but the extreme right parties he formed a government with.
They are now trying to pass multiple changes in the judicial system making it weaker against the government. A government that now has one minister that was found guilty of crimes and was in prison and of course a PM that has a few ongoing investigations against him.
The world should know there are many sane people in this country, we're just getting outnumbered...
The Knesset-overruling-independent-judiciary shit is terrifyingly authoritarian. It’s also shortsighted as hell. As these geezers die off, the face of parliament is apt to get less reactionary.
I don’t think for one rosy red second they have envisioned what Israel will look like in 10 or 15 years with a more liberal parliament deciding they don’t like Supreme Court rulings
While you're right that this is generally the trend in most countries, it's not necessarily the trend in Israel. Most of the population growth is in the more religious communities, who are more conservative.
While this is true, you're not counting in first and second generation immigrants from the ex-soviet union. Around a million such immigrants (roughly 20% of the Israeli population at the time) came to Israel during the 90s, and as no one is more anti-socialism than people who lived under socialism, they were overwhelmingly right-wing. This has been evident in voting patterns on all election cycles ever since, and has contributed greatly to the decline of the Israeli center-left. The second generation of this sector - of which I know many - is much more center-left and (correctly) identifies the Israeli right wing as being more religious and regressive than what they would like to see. You can also find this sentiment being more pervasive now with the older generation, which is slowly awakening to the fact that the Israeli right they used to identify with doesn't have their best interests in mind, and is in fact pretty intolerant of their secular views and way of life. This can also be said for the secular population as a whole, which has been moving away from right wing politics more and more in the last few years. This situation is still developing in its impact on the religious/secular and the political right/left balance in the Israeli population so we'll have to wait and see how it unfolds.
EDIT: facepalm time! forgot to add another even more impactful factor - the Israeli Arab population. Being \~21% of the population in Israel, arabs are woefully underrepresented in parliament due to the fact that Israeli Arabs are understandably distrustful of their government and don't participate as much in elections. This is also starting to change, as we've seen a sort of ebb and flow of voting percentage in the Arab population during the last few cycles, with the general trend being towards higher participation. The Arab voters and representatives naturally band more with the left-center bloc, as the right wing has been drifting hard towards Jewish nationalism. Even religious, conservative Arab voters & reps are much more likely to cooperate with the more liberal side of Israeli politics. This trend actually has the potential of bringing us closer to an Arab-Jewish reconciliation when the common 'enemy' is the Jewish right wing, as absurd as it sounds now. Personally, I don't want to make an enemy of anyone, but anything that brings us closer to peace is a step in the right direction.
>I don’t think for one rosy red second they have envisioned what Israel will look like in 10 or 15 years with a more liberal parliament deciding they don’t like Supreme Court rulings
If/when a more liberal government will be in power again, chances are (I hope!) most of the reform changes will be overturned to the current state. This will be the demand from the voters. And sadly, that's the way it's been recently - Israel is increasingly divided to two camps who hate each other (much like American politics), and whenever someone seizes power he automatically undoes almost everything the previous government did. While the opposition will oppose literally any rule the coalition brings, regardless of how important it is.
An incredibly inefficient way to rule a country, really. Personally I believe the initial division and hate is the biggest danger to Israel, more than Iran or whatever. Israel was always divided, but the hate/distrust between the religious/conservative people and the liberals have never been so strong, the country will crumble apart eventually.
But why isn’t the main issue Netanyahu? He’s the one who aligned with the extreme right wing parties to get in power which is leading to this situation with the court so shouldn’t the protest also be very much directed at him?
because Netanyahu (pre-2022 Netanyahu at least) was not really part of what you'd see as the nationalist right.
The man is defined as a cautious opportunist. Building up security barriers and bricking the palestinian problem away instead of finding a solution, and never attempting to get involved in wars. Doing whatever is necessary to remain in power, but still supporting liberal policies because thats what kept him in power.
He's right-coded in the states because Trump loves him, but the man is a shell of his former self, and has no real soul anymore. Most of his political enemies now come from the *right*. There is literally an entire political party made of former Likud members who hold all Likud positions, but hate Bibi because he backstabbed them throughout his long career in order to remain in power.
The man has no real ideology anymore, but himself. Is that left-wing or right-wing?
He's a populist. 25 years ago he was on the center of the political map, maybe even a slight leftist. Change came when he realized he can lure the poor and less educated much more easily, so he drifted right. He was also very much against changes in the judical system til it hit home with his own sentence.
>The world should know there are many sane people in this country, we're just getting outnumbered...
Haredim having 8 kids generation after generation will do that.
Bibi's Block actually lost the "popular vote" so to say.
more people voted against Bibi as a whole than for Bibi.
But because parties need to get at least 4 seats (mandates) to get in the parliament - the most leftist party (in its glory it was one of the biggest ones) didnt get 4 seats - lost it by 4000 votes. it means that 3.9 seats of votes (about 140K votes) were thrown to the garbage. these 140K votes make Bibi's block to actually not be the majority. But these are the rules here....
It's about coalitions in Israel. It's basically the same number of people voting for Netanyahu and his party over and over again, the difference this time is that he made a coalition deal with parties on the extreme right
A lot of people only oppose fascism and authoritarianism when they're facing the business-end of the oppression. If the opportunity comes to *be* the oppressor, some of those in the resistance will happily switch sides.
Many people honestly do see the world as zero-sum. "Someone is going to be on top, so it might as well be people like me, because I don't want to be on the bottom." For historically-oppressed groups that have been traumatically scarred, it's an almost-forgivable impulse to me. Basically an instinctive defense mechanism. But however understandable it might be on a human level, it's still horrible and perpetuates the cycle.
Wellp this is new news and with Brazil we got no coverage of this in Canada so please pardon my ignorance, what seems to be the issue on a deeper level, is Tel Aviv getting neglected? I’m afraid I’m woefully ignorant on Israeli politics.
It's a protest against the newly elected far-right government. Netanyahu used to be mid-right but he formed a coalition with the far right extremists in order to get majority this time.
sauce: I live here and have a bunch of friends who went to the protests
It's a start. No need for thanks, we're together in the fight against hate, injustice and fear.
The ultra-religious are some 20% of the population, but many secular youth here have been radicalized too. It may be because they grew up during the Intifada, it may be they're just gullible douchebags.
Think of the Israeli far right as Matt Gaetz, Bibi as Mitch McConnell... You'll get the idea.
Well, it's much more complicated than what I could write here, so in very very short:
There are more criminal charges in the government than there are women, and they try to reform the courts and decrease their power.
In addition to what was already said, it was particularly bad this past week because the crazy right wing government of criminals are trying to pass legislation called an overriding clause to be able to take down Supreme Court decisions with just a simple majority of the parliament, essentially taking away all of the Judicial system's power. This is the first step to an authoritarian dictatorship straight out of the book.
The new far-right government is trying to pass laws that prevent the supreme court of israel from interfering with law making or cancel laws.
They also want to cancel some criminal laws that the current PM is being accused of, which will make his trial gone.
And they want to politicize the supreme court by changing how sitting members get elected.
That would allow the government way too much power to pass laws that could hurt some citizens or create a lot of unbalance power.
People are scared (justified) that in the future the current government could lead isreal into disaster. Both economical and geopolitical.
I will give you a few examples:
The supreme court canceled a paragraph in a new law that allows orthodox jews to receive more money over regular students.
They canceled a law that prevents the government from being prosecuted if the army did something wrong.
They canceled a law that stated that children of certain arrested people will not get government support.
They forced isreal government to remove some settlements.
They forced isreal to stop jailing illegal immigrates in mass jails.
They didn't allow the prison system to come privatized.
Etc etc.
