Israel protests: Half a million Israelis take to streets against judicial overhaul
Jerusalem (CNN) Half a million Israelis took to the streets for the tenth straight week in protests against Benjamin Netanyahu’s government’s plans to overhaul the country’s judicial system, organizers claimed.
Israel has a population of just over 9 million, so if the organizers’ estimates are correct, about 5% of Israelis came out to voice their opposition to the proposed reforms.
Almost half of the protesters — about 240,000 — gathered in Tel Aviv, organizers said. In Jerusalem, several hundred demonstrators gathered in front of President Isaac Herzog’s house. They carried Israeli flags and chanted slogans like “Israel will not be a dictatorship.”
On Thursday, Herzog — whose role is largely ceremonial — called on the Netanyahu government to take judicial review legislation off the table.
Protesters and critics of Netanyahu’s plan say it would weaken the country’s courts and undermine the judiciary’s ability to control the power of the country’s other branches of government.
The legislative package would give Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, the power to overturn Supreme Court decisions by a simple majority. It would also give the government the power to appoint judges, currently vested in a committee made up of magistrates, legal experts and politicians. It would strip the ministries’ legal advisers of their power and independence and remove the courts’ power to invalidate “inappropriate” government appointments, as the Supreme Court did in January, forcing Netanyahu to sack Interior and Health Minister Aryeh Deri.
Critics accuse Netanyahu of pushing legislation to get out of the corruption trials he is currently facing. Netanyahu denies this, saying the trials are collapsing on their own and that the changes are necessary after judicial overreach by unelected judges.
Israel does not have a written constitution, but a set of so-called basic laws.
“We’re tired of being polite,” said Shikma Bressler, an Israeli protest leader. “If the proposed laws are passed, Israel will no longer be a democracy.”
About two in three (66%) Israelis think the Supreme Court should have the power to overrule laws that are inconsistent with Israel’s constitution, and about the same proportion (63%) say they reject the current system of Supporting the appointment of judges, according to a poll last month for the Israel Democracy Institute.
“The only thing this government cares about is crushing Israeli democracy,” said opposition leader and former Prime Minister Yair Lapid.
CNN’s Michael Schwartz and Matthias Somm contributed to this report