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Edited by: TJVNews.com

Tens of thousands of Israelis on Monday protested outside the Knesset building in Jerusalem in a show of force against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as his government formally launched its contentious plan to overhaul the country’s legal system, the AP reported.

The boisterous demonstration outside the parliament building coupled with a stormy committee vote inside the building, appeared to deepen the divisions over Netanyahu’s plans for judicial reform, the AP reported.  The plan has triggered weeks of mass protests, prompted condemnations from wide swaths of Israeli society and drawn a statement of concern from President Joe Biden.

Biden had urged Netanyahu to build consensus before pushing through far-reaching changes, saying in comments published by The New York Times on Sunday that an independent judiciary was one of the foundations of US and Israeli democracies, as was reported by Al Jazeera.

Netanyahu and his allies say the country’s unelected judges have too much power and need to be reined in. The AP also reported that his opponents say that Netanyahu, who is on trial for corruption charges, has a deep conflict of interest. They say his planned overhaul will destroy the country’s democratic checks and balances and is a poorly disguised plot to make his criminal case go away.

Fox News reported that according to the suggested plan, which was introduced mid-January, the ruling coalition will have control over the appointment of judges, including high court justices, and allow the Knesset to re-legislate laws the court annuls with a majority of a simple majority of 61 of the 120 Knesset members.

The government will also be able to appoint the president and vice president of the supreme court neither of whom needed to have previously served on the court and potentially not even served as a lower court judge, as was reported by Fox News.  Justice Minister Yariv Levin has argued that the high court has surpassed its authority in the last two decades and severely interfered with the ability of elected coalitions and ministers to enact government policies.

Monday’s demonstration was the largest to take place in the city in years, the AP reported.

Protesters came by bus from Haifa, train from Tel Aviv and car from the Golan Heights. They carried Israeli flags, megaphones and homemade banners. And they were chanting for democracy, freedom and judicial independence, according to a New York Times report.

Monday’s massive protest also included Arab, women’s rights and LGBTQ activists as well as opposition parties, the AP reported. They were joined by groups of academics, army reservists, students, high-tech employees, retirees and young families.

The crowd was noisy, blowing horns, chanting “democracy,” singing and whistling. But the event passed without incident and police said there were no arrests, the AP reported. Many protesters carried the blue and white Israeli flag and posters decrying what they said was an attack on the country’s democratic institutions. “Shame! Shame!” and “Israel will not be a dictatorship,” they chanted.

Before joining the demonstrators outside the Knesset, the opposition leaders held a joint presser, calling on some of Netanyahu’s Likud to “stop the disaster.” Fox News reported that former Defense Minister Benny Gantz said, “the entire opposition and many more Israeli citizens who voted for the coalition parties are united against the ‘targeted assassination’ that is being carried out against Israeli Democracy.”

Former Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid warned that if the bill passed, it would tear Israeli society apart. “If this legislation passes, the democratic chapter in the life of the state will end,” which would end Israeli Democracy.”

“They hear us,” Lapid told the crowd as he pointed at the parliament, according to the AP report. “They hear our strength and our commitment. They pretend they don’t hear. They pretend they’re not afraid. But they hear and they are afraid.”

Fox News reported that addressing the tens of thousands of protesters was Eliad Shraga, founder and chairman of the Movement for Quality Government in Israel, and one of the protest organizers, opened his speech with a quote from the Book of Isaiah: “Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth: for the LORD hath spoken, I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me.” Isaiah was the prophet who foresaw the destruction of the Second Temple, and Shraga warned of the destruction of the third temple; the state of Israel.

He warned that, “Night and day, in the constitution, law and justice committee, he is moving the anti-democratic legislation forward, the laws that will transform Israel overnight from a liberal democracy into a fascist dictatorship,” Fox News reported.

On Sunday, President Isaac Herzog appealed to Netanyahu and his coalition allies to suspend the legislation and open a dialogue with the opposition in a special televised address to the nation. Netanyahu has not responded to the appeal, Fox News reported. Herzog emphasized the importance of reaching a broad compromise and presented his five-point plan for Israel’s balance of powers.

“The people won’t have it,” said Boaz Zarki, a demonstrator in Jerusalem, according to the AP report. “The separation of authority is critical to the existence of democracy.”

“I feel very distressed, very nervous, I have a lot of sleepless nights,” said Helit from Ness Tziona, south of Tel Aviv, who came with her daughter, as was reported by the BBC.

“I think they will change. I hope so… but I think [it will be] only for a while. Then things will change again for the worse.”

The BBC also reported that Dore, a lawyer from Tel Aviv, was one of thousands whose offices shut to enable staff to attend the protests. “I’m here because my heart has been torn to pieces seeing what the new government is doing to Israeli democracy,” he said. “You know they are tearing apart the spirit of this country. And they are threatening the power of the legal systems. I cannot see it happening without protesting against it.”

Other large demonstrations were held in cities around the country.

The Jerusalem Post reported that prior to heading over to the Knesset for the demonstration opposing judicial reform measures, some protestors gather at Machne Yehuda, the central Jerusalem marketplace.

“The judicial reform isn’t good,” one veteran protester from Tel Aviv explained, as was reported by the JPost. “If there are problems, don’t just throw everything out. You need to fix them.”

“Which side am I on? This side,” one protester said while hoisting an Israeli flag.

“I’m a Jerusalemite, though I now live in Jaffa and I grew up in a Likud family, a revisionist family raised on Ze’ev Jabotinsky,” he said, according to the JPost report. “What’s happening today in the Knesset goes against what the Likud used to be.”

