The ambitious nature of the protest movement in Israel appears to have stunned Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet. In announcing a sweeping package within a week of its swearing-in, the government unwittingly managed to unify a fragmented opposition.
Moments after Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Prime Minister, fired his defense minister, Yoav Gallant, on Sunday night, a message circulated on Israeli WhatsApp. “The dictatorship is here. We must not remain apathetic.” Each week for the past twelve weeks, Israelis of different backgrounds and persuasions had taken to the streets to protest against the government’s plan tothe country’s judiciary.
With the legislative committee pushing ahead, another call went through the messaging services: shuttle buses were leaving that morning from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem for a demonstration in front of the Knesset. The ride—free of charge—was sponsored by Israel’s high-tech sector, which has issued some of the direst warnings against the proposed legislation and its projected damage to the economy.
Yet to speak of the protesters as a monolith is misleading, as anyone who has attended one of the demonstrations can attest. There is no single leader to the protest movement, which is its greatest strength and also a potential weakness. When Isaac Herzog, the Israeli President, presented his version of a judicial-reform compromise earlier this month, it was unclear who in the opposition had the mandate to accept it.
“When ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ came out, it seemed totally fictional and detached from reality, but now I look at these things like a manual on what’s to come here,” Merav Cohen Mor, an organizer of the handmaid protest, told me. If the standing of the Supreme Court is compromised, she asked, who will guarantee the protection of women? “People talk about minority protections, and of course that’s important. But we’re not even a minority!” she said.
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