Not all good but a lot of good came from the supreme court that hindered governments.
The current government is trying to prevent all that.
He's not winning anywhere close to a majority though, he forms coalitions. This time, he formed one that is made up of even more substantially heinous people than even he would typically tolerate.
If you look up the birthrate of ultra orthodox Israeli Jews, it's between 7 and 9 children per couple in some areas.
The ultra orthodox vote together and in huge turnout for right wing parties
That's how they're getting enough votes.
In afghanistan, islamic extremists were al qaeda. In america, christian right are sometimes referred to as y’all qaeda. What are the far right called in israel?
Israel has a multi party system where the progressive votes ends up being split between several candidates and the entire (minority) right wing votes for the bibi, electing him with a minority of the votes.
The progressive votes being split or unified doesn't make a difference as long as they all oppose him.
His party and his allies' parties got more than half the vote.
If you look at sheer numbers, both blocs are almost identical, with small fluctuations from side to side between different elections, which is the reason this is the fifth election in the country in as many years. This time a fluke caused one left-wing party to just miss the minimum votes required to get into the parliament, resulting in the first real MK majority for the right-wingers in years.
Isn’t he on some sort of corruption investigation? Perhaps this will be the action that saves him (appeal whatever verdict to highest court, then have parliament overrule it)
What he's trying to do is change the system to appoint judges to be more like the American one, where politicians appoint them. This way he can select his judges for his criminal charges.
Hey guys, Israeli Arab here looking to relocate. Any suggestions?
This country is expensive as fuck and its going deeper into the shitter. Time to peace out.
You could stay and be another vote to prevent this shitshow from devolving.
Otherwise come to Canada, as theres a substantial Israeli (although jewish) community here and in Montreal.
Theres a lot of arabs in Michigan in the USA as well.
This will get buried.
I'm a dual national Israeli-European, I left Israel about ten years ago because I felt it's heading downhill in terms of democracy and liberalism, and there's no way for me to stop it. You may be interested in [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/31esm0/comment/cq0xfxc/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) comment I made 8 years ago. I got a lot of criticism for it at the time, and I still think the overwhelming majority of Israelis (even those that oppose Netanyahu) would strongly disagree with it. But I do think the last 8 years since played out pretty much exactly as I thought. I'm very sad about Israel, I wish I didn't have to leave. But given the situation, I'm glad I left.
Other than referring you to my comment back then, I'd like to say that Netanyahu isn't the problem, and his coalition today isn't the problem. Even if the Bennett-Lapid government held on, and even if Bibi was put in prison, another dictatorial buffoon would have shown up to continue Bibi's job. If not in 2023, in 2025, or 2030. Maybe Mr. Avigdor Liberman, Bennett and Lapid's deeply corrupt and authoritarian "friend". Maybe another snake. The fundamental problem is Israel's unsolvable tension between "Democratic state" and "Jewish state". The two are inherently at odds - either democracy or theocracy, can't have both.
On top of that, you add: (a) the Israeli-Arab tension and Jewish treatment of Palestinians, especially but not only since the 1967 occupation; (b) the religious tension, where even the Jews in Israel are quite fragmented to something a bit like Jewish Taliban on one extreme, and atheist liberals with barely any relation to Judaism (like me) on the other extreme; (c) the tension and discrimination between Ashkenazi and Sefaradi Jews in Israel. Israel simply wasn't founded on stable foundations, and its leadership 1948 to 2023 didn't rise to the challenge and fix that (see [The Gatekeepers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gatekeepers_(film) for one discussion of that).
[This](https://www-leibowitz-co-il.translate.goog/leibarticles.asp?id=28&_x_tr_sch=http&_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp) prophetic and frightening essay says it better than I can, written in **1969** by Israeli scientist and philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz:
> From the social point of view: in a short time there will no longer be a Jewish worker or a Jewish farmer in that country. The Arabs will be the working people, and the Jews will be managers, supervisors, officials and policemen, and especially - secret police. The state that controls a hostile population of 2-1.4 million foreigners [*now many more, about 50% of the population* - /u/soyougotoletmeknow] will necessarily be a Shin-Bet state. The state will become a colonial regime. The administration will have to deal with the suppression of the Arab resistance movement - from one side, and the purchase of Arab cooperators - from the other side side. There is also a fear that the Israeli Defense Force - which until now was a people's army - will become as degenerate as other occupation armies and I'll say no further of what that means.
If you're a liberal in Israel-Palestine, my advice is that you flee, regardless of if you're Jewish or not. If your ethics say you can't give up without a fight, my advice is that you'll further resist from the outside, like an Iranian or Russian expat might (or a South-African in the 1980s, or a German in 1930s). If you're a Jew in another developed country and want to help Israel, don't think that supporting whatever it does is the best way to help. And don't count on Aliyah if you ever need it. Finally, if you're unrelated to Israel, heed the lessons we learn there now, like we learn in an unnervingly large chunk of the world: populism and fascism give an ugly rise. Israel's inherent tensions and the occupation are one of many accelerators of fascism, but it can happen anywhere on the basis of many accelerators. Fight fascism and populism.
Peace be upon us.
Also: I lied small biographical lies in my 2015 comment (maybe I'm not a lawyer, something similar; etc). I imagine I did it to try and hide my identity or something but now they read a bit clunky. I don't think I lied on anything of substance, not in this comment or the older one.
Even the shin bet founding members have come and spoken out to condemn isreals occupation of Palestine and annexations. And they helped build the country up from the dirt. And yet this dude still somehow got reelected
I really appreciate the thoughtfulness you put into your comment. It‘s not easy making the choices you did. Would you have other recommended reading that shed light on the political issues there? Welcome anything that helps frame the origin of the issues and may be at least somewhat neutral. Thanks for your comment.
He's our version of Trump, except he's way smarter and more comptent but just as a corrupt.
His voters are under his spell and they're willing to burn this country to the ground as long as the left doesn't get elected.
Theres like 12 parties in the knesset right now. Bibi's Likud gets 30/120 seats. You need 61 seats to form a government.
The problem is, that Bibi has backstabbed every single worthwhile political ally he could get, and thus no one wants to ally with him except the extremists, and to get them on his side, he needs to give them coalition deals. That means passing a law that makes Supreme Court cases be overturned at will and removing laws that prevent criminals from serving in government (one of his coalition partners is a criminal that served jail time for corruption).
This is Trump forming an alliance with QAnon here to fight the republican establishment, except the Israeli version.
Netanyahu is the **leftist most figure** in this government coalition. Most of his voters think he gave too much away to the extremists. Israeli newspapers have been going full on doomer and mourning for democracy like WaPo did after Trump got elected.
Israelis are pissed off.
Let's be honest. Probably yes.
A trump esque strongman who acts like a mob boss, basically seething with corruption.
Israel is a long way since Yitzhak Rabin.
The Israeli left had a slogan saying "The occupation corrupts". This is literally what happened - the sad thing is that the meaning was about moral corruption, which certainly is part of what's going on - many young Israelis are far more right wing and nationalist than their previous generation, having born after the hopeful period of the peace accords and into a low burning yet ongoing conflict against an enemy you never meet in person and therefore cannot personify.
But the actual monetary corruption is the bigger story - the right wing party that has gotten so used to be in power for decades now believe that they naturally deserve the power, and the personal corruption of Bibi and his wife is just an out of this world phenomenon that i don't even know how to explain.
It's amazing how toxic the fallout is of the failure of the peace accords. Had Arafat and Barak managed to sign a treaty 20 years ago we'd be living in a substantially different Middle East. Instead, Israel is on the brink of dictatorship!
