Benjamin Netanyahu’s plans were suspended last month in the face of a wave of strikes and mass demonstrations. The latest protests against them come as Israelis are to mark both Israel’s Independence Day and Israel’s Memorial Day, which commemorates those killed in Israel’s wars and terrorist attacks.
“My father was killed in the Yom Kippur War,” photographer Miri Pinchuk, 53, told Reuters. “He gave his life for this country, because he was also raised with the belief that it will be a democracy.”
The proposals would give the government effective control over the appointment of Supreme Court judges and allow parliament to overturn many court decisions. They caused one of the biggest internal crises in Israel’s recent history.
The government accuses activist judges of increasingly usurping the role of parliament and says the overhaul is needed to restore balance between the judiciary and elected politicians.
Critics say it will remove the vital checks and balances that underpin a democratic state and give unchecked power to the government.
“There is this sentence from the Bible, from the lamentation of David, which says “How did the heroes fall?”. And, in fact, the question now turns, instead of ‘How did the heroes fall?’ into ‘For what?'”, 63-year-old lawyer David Gilat told Reuters.
An opinion poll published Friday by Israeli public television found the plans deeply unpopular, with 53 percent of respondents believing the plans would harm the country. In addition, 60% of Israelis said that the government does not represent them, and 48% believe that the situation in the country will continue to worsen.
In central Tel Aviv, for the 16th consecutive week, crowds gathered Saturday in defiance of plans they see as an existential threat to Israeli democracy. They waved the blue and white Israeli flags that have become a hallmark of the protests over the past three months.
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