Mass Protests, Including Netanyahu Relatives, Former Aides, Continue in Israel

April 2, 2023, 2022 (EIRNS)—If Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thought he would get some respite from the mass protests against his judicial reform with the “pause” that he announced on March 27, he was deluding himself. The Jerusalem Post reported April 2 that 450,000 Israelis were in the streets the previous night, including 175,000 in Tel Aviv. “Netanyahu’s attempt to put the protesters to sleep failed,” the Umbrella Movement of Resistance against Dictatorship in Israel said. “Over 445,000 pro-democracy demonstrators took to the streets of Israel tonight, in one of the largest demonstrations in Israeli history. We will continue to be in the streets until we guarantee that the State of Israel is a democracy.”

Netanyahu’s cousin and the son of the late Chief Justice Shoshana Netanyahu, Professor Nathan Netanyahu, was set to speak at the Tel Aviv protests, as was former media advisor to the prime minister, Yossi Levy. Also spotted at the Tel Aviv rally was Yoav Horowitz, a former chief of staff to Netanyahu and former director-general of the Prime Minister’s Office. Horowitz was a longtime close confidant of Netanyahu, and the two served together in the Israel Defense Forces elite unit Sayeret Matkal. He was the prime minister’s chief of staff from 2016 to 2019 and was PMO director-general from May 2018, until he informed Netanyahu he would resign in June 2019.

There were also pro-reform counter-demonstrations but they seemed to number in the hundreds, not hundreds of thousands.