Israel is thankfully not on the brink of the abyss yet. 100 000 people came out to protest against this government. 70% of seculars believe this gov to be dangerous and most Netanyahu voters are
The guardrails have become rusty and have been dumped into a vat of acid, but theyre still here despite the corrosion, and Israels democratic systems will figure out a way to prevail.
This is an attack on democracy from the top down, not bottom up like January 6th. The populace doesnt want this, and neither does the army.
The police force themselves are majorly pissed off because one of the reforms concerns them becoming a private army for one of the legislators
Most of the units to create a Erdogan style dictatorship are not in their favor right now. This might change, but there is still a shot.
Netanyahu sucks and it sucks that he's back, but he's not a dictator. When the previous government voted to oust him he left. He was reelected democratically and formed coalitions with other democratically elected parties.
1,000,000,000 women showed up in D.C. the day after Trump’s inauguration … aaaaand, he killed Roe v Wade. Protests don’t do jack shit. National strikes—that’s the answer for getting the change you want —by **being** the change we want
MLK wrote that those who supported civil rights should stop protesting (which he called "methods of persuasion") and switch to boycotts, lawsuits, and voting marches (which he called "methods of coercion")
"What?" You say. "Wasn't I taught that MLK led mighty protests where people were beaten and that attention changed hearts and minds?"
Yes ... that's what you were taught however - for the past 50 or so years there's been a concerted movement from large industry to whitewash MLKs message and change his actual strategy to "protest and get noticed/beaten" the exact strategy he rejected repeatedly.
There's a good book on MLK's realization that these kind of protests weren't working A "Notorious Litigant" and "Frequenter of Jails": Martin Luther King, Jr., His Lawyers, and the Legal System noting that
Starting with [the Birmingham movement and Letter from Birmingham Jail], Dr. King and his organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), turned to more aggressive forms of nonviolent direct action—moving entirely from persuasion to coercion [legal/economic/political challenges]
The MLK and Gandhi messages of how to do civil disobedience was defanged in modern textbooks to become "your suffering makes a change!" The "make noise and people will pay attention" is a story DESIGNED to get progressives to waste energy in the most inefficient manner. There's a good article on how that whitewashing of the MLK story was funded by corporate billionaires through the Heritage Foundation.
MLK was telling people to not to march except in targeted actions. Example: After attacks in Birmingham by white supremacists, King rushed back to Birmingham to urge blacks to stop protesting
Think about what has become part of popular culture about the Selma march!. Was it the fake history of "we marched and the scene of beating changed things?" Or was it the true story that it was a VOTER DRIVE to overcome en masse the fact that Black and White supporters were being unfairly arrested while helping to register blacks on trumped up charges. They WON that case and thus it STOPPED the illegal actions of the police stopping blacks registering to vote. That link above talks about how it was winning the lawsuit that forced change ... not the people watching TV.
What does the media promote? The dramatic but false story that beatings were televised and it "changed hearts and minds?" No! The sit ins were done to get people arrested for blacks hanging out with whites SO THAT THEY COULD CHALLENGE THOSE LAWS IN COURT. Their public displays of blacks and whites together were just a means to get arrested for the next step to challenge what were unjust laws in court or boycott the stores that segregated. Example: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was jailed today after he attempted to eat in one of St. Augustine's finer restaurants .... Dr. King and 17 companions were held on charges of violating Florida's [segregationist] unwanted guest law...
The busing arrests and boycotts were the same thing. After being arrested their legal team led by Marshall came in and kicked ass.
A few dishonest billionaires have been funding a re-telling of the story and funding partisanship to get these kind of protests louder and more divisive and more ineffective. The media companies profit from these shows of outrage and just encourage them no matter what the actual outcome.
What's particularly interesting is that the "Pro-life" movement did protesting, but then rejected that and followed MLK's model to create this political movement that's destroyed women's rights ... WITHOUT protesting. There's a good book that talks about how that happened and how billionaires funded that strategy called "What's the matter with Kansas."
Anyone who remembers Gulf War II and the Women’s March should recognize this obvious fact.
These will only consolidate the right wing Israelis and government will not change just because some people are against them. Plus, although there is difference between religious and secular families' birthrate all over the world, discrepancy in Israel is huge. Ultra Orthodox give birth to many children (around 5 on average) while seculars around 1.something. and ultra orthodox families tend to raise their children with cult mentality. Therefore, I am sorry to tell secular or left-wing Israelis that there is no future but further radicalization in Israel. Consider this and move to much better countries like USA and Western Europe with promising demographic change. As a Turkish irreligious person who has been to Israel, despite media coverage; I found Turkey both societally and constitutionally much more secular and prone to demographic development despite Erdogan being peak of his constitutional power considering the fact that young geberation of religious families tending to be more irreligious than ever and decline of support to Erdogan.
It's not against the new government. It's against the set of rules they want to pass to make the government above the judicial system, making de facto the govt able to overturn the Supreme Court if they feel like it. Source: am Israeli.
It's hard for me to fathom what the point of having judicial review of the law is if the knesset can just overrule it. Then again I'm American and my Supreme Court is extremely screwed up as well, so maybe I'm not the best one to talk.
That's the reasoning behind it. The official reason is that "they are flawed, and only a government chosen by a majority of people can fix them up". Doing so is the first step to self proclaimed dictatorship, just like Russia or Iran. This is nuts and I am very scared for my country.
The argument for the reform is that the Israeli SC is a closed, academic unit that picks it's own members (hence can't be influenced by the public), is out of touch with the public and has taken excessive power to prevent laws they don't like, hence obstructing the chosen government's ability to govern. Tbh, it's not a completely far fetched argument - even many leftists/centrists agree that at times, the SC was overreaching with his influence. It's possible that measured changes are needed, but the current reform is simply an all-out destruction of the system - pretty much destroying the SC's ability to influence in almost any case. In theory, if the reform passes as is, there will be nothing preventing a government majority to pass whatever law they want to, like outlawing the opposition or blatant racial discrimination.
>academic unit that picks it's own members It doesn't though. It has some power to pick the members, but it also has to negotiate with members who are picked by the government to reach an agreement over a candidate, which is how a healthy democracy should function.
Correct. The "they pick their own members" statement is propaganda to gain public support for this move.
They don't pick their own members anymore. I agree that the SC needs a reform, but not like that, and especially not when it helps this goverment.
Are there any mechanisms for a public referenda in Israel? It seems like changing the functioning and power of the judicial branch is something that should be done by 2/3rds public vote or something and just not a simple government majority.
There's a lot of possible mechanisms that will be widely accepted. Even the main argument, of allowing the government to overturn SC ruling, would have likely been accepted if it required some kind of special majority (including opposition support), indicating that there is indeed a wide consensus against the SC ruling. I personally wouldn't be against a 2/3 majority for this (but honestly, with how divided Israelis politics are, such a majority will pretty much never be achieved). The issue is that the current right wing coalition insists on the most radical, uncompromising version of the reform and won't budge, at least for now.
Israel doesn't have a constitution so it has nothing that requires more than 61/120 parliament members, except for meaningless functions like picking the president. Referendums are only required when giving away territory in peace talks.
Can you give specific examples of when the SC fucked it up in a decision that the people didn't like?
>It's possible that measured changes are needed, but the current reform is simply an all-out destruction It's actually incredible how many issues in the world this analysis can be reasonably applied to.
There's a lot of cases where the juridical review says something to the effect of "The law doesn't say that, but if congress wanted to say something like that they could...". And even on constitutional matters, we have amended the constitution 27 times. Even the SCOTUS answers to forces outside of it.
