In Israel democracy protests, both sides are digging in

The wall of noise at Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport was all-encompassing and relentless: thousands of demonstrators with drums and horns, chanting against the government’s renewed push to overhaul the country’s judicial system.

“They’re stealing our home; they’re destroying it,” says Arnon, an older man draped in a blue-and-white Israeli flag and wearing a T-shirt that says, simply, “Democracy.”

The workday protest was part of a nationwide “day of disruption” last Tuesday opposing the government’s plans and targeting the nation’s ports and roads.

Along with escalating demonstrations and government ministers’ vows that they’re not backing off, signs are accumulating that both camps, deeply distrustful of each other, are heading with renewed determination toward an unprecedented collision over the nation’s democratic character.

Legal experts say the government’s proposed legislation would undermine the powers of the Supreme Court and hand unchecked power to the government.

At the airport, Arnon’s wife, Mira, says that the couple, both in their 80s and offering only their first names, had taken to the streets to make their voices heard, as they had for the previous 27 weeks of protests against the far-right government’s plans.

“It wasn’t bad here; it was good here before all this began,” Arnon says. “They need to halt and stop everything.”

Amid previous widespread mass demonstrations, a general strike that paralyzed the country, and a growing movement by military reservists to refuse to serve, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been forced to back down from his original plan to pass a slew of laws in parliament earlier this year, announcing a pause in late March.

Yet subsequent talks between the government and the opposition over a consensual judicial reform agenda collapsed last month.

Now senior government officials say they are intent on passing a first bill early next week targeting the ability of the Supreme Court to review government decisions and appointments.

A re-energized protest movement has drawn hundreds of thousands to the streets, and polls show some 70% of the country is still opposed to the government’s judicial program.

On an almost daily basis in recent weeks, demonstrators have shut down main highways across the country and protested outside the homes of government officials. The “day of disruption” last week went on for 17 straight hours, and another similar weekday action is planned for tomorrow.

This past weekend, at the weekly Saturday night demonstration in Tel Aviv, the nation’s largest, an estimated crowd of 150,000 people listened intently as Shikma Bressler, a research physicist and protest leader, paraphrased Winston Churchill. “We will never give in. ... We will fight everywhere,” she bellowed onstage. “History will record this time as the most important since the declaration of [Israeli] independence.”

“What will happen to girls?”

Nearby, taking a break from the din and the suffocating summertime humidity, were Yael and her 6-year-old daughter, Ella.

“In the middle, it’s important to eat ice cream,” Yael says as Ella tucks into a cup while still holding her yellow horn and keeping her red headphones on to diminish the noise.

“The situation has grown worse again, and I’m afraid of what will happen to girls in this country,” Yael says. The initial steps taken by the government – the most ultranationalist and religious in the country’s history – had already begun undermining gender equality, she says, and were “a testament to the overall trend” even before they succeeded in arrogating untold power for themselves. Among those steps: placing the committee for gender equality, which had been independent for years, under the purview of a government minister.

“It’s about her future,” Yael adds, looking down at her daughter. “We may not be able to raise kids here.”

Legal experts say the bill now being pushed through the Knesset, which would eliminate the court’s ability to strike down government decisions and civil servant appointments on the grounds of “extreme unreasonableness,” could have far-reaching consequences.  

“It will definitely affect the rule of law, the integrity of the public sector, and will also threaten demonstrators who are currently protesting against the government’s policy – we may see much harsher treatment of demonstrators,” says Prof. Rivka Weill of the Harry Radzyner Law School at Reichman University.  

Professor Weill calls the “removal of reasonableness” a “prelude” to the possible firing of the attorney general, the top legal official in the country. Other experts surmise that such a controversial move could usher in a new and more malleable appointment that would then suspend the ongoing corruption trial against Mr. Netanyahu.

For their part, government officials and supporters contend that such legislation is imperative in order to rein in what they deem an overly activist and liberal judiciary. Senior ministers have also made clear that the planned passage next week of this first bill will not be the end of the government’s radical power grab, as its detractors characterize it, but only the beginning.

“This will be a long and ongoing process,” Miki Zohar, a minister from Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud party known to reflect the premier’s thinking, said in an interview with a local news outlet. “The [judicial] reform is not just the ‘reasonableness clause,’ there are many other issues we want to fix.”

If anything, the growing protest movement has hardened government plans to push ahead, if only to show as a matter of principle that it is in charge and not the street.

Not even the swelling number of military reservists again announcing their intention to stop volunteering for service – including special forces, intelligence specialists, cyberwarriors, and air force personnel – has dissuaded the Netanyahu coalition, despite top generals warning of real damage to Israel’s war-fighting capabilities.

“It cannot be that there will be a group within the military that threatens the elected government: ‘If you do not do what we want, we will shut the switch on security,’” Mr. Netanyahu said at a Monday cabinet meeting. “No democratic country would accept such diktat; such diktat is the end of democracy.”

Dictatorship vs. democracy

Yet on the sidelines of the Tel Aviv demonstration Saturday, one of the key leaders of the reservist protest group, “Brothers in Arms,” preemptively dismisses such talk. Above him is a massive banner with the U.S. flag on one side, Mr. Netanyahu’s visage on the other, and a message – Persona Non Grata – referencing the Biden administration’s strong opposition to the judicial overhaul agenda.

“A.” – as he requests to be called – now in his mid-30s, was an officer in an elite covert unit responsible for Israel’s northern front with Lebanon.

“In my unit, during an emergency, 120 percent of us show up, we need to stop people at the gate because there’s just not enough equipment,” he says. “In Putin’s Russia, he has to arrest people at the border [and conscript them by force]. That’s the real difference between a dictatorship and a democracy.”

The reservists’ protest was meant to do two things, A. continues: indicate their unwillingness to serve in the army of a country that was no longer democratic and pressure the government to stop precisely that from happening.

“The fear here is definitely real. The people at the wheel [of this country now] don’t have many limits. ... They’re only guided by sectoral or personal interests,” A. says, highlighting the absurdity of a government effectively declaring war against its own best and brightest, its own military, and its own economy.

“The other week we blocked the entrance to the port in Haifa and I’m sitting in the middle of the road with my arms locked,” he continues. “The reservist to my right is a CEO responsible for 600 employees. To my left is another reservist and entrepreneur who raised millions of dollars for his start-up and pays a fortune in taxes to the state. And this is all happening in the middle of a weekday!”

A. says he’s not sure whether the reservists’ protest, and the overall protest, would ultimately win out; perhaps a general strike called by the large trade unions and local municipalities, similar to late March, would again tip the balance in their favor and force the government to again back down.

But he does promise one thing: “If this law does pass, we’ll escalate the protest.”