He continued: “There are security issues, an economic crisis. What they’re dealing with now isn’t their first priority.”

The JPost reported that this protester also refused to call it a judicial reform, but a revolution.

“It’s not a reform, it’s a revolution,” he said. “A reform comes to fix things. This has come to ruin it.”

“This is against ideas, not a person,” said Adir Ben-Tovim, 37, a real estate manager who had come from Herzliya, north of Tel Aviv, as was reported by The New York Times. “I feel the country has been hijacked by a government rushing blindly toward a disaster for the Israeli economy and a breakdown of society,” he added.

The NYT also reported that a girl of 12 held a placard that read: “When I am 18, will there be elections?” as the crowd around her chanted: “Democracy! Democracy!”

The notoriously left-wing Haaretz newspaper said in an editorial that the government was “doing everything it can to sabotage these protests”.

Israel’s Education Minister Yoav Kisch said teachers who choose to skip school “won’t be paid and absent students will be deemed truants”, Haaretz reported.

“Despite the problems and pitfalls, only large-scale public participation in both the demonstration and the strike can alter the path of destruction down which the government is marching,” it added.

On Sunday evening, President Isaac Herzog made a rare televised plea for consensus, and warned that Israel was “on the verge of legal and social collapse”.

“I am appealing to you with a request not to introduce the bill for its first reading,” Herzog said.

Despite a call by Israel’s figurehead president to freeze the legislation and begin a dialogue with the opposition, Netanyahu pressed ahead with his program, the AP reported.

To the government and its supporters, the move would enhance Israeli democracy by restoring parity in the relationship between elected lawmakers and an unelected and interventionist judiciary, and ensuring that government decisions better reflect the electoral choices of a majority of the population, the New York Times reported.

As protesters were gathered outside, a parliamentary committee controlled by a Netanyahu ally passed the first pieces of legislation connected to the plan.

The AP reported that during the unruly committee vote, opposition members stood on the conference table, pounded the desks and shouted “shame!” The committee chairman, Simcha Rothman, a member of a far-right religious party, ejected several opposition politicians, at least two of whom were dragged away by security guards.

Monday’s vote sends the first pieces of legislation to the full parliament – which would have to pass them again in three separate votes. The AP also reported that the first such vote is expected to take place next Monday. Netanyahu controls a solid majority in parliament, and there appears to be little to prevent him from pushing ahead. Nonetheless, Monday’s developments set the tone for what could lie ahead.

Netanyahu accused the opposition of “intentionally dragging the country to anarchy,” but also appeared to hold out the possibility of dialogue with his opponents, according to the AP report.

“Get a hold of yourselves. Show some responsibility and leadership,” the prime minister said. “The majority of Israeli citizens don’t want anarchy. The majority of citizens want a substantive discussion, and in the end, they want unity.”

Late Monday, Netanyahu’s justice minister, Yariv Levin, and Rothman, the committee chairman, issued a joint statement inviting opposition leaders for a meeting hosted by the president.

They include a proposal to give the Netanyahu-dominated legislature control over judicial appointments. Currently, judges are appointed by an independent committee that includes lawyers, politicians and judges, the AP reported.

A second proposal would take away the Supreme Court’s authority to review the legality over major pieces of legislation known as “Basic Laws.”

The AP also reported that still in the works is another proposal to give parliament the power to overturn Supreme Court decisions it does not like. Opponents say the proposal would push Israel toward a system like Hungary and Poland in which the leader wields control over all major levers of power.

Following the protest Justice Minister Yariv Levin and Rothman, who orchestrated and initiated the reform, called upon the opposition leaders to “start talking without preconditions. It’s time,” they said, addressing opposition head Yair Lapid and National Unity Party head Benny Gantz, as was reported by Fox News.

In a highly insightful analysis of the issue that threatens to polarize Israeli society, veteran journalist Lauren Marcus writes in a piece that recently appeared on the World Israel News web site that. “The unprecedented push to stop the judicial reform has been framed as a fight against dictatorship and necessary for maintaining Israel’s status as a democracy. But the truth is there’s much more at play here that the left won’t admit.”

She adds: “As of 2023, it’s impossible to see the Israeli left ever again experiencing a sweeping electoral victory. While a left-of-center party could theoretically join a broad coalition in the future, they’d likely be confined to the fringes of the government and unable to enact legislation that advances their agenda.

Strikingly, 73 percent of Israeli Jews between the ages of 18 and 24 identify as right-wingers, and 75 percent of those between 25 and 34 categorize themselves as right-wing.

Those numbers shrink according to older age brackets, with only 46 percent of Jewish voters over the age of 65 identifying as right-wing.

There are numerous reasons for this development. Religious people, who overwhelmingly vote for right-wing parties, have more children than left-wing families. On average, ultra-Orthodox women have 6.7 children, while secular Jewish women typically have 3.

Another reason for the tendency for older voters to be more left-wing could be their memories of the 1994 Oslo Accords and the sense that peace with the Palestinians was on the horizon.

They may still be clinging to that hope, whereas most voters under the age of 30 are too young to remember that time period and have accepted the intractable and bloody nature of the conflict as an inevitable reality. Additionally, tens of thousands of highly educated Israelis, who tend to be more liberal on average, and those working in creative professions, who also tend to lean left, have emigrated in recent years.”

(Sources: FoxNews.com, AP.com, NYT.com, AlJazeera.com, worldisraelnews.com)