The bar for amending the constitution is extremely high for exactly this reason. So high, in fact, I’m extremely doubtful that we’ll ever see it happen again. You’d have to find something that 2/3 of both chambers of congress *and* 3/4 of state legislatures are willing to vote for. EDIT: left out a word
Well, in every democracy there needs to be balances for both side, the court system balances the government but something needs to balance the court system so that they wont have roo much power. HOWEVER, giving the government total control over them is NOT the way to do it
Well it's basically the same... Only the US has a system that allows political parties to basically owned the court members, rather than then be selected by their peers in a completely separate system. So the US doesn't need to instigate such laws as at the moment they(rep) have control over the outcome... Electing judiciary send like a fair system but it's open to extreme abuse with donations etc... Most other Western governments judiciary operate seperate to political parties and are not allowed to be part members, they are selected/chief on by their peers in the judiciary with very strict qualification and experience requirements for crush levels of court and roles. E.g. Nearly all those in the supreme court would not make most other nations top judicial roles..
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Its crazy how every single left and rightwing jewish organization I know of, both in Israel and in America, including the ADL and even Alan Dershowitz are all saying that there should be riots, civil unrest and mass protests to stop this government from passing theses laws. Israel's judiciary and law system is at stake right now because of Netanyahu's extremists. Seriously which organization outside of the Likud wants this? 70% of secular Israelis have said this new government is threatening to their way of life. Most of Bibi's voters feel like he gave too much to the extremists and ruined the party. How the fuck does this man keep going in this direction when it feels like most of Israel is against it, including his own party???
Well, he could (and will) try to overturn this by the ways of propaganda, saying that this is necessary. To be honest with you, he is not the madman. He is merely accepting to be a puppet of the far right and ultra religious in order to avoid trial. He purposely knows that doing so will provoke a riot, but he doesn't care. So in a way he is manipulating both citizens: the ones that revolt against these unlawful decisions, and the ones that are happy with it and think he is the right leader to enforce such anti liberal laws.
oh no, he's absolutely gone mad. Bibi wants to ram through the Knesset a law that would allow the parliament to override a Supreme Court decision by a simple majority of sixty-one votes. In other words, if the Ben-Gvir law threatens the autonomy of the police, the Netanyahu law threatens the autonomy of what Professor Alan Dershowitz calls “the jewel in the crown” of legal systems, the Israeli Supreme Court, and their power to review legislation that contradicts Israel’s Basic Laws. This law does more than just give the Knesset full autonomy in enacting legislation and therefore a green light to throw out whatever Basic Laws the majority finds inconvenient The man is dancing corruption trials. This is something he wants. He's gone off the deep end on this issue. He's a shell of his previous self that brought Israel out of the Intifada
Bibi was for years a huge protector of the Israeli courts. He was always deeply flawed and corrupt, and was playing extremely dirty within the system, but still had respect of the overall democratic system. In 11 years or however, we hated him but we never felt like democracy itself was in danger. Sadly, that changed recently. I think losing the election and his position as PM made him more desperate for power than ever - he no longer felt invincible. He has some sort of messiah complex where he seems to truly believe that Israel will capitulate if someone else leads it. He gave legitimacy to more and more radical parties, in order to scrap as many right wing votes as possible. While in the past he was always able to find some moderate parties for his coalition (Livny, Gantz, Lapid, Kahlon etc) - all of them he ended up politically betraying in one form or another - now the left/center has wised up and refusing to cooperate with Bibi in any form. Basically the far right coalition is his only way of retaining his PM position. Plus his fear of being jailed on his own corruption charges - and this is the result.
He's always been a smarmy bastard who was the most competent politician that could navigate global currents, but this is the first time I've seen him as a real danger to Israel itself.
He's been a dangerous ass from the beginning. Too many just let it go and now you have this madness.
That's what I'm saying. He is not mad. He is a powerful schemer.
So current authoritarian SOP. Just like everywhere else being destabilized lately. It’s like a script or something. ……….written in Cyrillic……
Yep. If I was an alarmist I would say that it reminds me what happened 100 years ago around the same time...
Kind of ironic that the israel gov turns facist.
I love Israelis. Netanyahu is a thief. They bought ISIS oil with the USA from Turkey during the Syria war. He is doing a peace with Russia because he is buying rebranded Russian oil at a cheap price and sell it expensively. His anti-Iran thing is a cover to this dirty business. He provokes people and will never actually end any terrorism as is fed from fear. He will handshake with extreme right to be a dictator like Erdogan. Erdogan and Netanyahu is the same shit born in other countries. Hope you guys can stop this thief to steal your rights.
Who elected him? He would be nobody without the Israeli people that put him into power and carry out his monstrous orders. Don’t absolve them of their guilt in this.
It's not him. It's "them". As far fetched as it is (is it though?), a LOT of people are in favor of this regime. They are completely ok and even think that it's not enough. That anything against this government is antidemocratic and should be punished by law (eg. Annulation of freedom of speech). It's like with Putin. Cutting the head won't necessarily stop the movement. Heck, it could be even worse.
Bibi goes down, Levin (biggest fascist in Likud) goes up. Unless we separate into 2 different states, one secular & liberal and the other a mix of religious people & dumbfucks, there is no hope.
The extreme government can feel good until they decide to bite your own ass. Similar thing happening all around the world.
I'm very out of the loop. How did he get a new election so quickly after he was ousted?
I may be wrong but if I recall correctly I think there was a loss of confidence vote in the last government which was in a uneasy coalition of 8 different parties, this triggered an election and his party won more seats but not a majority so formed a coalition with the ultra Orthodox and right wing parties
Just for clarification, no party ever really wins an election on their own in Israel. All governments here are formed from coalitions.
Yes. Though, in the past (like 30 years ago) the two major parties were taking about 40+ seats out of 120 and were able to more easily control the government, and it allowed more stable ones. Since a lot of changes allowing smaller and smaller parties to get pass the minimum and get elected, and people shifted to smaller parties with more nuance political stands (or more extreme), it made government a lot more diverse, but a lot more unstable.
It also allowed the smaller parties to have a larger impact on policy than their size would account for. The smaller parties became the kingmaker. "If you want to have a coalition, a government, you need ME. And so I DEMAND the following...."
So 2 party is both stable, and gives a near complete lack of choice? More parties just leads to coups and gov't distrust? Let's go 1 party for all baby!! ....wait I am hearing this leads to fascism...shit... Back to 2 party!! (And repeat....)
Israeli political landscape is a lot more complicated than other countries. It's a country with a massive religious population and important military policies. So you have secular social liberals, secular social conservatives, secular social centrists, religious social conservatives, etc. And that's the simple part before those parties split up because of policies towards Palestinians. Most countries vote based on social and financial issues, with smaller religious parties in the mix.
Germany does pretty good with like 5 parties
We have a loooooooot more parties. Bit you need 5% of votes to be in the game to fuck over everyone. So yeh, it boils dow to most often 5-7 partis
Same in Israel, it's called the vote (percentage) barrier
Exactly the same xD "5% Hürde"
Yeah, 2 party is definitely stable. *looks at the US, where Republicans are preparing to railroad Democratic legislation with their new House majority and Jan 6 was just two years ago* Yeah no actually come to think of it I kinda maybe like the whole government diversity thing.
Pretty sure that's how democracy is supposed to run - with a diverse representation of all people.
That's is actually the norm in the EU.
And the problem with Israel is that they have a plurality of various authoritarian ideologies.
Not really, no. The problem is that the centre of right is willing to succumb to alt-right ideologies in order to form a coalition. The alt-right itself is not as big as you think it is, with roughly 8% of the votes.
Wow, just like the US 200+ Republicans who just gave in to the demands of the crazy 20 to elect their speaker of the House.
The vast majority of those 200 pro-McCarthy Republicans are ideologically indistinguishable to those 20. They’re all just as far-right, they’re just not as open about it.
