West News Wire: A reform proposal made by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right cabinet, which aims to alter the regime’s legal system and undermine the supreme court, has been met with thousands of protests outside the Israeli parliament and elsewhere in the occupied territories.
The masses in the Israeli-occupied city of al-Quds extended past the supreme court building and all the way down Yoel Zusman Street, past the Israeli parliament.
According to Israel’s Channel 12 news network, as convoys of trucks carrying thousands more protesters continued to arrive at the protest site, the main entryways into al-Quds were shut down.
The opposition’s leader, Yair Lapid, declared, “We will not be silent,” adding, “We will not remain silent as they demolish all that is essential to us.”
Thousands more have rallied in other cities and towns around the Israeli-occupied territories.
Parents and students also held a massive protest in the coastal city of Tel Aviv, chanting slogans against the move proposed by Netanyahu’s far-right cabinet. Police closed several roads in northern Tel Aviv as protesters marched in the streets.
Dozens of protesters blocked the entrance to Ben Gurion Airport.
In another rally in Tel Aviv, several demonstrators from a group called Stop the Coup blocked the entrance to the home of Yitzhak Wasserlauf, who is one of Netanyahu’s ministers from Otzma Yehudit far-right political party.
The group issued a statement, denouncing the steps taken by the prime minister’s extremist cabinet, and vowing to take all peaceful steps to stop the ‘judicial reforms plan.’
Hundreds of tech startups, law firms, and other private sector companies allowed their employees to take part in the massive protests, while thousands of doctors and mental health professionals were also expected to join.
Among the almost 300 tech companies and venture capital funds that have expressed support for their workers to join the civil strike are Payoneer, Pitango, Kaltura, Lemonade, Riskified, Wiz, Fireblocks, Appsflyer, Similarweb, IronSource, Natural Intelligence, Plantish, TLV Partners, Econcrete, Team8, Ultrasight, Algosec, Qumra Capital, Vertex Ventures, and Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP).
Leaders of the Monday protest by tech companies said they hoped to “send a message, loud and clear” that they are opposed to legal changes, emphasizing their crucial role in the regime’s economy.
This came after Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, issued a rare plea for deliberation and compromise on the plan late on Sunday, warning that Israel was “on the verge of legal and social collapse.”
Herzog, who holds a largely ceremonial role, urged Netanyahu’s right-wing administration to stop the legislative process and hold talks with the opposition in hopes of reaching a compromise.
Meanwhile, a former head of the regime’s Mossad spy agency, Tamir Pardo, has warned that the controversial ‘judicial reform’ plan would turn Israel into “a place that I wouldn’t want to live in.”
Since Netanyahu made the decision to restructure the judiciary, demonstrations have occurred all over the occupied territories.
The legal modifications, according to critics, impair parliamentary and cabinet supervision and endanger judges’ independence. Additionally, they claim that the initiative will weaken minorities’ rights and facilitate further corruption.
Politicians from Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party have long charged that leftist judges predominate on the Israeli Supreme Court. They assert that the judges interfere in matters outside of their purview due to political motives.
Israeli high-tech industry representatives wrote an open letter to Netanyahu in December urging him not to “make common cause with extremists,” such as the far-right minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and the far-right politician Bezalel Smotrich.
