• Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet introduced a contentious judiciary overhaul law.
• The reforms also aim to overhaul the way judges are chosen.
• Demonstrators in Jerusalem transformed the streets into a sea of Israeli flags.

Protesters stopped roadways in cities around Israel on Monday as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu‘s cabinet introduced a contentious judiciary overhaul law.

Demonstrators in Jerusalem transformed the streets around the Supreme Court and Knesset into a sea of Israeli flags, which organizers were handing out even before the event started.

A few dozen women wearing in long red robes and white head coverings, like handmaids in Margaret Atwood’s novel “The Handmaid’s Tale,” were among the protestors, as were drummers, horn-blowers, and at least one juggler carrying an Israeli flagpole on his nose.

The Jerusalem protest was clearly less than the one a week before in the same place, yet it still appeared to number in the tens of thousands.

After weeks of protests and appeals from Israel’s President Isaac Herzog and the US to delay the law and negotiate, the judicial overhaul bill is scheduled for the first of three readings in parliament, the Knesset, on Monday.

Significant changes

Netanyahu’s coalition is seeking the most sweeping overhaul of the Israeli legal system since the country’s founding. The most significant changes would allow a simple majority in the Knesset to overturn Supreme Court rulings.

The reforms also aim to overhaul the way judges are chosen and to abolish the independent legal consultants who advise government ministries and whose opinions are binding.

US President Joe Biden has expressed concerns over the reforms, saying: “The genius of American democracy and Israeli democracy is that they are both built on strong institutions, on checks and balances, on an independent judiciary. Building consensus for fundamental changes is really important to ensure that the people buy into them so they can be sustained.”

On Sunday, Netanyahu defended the judicial reform.

“Israel is a democracy and will remain a democracy, with majority rule and proper safeguards of civil liberties,” he said during an address to the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.

“All democracies should respect the will of other free peoples, just as we respect their democratic decisions.

“There’s been a lot of rhetoric that is frankly reckless and dangerous, including calls for bloodshed in the streets and calls for a civil war. It isn’t going to happen. There’s not going to be a civil war,” the Prime Minister added.

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