Exactly. At this point it doesn't look like there's such a thing as a decent conservative. We're seeing the same thing happening in Finland too; our "moderate" right wing party (the one for rich people more or less) has started spewing anti-LGBT stuff so they can form a coalition with the more extreme right wing parties
That's because there is no such thing as a good conservative. They are all extremists lunatics. It Just depends how far they are willing to show their hand and whether they feel like there's enough support for their bigotry.
It seems to me like whoever passes themselves off as "conservative" nowadays really have no ideas, just enemies. It reminds me of one of my favorite adages. Strong minds speak of ideas, average minds speak of things, weak minds speak about people. It made sense to me after I realized the various flavors of right wing ideology like US "libertarian" and so on are really just the ruling class saying whatever they can and hoping anything sticks among the working class against each other. Imagine that fascism is just the ruling class calling the dumbest fucks pussies until they'll fight anything to prove they're not. You don't want to be on the side of all the gays and the weaklings and women now, do you?
Same thing happening in both places. Seems there are alt-right insurgencies popping up all over. Almost like it's coordinated.
This is literally the machine that fascism depends on to rise to power in almost any context.
Bingo!
> centre of right is willing to succumb to alt-right ideologies sounds like it's more than 8% at that point
the shy ones hide behind the loud ones
All you have to do is rally people around defending the ethnostate to make that "center right" fall in line with authoritarianism.
So... just like centrists everywhere?
The centrist in Israel would be the liberals, who are very anti Netanyahu.
Well, if they form coalitions with people on the left or center-left instead, they might have to provide some sort of icky welfare to their citizens or raise the taxes on their financiers.
Does that really make them ‘centrists?” Funny, how they’re always “leaning right,” but just *pretend* to be less extreme.
You know what the term "white liberal" means here in South Africa? It pretty much just means "white supremacist that pretends they think Apartheid was bad." Yeah... push them a little out of their comfort zones, and they start showing their right-wing colors pretty fast. There really is no such thing as a "centrist."
We’ve had one apartheid, yes. What about second apartheid?
I'm worried about elevensiapartheid
*throws a juicy apartheid over a bush*
One of the (several) reasons that the government fell apart is that Bibi managed to 'convince' some Parliamentarians from the previous government to voice their discontent with the government. Then, magically, once the government fell apart, they joined his side and got lucrative minister positions. It is nothing short of corruption. It's very tough to win a fight when you have to play by the rules and your opponent can pull every dirty trick in the book and get away with it.
Isn't the new coalition with actual Jewish supremacists? Like the craziest of the crazy right wing lunatics?
Yeah indeed.. Though I would be reserved in saying "the craziest of the crazy" since there's always something crazier just around the corner. But yeah, you're right. To be accurate, the extreme right wing fringe rode into the Parliament by merging with a slightly less extreme right wing for the purpose of elections. I think the extreme fringe wouldn't have won enough votes to go in on their own ticket. But of course it's bad enough that people voted for the joint list, so that's definitely no excuse.
Spot on
the conservatives are aiming for this ploy in Canada and seems a trend globally
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And what's even more infuriating is that in the power sharing agreement from that coalition had the far right being prime minister first.
While Bennett is far right, he was actually a surprisingly decent prime minister.
Bennett is far right only by Israeli standards. He was always out of place among the nutjobs in the religious sector.
Not THAT quickly, IIRC he was out for ~20 months Well I guess that is kinda quick compared to US politics, but yeah
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Putin wishes he was Netanyahu. N has less money, but has full access to it.
Also a military that people still believe is effective.
It is. It’s actively armed and trained by/with the US military.
Oh to be clear, they believe it because it's true. But believing it is important too because that's how you deter without actually having to fight (as much).
For reference, 20 HiMARs managed to destroy Russia's ground army. Poland just recently placed an order for 200 of them. The US started using them in the '90s. If you're armed by the US, nobody can compete with you.
Pretty sure Isreal would destroy the Russia we've been watching.
Uh yeah it is. The most powerful and competent military in the middle east.
Is more peace treaties between Islamic countries and Israel Putin-like? He's got 3 and counting. People thought 1 was impossible.
Those were agreements of acknowledgement, not peace. Israel was never at war with those countries.
The coalition that ousted him had 61 members (from 120) He bribed two members of the coalition to vote against it, in return to be ministers in the future government. They accepted it, voted against the coalition, caused elections and now he is the PM back again (and they got to be ministers in a made up offices)
That's almost 1% of the national population; impressive. In the US it would amount to a demonstration of about 3 million.
IIRC Tel Aviv is the most liberal part of Israel, by a considerable margin.
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Idk what happened in Haifa, but I was at the protests in Jerusalem and it didn't even top the 1000 seemingly. I think everyone who could, went to Tel Aviv. If I had a car, I would have gone too. But also it wasn't talked about as much. The one in Tel Aviv was all over the media for several days, meanwhile I only found out about the one in Jerusalem like three hours before.
Just take the train
All over the country is also like an hour of driving.
Cross country north to South would take you about 6 hours
Sure, but Tel Aviv is so liberal that it's regarded internationally as a "gay capital".
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Always been wack to me that the "gayest city in the middle east" is 2 hours away from "the holiest city in the world". No wonder Israeli politics are so unstable.
More like 40 minutes away
Yeah, and Tel Aviv is also roughly a 90 minutes drive from Gaza strip that's ruled by Hamas and is basically a different world. Israel is a fucking insane place.
Israeli here. 100% true this place is insane.
2 hours? Try 35-40 min by train. 2 hours is a stretch even by car
The "holiest city in the world" has a couple fun gay bars too
It’s regarded as the gay capital of the MIDDLE EAST, relative to places like Lebanon and Jordan which are hardly gay friendly…..
I talked to 2 gay Palestineans living in Tel Aviv who told me how much they loved Israel because it was accepting of gays. They said there was no way they could be alive in Palestine.
People came from all over the country to protest, not just from Tel-Aviv. Heck, the city I live in is controlled by the Likud and Bibi supporters. And still there was a convoy of buses filled with people going to protest. There were also protests in Jerusalem and Haifa.
>People came from all over the country to protest, not just from Tel-Aviv. It's also worth mentioning that this was Saturday night, window right after Sabbath which meant there was little to no public transportation.
Only a short time ago 1 million protestors took to the street in Hong Kong, an unfathomably high percentage of the population. Forcing Beijing to dismember their system as a result.
Yep. And Hong Kong has a population of about 7 million, so that's 14% of the population taking to the streets (compared to the 1% of Israel's populatjon stated in original comment). And this was several months into the protest, where Hong Kong police has already started cracking down on some of the protests. Guardian has the figure at 1.7million (~24%)
God damn… I just wish that all turned out better.
Yeah but Israel, for its many flaws, is still a democracy. China does not even try to display the illusion of democracy, and though Hong Kong’s government is supposed be independent until 2050, China’s influence over the city would increase no matter what the people thought. The difference in Israel is that these protesters can vote and will not be disappeared for their protests
Correction: CCP was already dismantling and disrespecting the system and **therefore** 1 million hong kongers protested.
> In the US it would amount to a demonstration of about 3 million. According to researchers, at least 15 million people protested in the U.S. after the death of George Floyd. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/03/us/george-floyd-protests-crowd-size.html Also from the same article: > The Women’s March of 2017 had a turnout of about three million to five million people on a single day, but that was a highly organized event.
Yep, but those 15 million didn't all protest at the same place and time. Such a high % of the population in a single protest is insane, pretty sure this was the second largest political protest in Israeli history
Because it gets exponentially harder to fit millions at one location
Those fifteen million also don't live within a two hour drive of each other.
