Israel is experiencing the largest protests in its history with half a million participants

About half a million Israelis protested last Saturday across Israel, “The biggest protest in the country’s history”, according to civil society organizations calling for demonstrations against the new government of Benjamin Netanyahu. “Around half a million men and women came to protest the coup last night, at a central rally in Tel Aviv and elsewhere across Israel. It is the biggest protest in the history of the State of Israel,” the organizing groups announced yesterday.

For weeks now, the police have not given estimates on the number of participants in these protests that would allow us to compare the data of the organizers, which are usually confirmed by the Israeli media.

For ten consecutive weeks, Black Flag groups, or the Movement for Good Government in Israel, have gathered hundreds of thousands of Israelis in the country’s capitals, with Tel Aviv as the epicenter, to they are protesting against the judicial reform promoted by the new government of Benjamin NetanyahuWide sectors of Israeli society, not only the left but also the liberal center, see this reform as a threat to democracy, since enables broad executive control over the judiciaryby being able to elect judges, with a “nullification clause” that would allow Parliament to overturn Supreme Court rulings.

Organizers counted a record 240,000 protesters in Tel Aviv alone – before peaking at 160,000 – and 55,000 in Haifa, the country’s third-largest city in northern Israel.

Pressure on the streets has increased as judicial reform bills progress through the Knesset (Israel’s parliament) and several of its most controversial aspects are expected to be approved this week, such as the nullification clause.