The protest movement against the far-right government’s judicial overhaul will hold a massive effort aimed at blocking the coalition from passing its first law in the fascist legislative package, with a series of events scheduled for Saturday and Sunday. A mass march from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem will reach the Knesset on Saturday after several days on the road that saw the procession’s numbers swell to 20,000.
Large demonstrations are also set to take place outside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s official residence in Jerusalem on Saturday night starting at 7:15 p.m. Protests are scheduled in other cities around the country on Saturday starting at 6 p.m., including Tel-Aviv, Haifa, Rehovot, Bat Yam, Kfar Saba, Ramat Gan, Herzliya and Beersheba.
“Our struggle is against occupation”. Thousands of Anti-Occupation Bloc members, among them Hadash and Communist Party activists, gathered on Kaplan Street in central Tel Aviv on Saturday evening, July 15, 2023, to rally against the far-right government (Photo: Anti-Occupation Bloc)
A spokesperson for the protest movement said it was expected that the Jerusalem protest will be the main focus — rallies in Tel Aviv on Saturdays have been the main weekly event for the protest movement, which has raged since the government unveiled its judicial overhaul package in January.
In addition, the head of leading universities were set to strike on Sunday. “We believe that the completion of the procedure to curtail the reasonableness legislation in the second and third readings in the Knesset is a dangerous and destructive move for the Israeli academy and the entire State of Israel,” the university presidents said in a statement. The action will be taken by the presidents of Tel Aviv University, Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, Ben Gurion University in Beersheba, Bar Ilan University, Haifa University, the Technion, the Weizmann Institute and the Open University.
Alongside the street protests, more than 1,141 Air Force reservists issued a letter Friday announcing that they will suspend their volunteer reserve duty in protest of the government’s plans to overhaul the judicial system. Among the signatories are 235 fighter pilots, 98 transport pilots, 89 helicopter pilots, 91 pilots serving in the flight school and 165 elite Air Force commandos.
On Saturday, approximately 300 reserve officers from the IDF Intelligence Unit 8200 sent a letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, the IDF Chief of Staff, and members of the Knesset, urging them to halt the legislation to abolishing the reasonableness standard, and instead seek a broad consensus. They wrote, “stop and reconsider the unilateral legislation, it will change the nature of the State of Israel and violate the fundamental contract between the state and its citizens and servants.”
The reservists’ announcement — unprecedented in scale and in terms of the centrality to the Israeli army of the signatories — was the latest to send shockwaves through the army, which is struggling to stem a growing flood of reserve troops dropping out of volunteer duty to protest the overhaul, as defense officials warned “the phenomenon could affect national military preparedness.”
Related: https://maki.org.il/en/?p=31129
