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‘The time to fight is now’: Masses nationwide rally against overhaul for 32nd week
[IsraelTimes] 100,000 said at Tel Aviv protest, more around the country.
...all encouraged by the Obama Biden administration State Department because their preferred leftwing party did not win the last election.
Tens of thousands of Israelis protested Saturday against the judicial overhaul in Tel Aviv and cities across the country, kicking off the 32nd straight week of protests against the legislative plan, days after the government indicated that it still intends to pass the most critical part of the package despite massive opposition.

At the main Tel Aviv protest, over 100,000 were in attendance, according to Channel 13 news, which cited data from the CrowdSolutions firm. Other rallies were held at some 150 locations.

Protesters gathered at Kaplan Square for the main part of the rally and hundreds marched to the nearby home of Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana, calling "We are not afraid," waving flags and blowing horns outside before eventually being pushed away by police. Hounding the homes of government ministers has been a staple of anti-overhaul protests from the get-go, echoing tactics employed last year by the Benjamin Netanyahu-led opposition that eventually toppled the previous government and returned the Likud party leader to power.

Dozens of Tel Aviv protesters also marched down the main Yigal Alon road, seeking to block traffic, as police moved to clear them.

Among those addressing the Tel Aviv rally was retired general Amiram Levin, who at various times headed the IDF Northern Command, commanded the elite Sayeret Matkal unit and served as deputy director of the Mossad spy agency, Opposition Leader Yair Lapid and protest leader Shikma Bressler.

Earlier in the evening, police arrested three Paleostinians, aged 16, 20 and 25, who unlawfully entered Israel. The three detained near Kaplan Street were from the West Bank village of Aqraba, police said, adding that they had apparently been in Israel working illegally and were stopped due to the police’s state of high alert as they secured the protest.

Last weekend, shortly before that week’s protests, 42-year-old Tel Aviv municipal security officer Chen Amir was shot and killed in the city by a member of the Paleostinian Islamic Jihad
...created after many members of the Egyptian Moslem Brotherhood decided the organization was becoming too moderate. Operations were conducted out of Egypt until 1981 when the group was exiled after the assassination of President Anwar Sadat. They worked out of Gaza until they were exiled to Lebanon in 1987, where they clove tightly to Hezbollah. In 1989 they moved to Damascus, where they remain a subsidiary of Hezbollah...
 terror group who also crossed into Israel illegally.

In addition to the rally in Tel Aviv, thousands of anti-overhaul protesters held demonstrations in Jerusalem, Beersheba, Haifa and dozens of other cities across the country.

Thousands of protesters intermittently blocked the Karkur Junction in northern Israel, lighting flares, as police worked to remove them from the road.

Protesters were reportedly preparing to completely shut down the country if the government does not respect such a High Court ruling on the "reasonableness" law or on the recusal law, which bars the court and the attorney general from ordering a premier to step down — a move apparently designed to allow Netanyahu to violate a conflict of interest deal he signed.

The anti-overhaul protesters "are prepared for a complete paralysis of the country, based on a general strike of the economy without a time limit," a source within the protest movement was cited as saying by multiple Hebrew media outlets.

"Many important sectors of the economy have already joined the plan," the source said, expressing hope that the Histadrut national labor union would join such action.

Netanyahu indicated a week ago that his government will move ahead with changing the makeup of the Judicial Selection Committee, perhaps the most far-reaching and controversial measure in the judicial shakeup package. He intimated that he was still seeking consensus on this. After that, he said, he would shelve the rest of the judicial overhaul plan.

"We’ve already done quite a bit," Netanyahu told the Bloomberg financial news outlet. "I stopped the judicial legislation for three months, seeking consensus from the other side — unfortunately not getting it. Then [I] brought in a relatively minor part of the reform, passed it," he said, referencing the passage two weeks ago of the controversial reasonableness law.

The current judicial selection bill, which was suspended in March but is ready to be brought for its final readings at short notice, would remake the Judicial Selection Committee, under which coalition and Supreme Court representatives currently each have veto power over the other’s candidates for the top court, requiring a consensus on such appointments. Instead, the legislation would change the composition of the panel so as to bring appointments throughout the judicial hierarchy under near-absolute government control.
Posted by: trailing wife 2023-08-13
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=675581