Democratic threat: A planned judicial overhaul divides Israel

Tania Kraemer

In Israel, thousands of people are expected to protest today against government plans to overhaul the judiciary. It’s the latest in a string of demonstrations held in the past two months against the judicial reform, with Thursday serving as the next “day of resistance to dictatorship”.

Beyond weekly Saturday night demonstrations in Tel Aviv, almost daily smaller protests in different cities have been fused with frequent “days of disruption,” where protesters block main junctions and roads during rush hour. In Jerusalem last week, army veterans and reservists staged a protest in front of the prime minister’s office, where they chanted and waved Israeli flags.

The fact that Benjamin Netanyahu’s office is located between Israel’s Parliament, the Knesset, and the nation’s Supreme Court amplified the symbolism of the veterans’ protest. “It’s a very special group here tonight; we are reservists who served in past wars, from the Six Day War [1967], to Yom Kippur, to Lebanon,” Rami Matan, a retired army officer told DW. “We defended, fought and were willing to die for this country. Now we are here to save her [Israel] — not like in the past from a foreign enemy, but today we defend it from becoming a dictatorship.” Matan has returned to the streets after protesting in 2020-2021 against Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, the then (and now) prime minister, who was facing corruption charges in court at the time — as he still does today.

But chants of “Bibi ha beita” (“Bibi go home”) from that time have now been replaced with “democratya” (“democracy”). For many here, this is something bigger than a protest against one politician.

Israel has been gripped by protests for almost two months. Tens of thousands of Israelis are voicing their opposition to a proposed overhaul of the country’s legal system and the extreme haste with which these changes are being pushed through by the far-right religious government led by Netanyahu.

The controversial overhaul would severely curb the powers of the nation’s Supreme Court. It would also give more power to the government to select Supreme Court judges and allow a simple parliamentary majority to override Supreme Court decisions.

From judges to high-tech workers, students, parents and anti-occupation activists, the protests have mobilized diverse segments of society. In an unprecedented move, reservist fighter pilots from the country’s elite squadron threatened to refrain from reporting to reserve training in protest of the controversial overhaul. Other reservists have also penned open letters warning that they might not show up for duty.

For many Jewish Israelis, the army symbolizes a stronghold of security that ought to stay out of politics. These actions have further added to the polarization between opponents and supporters of the government’s proposal.

Simcha Rothman, a member of the Knesset for the far-right Religious Zionist Party, heads the legislature’s Constitution, Law and Justice Committee and is considered to be one of the architects of the government’s reform. Emerging from a meeting of the committee that will oversee the proposed legislation before it gets its first reading in the Knesset, he told DW: “On November 1, a lot of people went out of their homes and voted exactly on this issue. So, we need to listen to them. There are a lot of people, but it is a small minority in Israel that says this reform is not good for them.”

This article was provided by Deutsche Welle