At one of Israel’s largest right-wing demonstrations this year, thousands cheered as a man in a “Bugs Bunny” costume blew kisses from a podium outside the Supreme Court in Jerusalem on Thursday night.
The surreal moment, one of several at and around the protest, mocked prosecutors in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s corruption trial (he’s accused of accepting gifts illicitly, including a “Bugs Bunny” puppet for his son from a billionaire in 1999).
The cartoon tribute underscored the prevailing sentiment at the rally: Growing frustration among conservatives who believe the judiciary and bureaucracy are abusing their power to block the elected right-wing government from governing.
After the “Bugs Bunny” act, especially popular with the many children present, Israel Ganz, head of the Yesha Council, delivered a fiery speech: “You voted right-wing, so they took the prime minister to court to oust him. You want the hostages back? You want victory? Speak up.”
Israeli Justice Minister Yariv Levin told the crowd, “There will be comprehensive judicial reform. You hear that over at the Supreme Court? You will not stop us!”
Levin spearheaded the reform campaign that helped Netanyahu’s Likud-led coalition win the November 2022 election, but was paused after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks. In January 2024, the Supreme Court struck down a key element of the reform: A law that limited judicial review based on the subjective standard of “reasonableness.”
Since then, Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara and the court have taken a more aggressive stance. They cited conflict-of-interest concerns to bar Netanyahu from replacing Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar, who now plans to step down on June 15. Netanyahu vowed to defy the ruling by appointing Maj. Gen. David Zini to the post.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s national security minister, also spoke at the rally, calling on Baharav-Miara to resign ahead of government-led efforts to fire her.
Leaders of the protest movement against the government allege it is illegitimate because of Netanyahu’s trial, among other reasons. They argue for vigorous judicial action to curb what they call an attempt by Netanyahu’s government to subdue the judiciary and erode democratic principles through the reform.
Thousands of anti-government demonstrators gathered in Tel Aviv on Thursday evening, where protest leader Shikma Bresler said the government was “trampling on the rulings of the Supreme Court and the law in an attempt to illegally oust the attorney general.”
The right-wing rally in Jerusalem also coincided with that city’s Gay Pride Parade. At Jerusalem’s main train station, the crowds from both rallies mixed and formed unusual juxtapositions. In an elevator, a group of scantily dressed women with pride flags and metal-studded dog collars stood next to several religious men holding banners calling for the Jewish Temple to be rebuilt on the Temple Mount.
Ben-Gvir told the audience in Jerusalem that the “Deep State has decided that the prime minister has no authority to appoint the head of the Shin Bet,” adding, “They’re spitting on us and our entire public. We must not let them.”
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich delivered a similar message and addressed the Netanyahu government’s current crisis: He called on Haredi politicians not to topple it over their insistence on an exemption from military service for young men from their communities.
Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli followed Smotrich’s speech, calling the protest “one of the most important right-wing gatherings in years.”
Brig. Gen. (res.) Danny Van Biran, a former chief reserves officer of the Israel Defense Forces, accused the anti-government protest movement of “opening up Israel to attack” on Oct. 7, 2023, by encouraging reservists to decline to serve. On that day, an estimated 6,000 Gazan terrorists invaded Israel, murdering some 1,200 people and abducting another 251, triggering a regional war.
Shortly before the speech by Van Biran, founder of the Nikraim Ladegel (“Called to the Flag”) nonprofit for national unity, air-raid sirens blared due to a missile launch from Yemen. The alarms wailed as Rabbi Eliyav Turgeman, a major in the reserves and head of the Community Rabbis’ Union, sang an impassioned Psalm for the release of the hostages in Gaza; victory and safe return for Israeli troops; and the whole People of Israel.
The audience, mostly Modern Orthodox-Zionist protesters, enthusiastically repeated Turgeman’s rendition of Psalm 118, a plea for divine rescue. Turgeman, a tenor, then sang “Tamid Ohev Oti” (“Always Loves Me”), an upbeat pop song about divine providence that has become an unofficial anthem of the Swords of Iron war among right-wingers, celebrating faith and optimism despite adversity.
A police officer used the amplification system to instruct the crowd “not to panic” and to “lie down on the ground with your hands over your heads.” Few did so.
Ayelet Keene, a 56-year-old woman from Haifa, was among the few Haredim at the rally.
“It’s about who governs and by what right, and I can no longer just sit and watch the left reign without mandate,” Keene told JNS during a five-hour bus ride from Haifa to Israel’s congested capital city. The bus was one of dozens that the Zionist nonprofits Im Tirzu and the Gevurah Forum helped subsidize for participants.
Many of the protesters on the bus had deeper issues to protest than simply judicial overreach. Some of them described the current political clash as part of a broader societal divide between a predominantly Ashkenazi elite with secularist tendencies and an outsized hold on power, and an disenfranchised Sephardic class with religious and traditional worldviews.
“My father had to switch jobs four times because he didn’t have a red notebook. I know what our overlords can do to those who don’t toe their line. But those days are over!” said Yochi Shmueli, one protester who came with her son Oded to the rally from Haifa. It was a reference to membership in Mapai, the party of Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, which later became Labor.
The protesters on the bus spanned the gamut of Israel’s conservative sphere, ranging from Haredim like Keene, a former United Torah Judaism voter who supports the current governing coalition, to activists for the secularist Yisrael Beiteinu opposition party of Avigdor Liberman.
Passengers discussed how the political schism is affecting their families. Oded said he has an unpleasant, heated political argument every Friday night with his in-laws. Another woman said she regularly fights with her left-leaning husband over politics.
Netanyahu, who sent a short video clip to be played at the rally thanking the protesters for coming, had released an earlier video on social media urging people to show up to the event. It was “important for democracy, meaning the people’s right to decide, not the bureaucracy, not the attorney general,” he said.
Yaffa Belleli, an organizer of the rally from the Haifa suburb of Nesher, said the prime minister’s video did not boost attendance in her city. She was disappointed that only 30 people from Nesher signed up for the bus ride and added that she worried about voter apathy in the next election.
“The danger is that right-wingers would become indifferent if they see that their governments can’t rule. It demotivates them to vote. Which is why this rally is so important,” Belleli, an English teacher and grandmother to three, told JNS.