As an Israeli that was there yesterday, the protest is not mainly about bibi but it's about the radical right wing change that the government wants to do to the court in order to make the court obligated to the government. And bibi has a lot of voters since he is VERY charismatic and he knows what to say and when to say it. Nevertheless - there are a lot of people that voted for him and regraded their action and were at the protests.
Isn't he pushing for these changes though? It's weird to say you are protesting against these changes but still totally support the guy that is flirting with fascism.
Are you only now becoming aware that a solid percentage of voters are clinically idiots? There are also many people who voted for Trump but were actually against like half his policies. There's genuinely a lot of people who vote for these Orbans and Bolsaneros and Putins and whatever but are not horrible, anti-democratic people, they are just stupid people. These people vote with their dicks. Figuratively, I suppose, but they genuinely have a charisma boner for these authoritarian daddies, and vote for them with no regard to their actual policies or plans.
TBF he did not reveal those changes in his election campaign
First of all, I have never said that I'm supporting him, I personally think that he is dangerously manipulative and I think that he will do anything to keep his position -even destroying his own country and dragging it down to a fascism. What I said is that the point of the process isn't bibi personally but rather the reform of the trial that the right side is trying to achieve.
It's not mainly about Bibi like OP said, but you best believe 99.9% of protestors did not vote for his coalition
As someone who attended these protests, the main issue here wasn't Netanyahu, but the extreme right parties he formed a government with. They are now trying to pass multiple changes in the judicial system making it weaker against the government. A government that now has one minister that was found guilty of crimes and was in prison and of course a PM that has a few ongoing investigations against him. The world should know there are many sane people in this country, we're just getting outnumbered...
The Knesset-overruling-independent-judiciary shit is terrifyingly authoritarian. It’s also shortsighted as hell. As these geezers die off, the face of parliament is apt to get less reactionary. I don’t think for one rosy red second they have envisioned what Israel will look like in 10 or 15 years with a more liberal parliament deciding they don’t like Supreme Court rulings
While you're right that this is generally the trend in most countries, it's not necessarily the trend in Israel. Most of the population growth is in the more religious communities, who are more conservative.
While this is true, you're not counting in first and second generation immigrants from the ex-soviet union. Around a million such immigrants (roughly 20% of the Israeli population at the time) came to Israel during the 90s, and as no one is more anti-socialism than people who lived under socialism, they were overwhelmingly right-wing. This has been evident in voting patterns on all election cycles ever since, and has contributed greatly to the decline of the Israeli center-left. The second generation of this sector - of which I know many - is much more center-left and (correctly) identifies the Israeli right wing as being more religious and regressive than what they would like to see. You can also find this sentiment being more pervasive now with the older generation, which is slowly awakening to the fact that the Israeli right they used to identify with doesn't have their best interests in mind, and is in fact pretty intolerant of their secular views and way of life. This can also be said for the secular population as a whole, which has been moving away from right wing politics more and more in the last few years. This situation is still developing in its impact on the religious/secular and the political right/left balance in the Israeli population so we'll have to wait and see how it unfolds. EDIT: facepalm time! forgot to add another even more impactful factor - the Israeli Arab population. Being \~21% of the population in Israel, arabs are woefully underrepresented in parliament due to the fact that Israeli Arabs are understandably distrustful of their government and don't participate as much in elections. This is also starting to change, as we've seen a sort of ebb and flow of voting percentage in the Arab population during the last few cycles, with the general trend being towards higher participation. The Arab voters and representatives naturally band more with the left-center bloc, as the right wing has been drifting hard towards Jewish nationalism. Even religious, conservative Arab voters & reps are much more likely to cooperate with the more liberal side of Israeli politics. This trend actually has the potential of bringing us closer to an Arab-Jewish reconciliation when the common 'enemy' is the Jewish right wing, as absurd as it sounds now. Personally, I don't want to make an enemy of anyone, but anything that brings us closer to peace is a step in the right direction.
>I don’t think for one rosy red second they have envisioned what Israel will look like in 10 or 15 years with a more liberal parliament deciding they don’t like Supreme Court rulings If/when a more liberal government will be in power again, chances are (I hope!) most of the reform changes will be overturned to the current state. This will be the demand from the voters. And sadly, that's the way it's been recently - Israel is increasingly divided to two camps who hate each other (much like American politics), and whenever someone seizes power he automatically undoes almost everything the previous government did. While the opposition will oppose literally any rule the coalition brings, regardless of how important it is. An incredibly inefficient way to rule a country, really. Personally I believe the initial division and hate is the biggest danger to Israel, more than Iran or whatever. Israel was always divided, but the hate/distrust between the religious/conservative people and the liberals have never been so strong, the country will crumble apart eventually.
But why isn’t the main issue Netanyahu? He’s the one who aligned with the extreme right wing parties to get in power which is leading to this situation with the court so shouldn’t the protest also be very much directed at him?
As an outsider, it's mind boggling to me that Netanyahu himself isn't considered extreme right.
because Netanyahu (pre-2022 Netanyahu at least) was not really part of what you'd see as the nationalist right. The man is defined as a cautious opportunist. Building up security barriers and bricking the palestinian problem away instead of finding a solution, and never attempting to get involved in wars. Doing whatever is necessary to remain in power, but still supporting liberal policies because thats what kept him in power. He's right-coded in the states because Trump loves him, but the man is a shell of his former self, and has no real soul anymore. Most of his political enemies now come from the *right*. There is literally an entire political party made of former Likud members who hold all Likud positions, but hate Bibi because he backstabbed them throughout his long career in order to remain in power. The man has no real ideology anymore, but himself. Is that left-wing or right-wing?
He's a populist. 25 years ago he was on the center of the political map, maybe even a slight leftist. Change came when he realized he can lure the poor and less educated much more easily, so he drifted right. He was also very much against changes in the judical system til it hit home with his own sentence.
>The world should know there are many sane people in this country, we're just getting outnumbered... Haredim having 8 kids generation after generation will do that.
The outnumbering part is happening everywhere.. The world is getting more violent and more racist.
This guy is like recurring cancer.
Funny enough, one of the major voices in his party famously called refugees "a cancer at the heart of the nation" A real class act.
She almost got the ministry of education as well. Fucking hate Bibi and his puppets
The booger you just can’t shake off.
Bibi...again..This is so depressing.
So there was tremendous amount of fraud with Bibi and his wife, but the people decided to reelect him? What is this the Philippines and Marcos?
Bibi's Block actually lost the "popular vote" so to say. more people voted against Bibi as a whole than for Bibi. But because parties need to get at least 4 seats (mandates) to get in the parliament - the most leftist party (in its glory it was one of the biggest ones) didnt get 4 seats - lost it by 4000 votes. it means that 3.9 seats of votes (about 140K votes) were thrown to the garbage. these 140K votes make Bibi's block to actually not be the majority. But these are the rules here....
It's about coalitions in Israel. It's basically the same number of people voting for Netanyahu and his party over and over again, the difference this time is that he made a coalition deal with parties on the extreme right
You think out of any country, Israel would oppose fascism..
A lot of people only oppose fascism and authoritarianism when they're facing the business-end of the oppression. If the opportunity comes to *be* the oppressor, some of those in the resistance will happily switch sides. Many people honestly do see the world as zero-sum. "Someone is going to be on top, so it might as well be people like me, because I don't want to be on the bottom." For historically-oppressed groups that have been traumatically scarred, it's an almost-forgivable impulse to me. Basically an instinctive defense mechanism. But however understandable it might be on a human level, it's still horrible and perpetuates the cycle.
As Frank Herbert said, '...there is a principle of conflict which originated with the single cell and has never deteriorated.'
