The focus of opposition is the proposed judicial reforms. The protests are also fueled, however, by fear of the nationalist and religious ultras in the governing coalition and by hatred of Netanyahu, who for some people has achieved near-demonic status.
Significant as these factors are, a convulsion of this magnitude suggests that something even more fundamental is at play. What is striking about the protests is the irrationality at their core. Although there are legitimate concerns about aspects of the reform package, the overwrought opposition to it is out of all proportion.
The protesters claim, for example, that giving politicians a decisive role in selecting new judges, as is being proposed, will destroy the rule of law and an independent judiciary.
They say the changes, which would stop the courts from overturning laws made by the Knesset, end the power of legal advisers to prevent government ministers from enacting the policy programs for which they were elected and end the slippery concept of "reasonableness" through which the judges have substituted politics and ideology for law, would herald the end of democracy and the abolition of civil rights. READ MORE
