Judicial reform protests continue for 35th straight week, but subdued after violent Eritrean riots

Anti-government and judicial reform protests took place in smaller numbers on Saturday evening following the violent Eritrean riots in south Tel Aviv. Hebrew media reported “thousands of protesters,” in comparison to previous reports claiming protests numbering upwards of 100,000. 

One protest leader, Shikma Bresler, blamed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the violent migrant riots. 

"I want to thank the policemen who today found themselves again paying a heavy price for the negligence of the Netanyahu government,” Bresler said.

“There is someone responsible for the chaos that was in Tel Aviv today. In 2018, there was an agreement that could have returned most of the Eritreans to their country and Netanyahu withdrew from the agreement because of racist Kahanists.” 

In 2018, Netanyahu’s government reached an agreement with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) regarding the nearly 35,000 Eritrean and Sudanese refugees in Israel. The agreement would have seen the removal of around half of the refugees to other nations willing to receive them.

However, just hours after signing the agreement, Netanyahu backed out under pressure from ultra-Orthodox coalition partners who wanted all the refugees deported immediately. 

Saturday night’s protests lacked a clear focus on the judicial reforms compared to events earlier in the year. 

Last week’s protests focused largely on women’s issues and criminal violence in Israel's Arab community. 

This week, the focus turned toward education. The school year began as scheduled on Friday, Sept. 1, after a disagreement between the Ministry of Education and the Teachers’ Union was settled at the last moment. 

While the issue of teacher salaries was settled in the agreement, protesters decried plans by Education Minister Yoav Kisch to replace Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum Director Dani Dayan. 

Protesters held banners that read, “No dictatorship in our schools.” 

With the judicial reforms on pause until the High Court hearings later this month on the Reasonableness Standard Bill and the Incapacitation Law, weekly protests have seen lower numbers of participants and attempts by smaller groups to air grievances not directly related to the reforms. 

Prof. Tamar Hermann, a senior research fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, said, “The protest leaders know their strength is not in the purity of ideology, but the strength to bring in large numbers.” 

Some groups have pushed for regular focus on issues such as a universal draft, some for a greater focus on inequality between Jewish and Arab citizens, while others are calling for attention about women’s rights issues or LGBTQ status. 

Besides the issue of different ideological interests, there are debates about protest tactics among the demonstrators, with some groups preferring more aggressive, confrontational tactics, such as the attempt to close Ben-Gurion International Airport in July. 

That effort was led by the Kaplan Force, a protest group which favors aggressive techniques such as blocking the Ayalon Highway in Tel Aviv or chaining themselves to turnstiles and rail cars at the newly inaugurated Tel Aviv light rail system.

Other protest groups are wary of offending the middle class, which has proven to be the main source of the protest movement's large turnout.

The High Court hearings, scheduled to begin next week, could bring the focus of the protest movement back on the reforms, or it may cause fracturing as groups begin to insist their special interests be brought to the forefront.