'Step up the pressure': Demonstrators prepare for 11th week of escalating protests
Tel Aviv anti-overhaul rally to kick off with national anthem sung by teen girl whose performance was nixed over ultra-Orthodox man in audience; ex-Bank of Israel chief to speak
By TOI STAFF Times of Israel
Today, 8:12 amUpdated at 1:36 pm 3/18/22
The escalating mass protests against the government’s efforts to hamstring the judiciary are set to continue on Saturday night with rallies planned for Tel Aviv and dozens of other locations around the country.
The demonstrations will mark the 11th consecutive weekend protest since Justice Minister Yariv Levin announced the plan to strip power from the country’s courts to the benefit of the ruling coalition, setting off a fierce backlash from opponents who believe the move will fundamentally alter Israel’s democratic system by removing the only real check on unfettered majority rule.
Recent weeks have seen the rallies swell as the government plowed ahead with the legislation, including this week, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other ministers immediately slapped down President Isaac Herzog’s proposal for an alternative judicial reform. Opposition leaders, however, have rallied behind the president’s plan, calling the proposal workable but not ideal.
In his announcement, Herzog warned that the country was teetering at the edge of an abyss and risked descending into civil war… In addition to the public protests, IDF reservists have increasingly expressed doubt about their continued service, or said they will stop showing up, due to the government’s plans.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/step-up-the-pressure-demonstrators-prepare-for-11th-week-of-escalating-protests/
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By TOI STAFF
18 March 2023
Hundreds of thousands of Israelis participated in nationwide demonstrations held for the 11th straight Saturday evening against the government’s plans to shackle the judiciary, which were marked by numerous acts of violence against protesters.
Protest organizers vowed to escalate demonstrations if the coalition doesn’t halt its legislative proposals, which lawmakers are due to advance next week, declaring this coming Thursday a “national day of paralysis.”
“Next week Israel’s government intends to pass the dictatorship and religious coercion law,” protest organizers said in a statement Saturday.
“Hundreds of people will line up against them like an iron wall and back the High Court and heads of the [judicial] system to stop the coup. Every citizen must come out and take a stand in these fateful moments of the State of Israel. Together, hundreds of thousands will save Israeli democracy,” they added.
Over 260,000 people demonstrated across the country, including 175,000 in Tel Aviv, 20,000 in Haifa, 4,000 in Netanya, 11,500 in Herzliya, 18,000 in Kfar Saba, and 6,000 in Beersheba, according to a count by company Crowd Solution cited by Channel 13 news.
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Dan Halutz, a former IDF chief of staff, told protesters in Haifa that ultra-Orthodox Israelis “should begin to learn core studies because F-16 fighter jets are only in English,” in a dig at the community’s broad refusal to serve in the military and the rejection of teaching core subjects at some Haredi schools.
The ex-military chief encouraged demonstrators to bring more people to the protests, calling the struggle against the government’s judicial overhaul a “war of liberation for the State of Israel.”
“And just like we won in the Independence War, you will win in the second war of liberation,” he said...
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Several right-wing activists, some of them masked, were seen physically confronting protesters in Tel Aviv.
Footage published by a Haaretz reporter showed police officers pushing one of the masked men away from the crowd.
Right-wing counter-protesters in the city, supporting the government’s proposed changes, held up signs reading “leftists are traitors.”.....
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In an apparent first, a number of Bedouin Israelis protested against the government’s plans at the Hura junction in southern Israel.
Standing alongside several Jewish Israelis, the group held signs reading “This is the home of all of us” and “Equal rights and democracy for all of us.”
Protest organizers responded to the violence against demonstrators, claiming it was a direct result of “incitement from the Netanyahu home.”
“When the son of the prime minister calls demonstrators Nazis, this is what happens. The police need to arrest him this evening,” organizers said, referring to remarks by Yair Netanyahu comparing protesters to the Nazi Sturmabteilung paramilitary, or SA.
and on and on @
https://www.timesofisrael.com/hundreds-of-thousands-rally-against-overhaul-rise-in-violence-against-protesters/