Jerusalem, Mar 18 (EFE).- Between banners and torches, the streets of Israel were filled again this Saturday for the eleventh consecutive week by massive protest marches against the Government of Benjamin Netanyahu and the judicial reform that he is promoting, despite the deep polarization that it has caused.
With Tel Aviv as the epicenter, the demonstrations brought together tens of thousands of people and took place in more than a hundred points in the country, as has become the custom since the reform was announced in January by Yariv Levin, Minister of Justice and a close ally. of Netanyahu.
“Levin, enemy of the nation,” reads a graffiti that appeared this week on the wall of the minister’s house.
Fearing that the reform would undermine democracy and the independence of the judiciary in Israel, protesters brandished flags and banners on Saturday as authorities tried to prevent the blockade of roads with metal fences and the deployment of mounted police and water tanks.
Women dressed in red robes marched in defense of gender equality, while members of the LGTBQ+ collective clamored for their rights waving pink-hued Israeli flags.
“This is home for all of us” and “Equal rights and democracy for all of us,” read banners carried by Bedouin Israelis in the town of Hura.
The reform, which abolishes the Supreme Court’s ability to review and annul unconstitutional laws and gives the Executive full control over the appointment of judges, is still in Parliament and could be approved by the end of March.
Netanyahu insists on the relevance of his reform despite the strong rejection that it has aroused in very diverse sectors of society -from intellectuals, scientists and high-tech businessmen, to soldiers, bankers and students- and even despite the questioning of the community international.
The prime minister ipso facto ruled out an alternative, less radical reform proposed this week by President Isaac Herzog in an attempt to lessen the country’s deep polarization and avoid a “civil war.”
Opposition leaders, by contrast, have backed Herzog’s plan, saying it is feasible if not ideal.
In the midst of the largest protest movement in Israel in recent years, whose marches have brought together half a million people in a single day, Netanyahu has called the protesters “anarchists” and his son compared them to the paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party.
“What did we have in Germany in the 1930s? Hired thugs who sowed political terror in the streets. No assassination but (…) they created chaos and their party rose up undemocratically,” Yair Netanyahu told Israeli radio on Friday.
By this Sunday, hundreds of elite Israeli Army reservists are expected to go on strike in protest of the reform
On the other hand, this same Saturday protests also broke out in Kfar Uriah, a town in central Israel, where the Minister of National Security, the ultranationalist Itamar Ben Gvir, spent the sabbath.
Protesters, protesting mainly the killing of an Israeli woman by her husband on Friday, clashed with police and residents who hurled stones and insults at them.
Banners were seen throughout the march calling Ben Gvir, who has multiple prior convictions for supporting a Jewish terror group and incitement to racism, a “criminal minister.”