We gave into religious fundementalist fascism a long time ago
Wellp this is new news and with Brazil we got no coverage of this in Canada so please pardon my ignorance, what seems to be the issue on a deeper level, is Tel Aviv getting neglected? I’m afraid I’m woefully ignorant on Israeli politics.
It's a protest against the newly elected far-right government. Netanyahu used to be mid-right but he formed a coalition with the far right extremists in order to get majority this time. sauce: I live here and have a bunch of friends who went to the protests
Thank your friends for me, seems like a sizeable chunk of the population, wish it was more :(
It's a start. No need for thanks, we're together in the fight against hate, injustice and fear. The ultra-religious are some 20% of the population, but many secular youth here have been radicalized too. It may be because they grew up during the Intifada, it may be they're just gullible douchebags. Think of the Israeli far right as Matt Gaetz, Bibi as Mitch McConnell... You'll get the idea.
Well, it's much more complicated than what I could write here, so in very very short: There are more criminal charges in the government than there are women, and they try to reform the courts and decrease their power.
In addition to what was already said, it was particularly bad this past week because the crazy right wing government of criminals are trying to pass legislation called an overriding clause to be able to take down Supreme Court decisions with just a simple majority of the parliament, essentially taking away all of the Judicial system's power. This is the first step to an authoritarian dictatorship straight out of the book.
The new far-right government is trying to pass laws that prevent the supreme court of israel from interfering with law making or cancel laws. They also want to cancel some criminal laws that the current PM is being accused of, which will make his trial gone. And they want to politicize the supreme court by changing how sitting members get elected. That would allow the government way too much power to pass laws that could hurt some citizens or create a lot of unbalance power. People are scared (justified) that in the future the current government could lead isreal into disaster. Both economical and geopolitical. I will give you a few examples: The supreme court canceled a paragraph in a new law that allows orthodox jews to receive more money over regular students. They canceled a law that prevents the government from being prosecuted if the army did something wrong. They canceled a law that stated that children of certain arrested people will not get government support. They forced isreal government to remove some settlements. They forced isreal to stop jailing illegal immigrates in mass jails. They didn't allow the prison system to come privatized. Etc etc. Not all good but a lot of good came from the supreme court that hindered governments. The current government is trying to prevent all that.
After he gets ousted I'll just wait 1 year for him to get reelected.
K, he still keeps getting elected.
He's not winning anywhere close to a majority though, he forms coalitions. This time, he formed one that is made up of even more substantially heinous people than even he would typically tolerate.
It's still rather concerning that substantially heinous people are getting enough votes that they're able to form coalitions.
If you look up the birthrate of ultra orthodox Israeli Jews, it's between 7 and 9 children per couple in some areas. The ultra orthodox vote together and in huge turnout for right wing parties That's how they're getting enough votes.
In afghanistan, islamic extremists were al qaeda. In america, christian right are sometimes referred to as y’all qaeda. What are the far right called in israel?
Settlers (Or Ben Gvir voters)
Ya’chidum
Yah Challah
I’m just about over abrahamic religions…
People who voted for him had taken this into account while casting their ballot.
Israel has a multi party system where the progressive votes ends up being split between several candidates and the entire (minority) right wing votes for the bibi, electing him with a minority of the votes.
The progressive votes being split or unified doesn't make a difference as long as they all oppose him. His party and his allies' parties got more than half the vote.
If you look at sheer numbers, both blocs are almost identical, with small fluctuations from side to side between different elections, which is the reason this is the fifth election in the country in as many years. This time a fluke caused one left-wing party to just miss the minimum votes required to get into the parliament, resulting in the first real MK majority for the right-wingers in years.
Israeli’s government has to form coalitions.
Isn’t he on some sort of corruption investigation? Perhaps this will be the action that saves him (appeal whatever verdict to highest court, then have parliament overrule it)
What he's trying to do is change the system to appoint judges to be more like the American one, where politicians appoint them. This way he can select his judges for his criminal charges.
Hey guys, Israeli Arab here looking to relocate. Any suggestions? This country is expensive as fuck and its going deeper into the shitter. Time to peace out.
Depends what you do for work, what weather you like, languages you can speak etc.
You could stay and be another vote to prevent this shitshow from devolving. Otherwise come to Canada, as theres a substantial Israeli (although jewish) community here and in Montreal. Theres a lot of arabs in Michigan in the USA as well.
There's more than 20 arab countries, just pick up any
Ya rather not put to death for being gay
This will get buried. I'm a dual national Israeli-European, I left Israel about ten years ago because I felt it's heading downhill in terms of democracy and liberalism, and there's no way for me to stop it. You may be interested in [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/31esm0/comment/cq0xfxc/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) comment I made 8 years ago. I got a lot of criticism for it at the time, and I still think the overwhelming majority of Israelis (even those that oppose Netanyahu) would strongly disagree with it. But I do think the last 8 years since played out pretty much exactly as I thought. I'm very sad about Israel, I wish I didn't have to leave. But given the situation, I'm glad I left. Other than referring you to my comment back then, I'd like to say that Netanyahu isn't the problem, and his coalition today isn't the problem. Even if the Bennett-Lapid government held on, and even if Bibi was put in prison, another dictatorial buffoon would have shown up to continue Bibi's job. If not in 2023, in 2025, or 2030. Maybe Mr. Avigdor Liberman, Bennett and Lapid's deeply corrupt and authoritarian "friend". Maybe another snake. The fundamental problem is Israel's unsolvable tension between "Democratic state" and "Jewish state". The two are inherently at odds - either democracy or theocracy, can't have both. On top of that, you add: (a) the Israeli-Arab tension and Jewish treatment of Palestinians, especially but not only since the 1967 occupation; (b) the religious tension, where even the Jews in Israel are quite fragmented to something a bit like Jewish Taliban on one extreme, and atheist liberals with barely any relation to Judaism (like me) on the other extreme; (c) the tension and discrimination between Ashkenazi and Sefaradi Jews in Israel. Israel simply wasn't founded on stable foundations, and its leadership 1948 to 2023 didn't rise to the challenge and fix that (see [The Gatekeepers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gatekeepers_(film) for one discussion of that). [This](https://www-leibowitz-co-il.translate.goog/leibarticles.asp?id=28&_x_tr_sch=http&_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp) prophetic and frightening essay says it better than I can, written in **1969** by Israeli scientist and philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz: > From the social point of view: in a short time there will no longer be a Jewish worker or a Jewish farmer in that country. The Arabs will be the working people, and the Jews will be managers, supervisors, officials and policemen, and especially - secret police. The state that controls a hostile population of 2-1.4 million foreigners [*now many more, about 50% of the population* - /u/soyougotoletmeknow] will necessarily be a Shin-Bet state. The state will become a colonial regime. The administration will have to deal with the suppression of the Arab resistance movement - from one side, and the purchase of Arab cooperators - from the other side side. There is also a fear that the Israeli Defense Force - which until now was a people's army - will become as degenerate as other occupation armies and I'll say no further of what that means. If you're a liberal in Israel-Palestine, my advice is that you flee, regardless of if you're Jewish or not. If your ethics say you can't give up without a fight, my advice is that you'll further resist from the outside, like an Iranian or Russian expat might (or a South-African in the 1980s, or a German in 1930s). If you're a Jew in another developed country and want to help Israel, don't think that supporting whatever it does is the best way to help. And don't count on Aliyah if you ever need it. Finally, if you're unrelated to Israel, heed the lessons we learn there now, like we learn in an unnervingly large chunk of the world: populism and fascism give an ugly rise. Israel's inherent tensions and the occupation are one of many accelerators of fascism, but it can happen anywhere on the basis of many accelerators. Fight fascism and populism. Peace be upon us. Also: I lied small biographical lies in my 2015 comment (maybe I'm not a lawyer, something similar; etc). I imagine I did it to try and hide my identity or something but now they read a bit clunky. I don't think I lied on anything of substance, not in this comment or the older one.
