Protests For, Against Judicial Reform Sweep Israel as Knesset Prepares to Vote

JERUSALEM, Israel – Thousands of Israelis marched on Jerusalem over the weekend, protesting the government’s judicial reform legislation. 

Supporters of the reform bill also gathered in Tel Aviv to stand with the coaltion.

A Knesset vote on one part of judicial reform is expected Monday, the next step in Israel’s ongoing domestic crisis. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was hospitalized this weekend for an implant of a pacemaker, is expected to return to the Knesset for the vote.

The opposition maintains the judicial reform proposal will weaken the Supreme Court and open a path to dictatorship. Israeli author and globalist advisor to world leaders, Yuval Noah Harari, described the following scenario:

“With the Supreme Court neutralized, the government could easily rig the elections, for example, by denying Arab citizens voting rights or by closing down all independent media outlets. Israel will still hold elections, just as Russia holds elections, but it will become a dictatorship.” 

Yet supporters of the legislation say it reins in a runaway Supreme Court.

Itzik Ben Yeshua came to the pro-reform rally to support the Netanyahu government.

He said, “I came here to support democracy. Democracy means the rule of the government elected by the people and agreed by the people, and not a regime in which the Supreme Court takes rights that it doesn’t have.”

Ohad Tal, a member of the Netanyahu coalition, told CBN News he believes the legislation actually strengthens democracy by re-balancing Israel’s government.. 

 “Of course you have to have a strong court, but no one doubts that. But the question is, who’s going to make the policies of the country? Is it going to be a small group of people or is it going to be the people, by their representatives?” 

Tal says many opposition members quietly favor judicial reform and their past actions prove it. 

“I know what people are saying in closed rooms from the opposition,” he explained. “Many people are agreeing that we need to have this reform.  And you don’t have to trust me about that. You just have to read the bills that many of the opposition members of today put on the table in just the past few years – which proves that they are supporting exactly what we are trying to promote today.”

The protests began more than 7 months ago, but some believe the goals are more than just thwarting legislation on judicial reform.   

Israel’s Public Diplomacy Minister Galit Distel Arbaryan tweeted that former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, a major protest leader, aims to overthrow the government.

Earlier this year in an address at London’s Chatham House, Barak cited research examining protests over 100 years, and how those protests succeeded.

“They found a common denominator, all these protests which succeeded,” Barak said, “Where they watched a level of 3.5 percent of the general population. Tenaciously, persistly, keeping the protests, boycotts, civil disobedience, and so on. At the end, the government(s) either fall or capitulate.”  

Monday’s vote concerns Knesset action to eliminate the “reasonableness” clause, a Supreme Court chief justice’s decision several decades ago that the high court is allowed to strike down a law passed by the Knesset if they decide that law is, in their view,  “unreasonable.”