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Netanyahu’s Judicial Overhaul Sparks Huge Protests in Israel [1]

['Patrick Kingsley', 'Isabel Kershner']

Date: 2023-02-13

They came by bus from Haifa, train from Tel Aviv and car from the occupied Golan Heights. They carried Israeli flags, megaphones and homemade banners. And they were chanting for democracy, freedom and judicial independence.

Roughly 100,000 protesters from across Israel filled the streets outside Parliament in Jerusalem on Monday in one of the biggest-ever demonstrations in the city, as a battle over the future of the country’s judiciary — perceived by many as a fight for the soul of Israel’s democracy — grew more fraught and fractious.

The demonstrators gathered to oppose a sweeping judicial overhaul proposed by Israel’s new government — the most right-wing and religiously conservative in the country’s history — that has bitterly divided Israelis, and has even led to fears of civil war.

The demonstration followed a dramatic televised speech on Sunday night by Israel’s mainly ceremonial president, Isaac Herzog, in which he called for compromise and warned that the crisis had left the country “on the brink of constitutional and social collapse,” and possibly “a violent clash.”

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[1] Url: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/13/world/middleeast/israel-judicial-protests-netanyahu.html

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