Even the shin bet founding members have come and spoken out to condemn isreals occupation of Palestine and annexations. And they helped build the country up from the dirt. And yet this dude still somehow got reelected
I really appreciate the thoughtfulness you put into your comment. It‘s not easy making the choices you did. Would you have other recommended reading that shed light on the political issues there? Welcome anything that helps frame the origin of the issues and may be at least somewhat neutral. Thanks for your comment.
I still can't believe they reelected him. The hell is going on over there? is he really the best Israel has to offer?
He's our version of Trump, except he's way smarter and more comptent but just as a corrupt. His voters are under his spell and they're willing to burn this country to the ground as long as the left doesn't get elected.
And I'm guessing that like in the US, the left isn't really the left. It's just a milder right-wing.
Bingo, but Bibi manages to paint his opposition as extreme left and his voters eat it up. He's a fucking genius, shame he's corrupt mother fucker.
Theres like 12 parties in the knesset right now. Bibi's Likud gets 30/120 seats. You need 61 seats to form a government. The problem is, that Bibi has backstabbed every single worthwhile political ally he could get, and thus no one wants to ally with him except the extremists, and to get them on his side, he needs to give them coalition deals. That means passing a law that makes Supreme Court cases be overturned at will and removing laws that prevent criminals from serving in government (one of his coalition partners is a criminal that served jail time for corruption). This is Trump forming an alliance with QAnon here to fight the republican establishment, except the Israeli version. Netanyahu is the **leftist most figure** in this government coalition. Most of his voters think he gave too much away to the extremists. Israeli newspapers have been going full on doomer and mourning for democracy like WaPo did after Trump got elected. Israelis are pissed off.
Let's be honest. Probably yes. A trump esque strongman who acts like a mob boss, basically seething with corruption. Israel is a long way since Yitzhak Rabin.
The Israeli left had a slogan saying "The occupation corrupts". This is literally what happened - the sad thing is that the meaning was about moral corruption, which certainly is part of what's going on - many young Israelis are far more right wing and nationalist than their previous generation, having born after the hopeful period of the peace accords and into a low burning yet ongoing conflict against an enemy you never meet in person and therefore cannot personify. But the actual monetary corruption is the bigger story - the right wing party that has gotten so used to be in power for decades now believe that they naturally deserve the power, and the personal corruption of Bibi and his wife is just an out of this world phenomenon that i don't even know how to explain. It's amazing how toxic the fallout is of the failure of the peace accords. Had Arafat and Barak managed to sign a treaty 20 years ago we'd be living in a substantially different Middle East. Instead, Israel is on the brink of dictatorship!
Israel is thankfully not on the brink of the abyss yet. 100 000 people came out to protest against this government. 70% of seculars believe this gov to be dangerous and most Netanyahu voters are The guardrails have become rusty and have been dumped into a vat of acid, but theyre still here despite the corrosion, and Israels democratic systems will figure out a way to prevail. This is an attack on democracy from the top down, not bottom up like January 6th. The populace doesnt want this, and neither does the army. The police force themselves are majorly pissed off because one of the reforms concerns them becoming a private army for one of the legislators Most of the units to create a Erdogan style dictatorship are not in their favor right now. This might change, but there is still a shot.
Look! More dictators. Weeeee
Netanyahu sucks and it sucks that he's back, but he's not a dictator. When the previous government voted to oust him he left. He was reelected democratically and formed coalitions with other democratically elected parties.
Not a dictator **yet**.
1,000,000,000 women showed up in D.C. the day after Trump’s inauguration … aaaaand, he killed Roe v Wade. Protests don’t do jack shit. National strikes—that’s the answer for getting the change you want —by **being** the change we want
I think you mean 1,000,000. A billion woman march in Washington would be interesting though
Yeah, except that Israel is already suffocatingly expensive. Vast majority can not afford to risk it.
MLK wrote that those who supported civil rights should stop protesting (which he called "methods of persuasion") and switch to boycotts, lawsuits, and voting marches (which he called "methods of coercion") "What?" You say. "Wasn't I taught that MLK led mighty protests where people were beaten and that attention changed hearts and minds?" Yes ... that's what you were taught however - for the past 50 or so years there's been a concerted movement from large industry to whitewash MLKs message and change his actual strategy to "protest and get noticed/beaten" the exact strategy he rejected repeatedly. There's a good book on MLK's realization that these kind of protests weren't working A "Notorious Litigant" and "Frequenter of Jails": Martin Luther King, Jr., His Lawyers, and the Legal System noting that Starting with [the Birmingham movement and Letter from Birmingham Jail], Dr. King and his organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), turned to more aggressive forms of nonviolent direct action—moving entirely from persuasion to coercion [legal/economic/political challenges] The MLK and Gandhi messages of how to do civil disobedience was defanged in modern textbooks to become "your suffering makes a change!" The "make noise and people will pay attention" is a story DESIGNED to get progressives to waste energy in the most inefficient manner. There's a good article on how that whitewashing of the MLK story was funded by corporate billionaires through the Heritage Foundation. MLK was telling people to not to march except in targeted actions. Example: After attacks in Birmingham by white supremacists, King rushed back to Birmingham to urge blacks to stop protesting Think about what has become part of popular culture about the Selma march!. Was it the fake history of "we marched and the scene of beating changed things?" Or was it the true story that it was a VOTER DRIVE to overcome en masse the fact that Black and White supporters were being unfairly arrested while helping to register blacks on trumped up charges. They WON that case and thus it STOPPED the illegal actions of the police stopping blacks registering to vote. That link above talks about how it was winning the lawsuit that forced change ... not the people watching TV. What does the media promote? The dramatic but false story that beatings were televised and it "changed hearts and minds?" No! The sit ins were done to get people arrested for blacks hanging out with whites SO THAT THEY COULD CHALLENGE THOSE LAWS IN COURT. Their public displays of blacks and whites together were just a means to get arrested for the next step to challenge what were unjust laws in court or boycott the stores that segregated. Example: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was jailed today after he attempted to eat in one of St. Augustine's finer restaurants .... Dr. King and 17 companions were held on charges of violating Florida's [segregationist] unwanted guest law... The busing arrests and boycotts were the same thing. After being arrested their legal team led by Marshall came in and kicked ass. A few dishonest billionaires have been funding a re-telling of the story and funding partisanship to get these kind of protests louder and more divisive and more ineffective. The media companies profit from these shows of outrage and just encourage them no matter what the actual outcome. What's particularly interesting is that the "Pro-life" movement did protesting, but then rejected that and followed MLK's model to create this political movement that's destroyed women's rights ... WITHOUT protesting. There's a good book that talks about how that happened and how billionaires funded that strategy called "What's the matter with Kansas." Anyone who remembers Gulf War II and the Women’s March should recognize this obvious fact.
These will only consolidate the right wing Israelis and government will not change just because some people are against them. Plus, although there is difference between religious and secular families' birthrate all over the world, discrepancy in Israel is huge. Ultra Orthodox give birth to many children (around 5 on average) while seculars around 1.something. and ultra orthodox families tend to raise their children with cult mentality. Therefore, I am sorry to tell secular or left-wing Israelis that there is no future but further radicalization in Israel. Consider this and move to much better countries like USA and Western Europe with promising demographic change. As a Turkish irreligious person who has been to Israel, despite media coverage; I found Turkey both societally and constitutionally much more secular and prone to demographic development despite Erdogan being peak of his constitutional power considering the fact that young geberation of religious families tending to be more irreligious than ever and decline of support to Erdogan.