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In Jerusalem, defiance and despair among protesters on fateful day for Israeli judicial reform

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Standing next to a patch of sidewalk filled with the names of fallen Israeli soldiers, Ayelet Bargur embraced a friend and, pointing to a stack of poster paper, asked her if she’d like to add the name of a relative who was killed in service.

The rectangular posters bearing the soldiers’ names were arranged on the pavement in rows, weighted down by stones that evoked those found atop monuments in Jewish cemeteries. In addition to the names, all the posters featured the same phase: “In vain.”

A nearby sculpture, made of medals given out by the Israeli Defense Ministry, spelled out the same term.

“It expresses our protest that the sacred covenant between the bereaved families and the government of Israel, and the army, has been breached,” said Bargur, who identified herself as an organizer of the initiative. “We feel that the deaths of our loved ones, if the dictatorship laws pass, will have been in vain. Our loved ones died for the values of the Declaration of Independence. We are a minute before the destruction of the Third Temple.”

Bargur is one of thousands of Israelis who have crowded a park in this city in recent days, part of a last-ditch effort by protesters to stop Israel’s right-wing government from passing a law weakening Israel’s judiciary.

Hours after Bargur spoke, Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, voted the measure through — the first piece of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s controversial judicial overhaul to be enacted into law.

Facing that reality, Bargur and her compatriots displayed a mix of defiance, resignation and determination. They are using increasingly dire language — predicting the end of Israel’s democracy, or as Bargur did, a catastrophe akin to the destruction of Jerusalem’s Second Holy Temple nearly 2,000 years ago, which will be commemorated on the fast day of Tisha B’Av later this week.

Protesters have vowed to boycott their reserve military duty or, like Bargur, structured their protest around Israel’s revered battle casualties. This morning, a crowd of protesters around the Knesset faced water cannons and mounted police, while others marched from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and then pitched tents and created a small campsite in the middle of a park.

But despite the disappointment they would face later in the day, the protesters’ mood was not one of lamentation. They carried the same Israeli flags, wore the same T-shirts and screamed the same blaring chants that have come to define the weekly mass anti-government demonstrations in Tel Aviv. A couple of protesters told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that they were considering leaving the country; most said they planned to stay.

“I will need to fight for my state,” said Roi Lupo, a tech worker who ran into a couple of his colleagues while taking a breather from the protests in the park. “This is my country. My parents are here, my family is here, my kids are here.”

He added, “What am I going to do? I live here and I’m going to fight for my freedom and my rights.”

As Lupo spoke, the Knesset was about to pass a law that bars the Supreme Court from striking down laws it deems “unreasonable.” The measure is one of several pieces of the judicial overhaul effort, which has caused turmoil in Israel and was shelved for several months amid unprecedented protests.

The locus of those protests has been central Tel Aviv, and a Monday morning train from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem was packed, with many of the passengers wearing protest T-shirts (“Free in our land,” “Democracy is in my soul”) or carrying large Israeli flags. Protest chants began on the endless escalators from the train tracks to the station entrance, and the walk from the station to the outskirts of the Knesset building was lined with tents advertising protest-adjacent causes, handing out more shirts or, in the case of one structure, providing food, water and first aid to demonstrators.

Outside the tent, a vocal opponent of the protests who gave his name as Meir stood verbally sparring with marchers. Like many of the protesters, he invoked his military service (during the Yom Kippur War, in the Sinai Peninsula) to bolster his point. But unlike them he thought the protest, and the public disruption it caused, was a travesty. He stood in the middle of the sidewalk, claiming (inaccurately) that he was unable to pass because a T-shirt distribution tent was blocking his path.

“People come here, say the government can’t rule,” he said. “There were elections, that isn’t democracy?”

The medical tent was staffed by the Israeli Medical Association, which opposes the overhaul effort. Dr. Yifat Weiss, an OB-Gyn who was managing the tent in the late morning, said that so far, she and her fellow volunteer medical professionals had sent a dozen injured protesters to the hospital.

“I’m worried the government will say it’s OK to treat people differently according to their race, their color, their gender, their sexual preferences,” she said. “I don’t know, I’m fighting until the end. I don’t want my children to grow up in a dictatorship or any other form that is not a democracy with equality. I don’t know what I will do if the laws will pass.”

Down the street, near a tent belonging to the organization Women Wage Peace, Yael Admi sounded more optimistic. She felt the protest was an opportunity to open people up to the necessity of an Israeli-Palestinian accord — a goal of her group but something that has not been a priority of Israeli governments for nearly a decade.

“There’s more and more understanding of the connections between these things — the burning of Huwara didn’t come from nowhere,” she said, referring to a recent settler riot in a West Bank Palestinian village. “When you don’t see the rights of the other, when you think we have rights that others don’t have, it develops this mechanism that doesn’t see the others.”

Bargur, standing just feet away, next to the “In vain” memorial, said that if the reform passes, it isn’t just living Israelis who may seek to leave.

Her father, she said, has expressed a desire, regarding her fallen brother, to “take the grave and leave the country.”

She added, “I hope we don’t get there.”


The post In Jerusalem, defiance and despair among protesters on fateful day for Israeli judicial reform appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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After False Dawns, Gazans Hope Trump Will Force End to Two-Year-Old War

Palestinians walk past a residential building destroyed in previous Israeli strikes, after Hamas agreed to release hostages and accept some other terms in a US plan to end the war, in Nuseirat, central Gaza Strip October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa

Exhausted Palestinians in Gaza clung to hopes on Saturday that US President Donald Trump would keep up pressure on Israel to end a two-year-old war that has killed tens of thousands and displaced the entire population of more than two million.

Hamas’ declaration that it was ready to hand over hostages and accept some terms of Trump’s plan to end the conflict while calling for more talks on several key issues was greeted with relief in the enclave, where most homes are now in ruins.

“It’s happy news, it saves those who are still alive,” said 32-year-old Saoud Qarneyta, reacting to Hamas’ response and Trump’s intervention. “This is enough. Houses have been damaged, everything has been damaged, what is left? Nothing.”

GAZAN RESIDENT HOPES ‘WE WILL BE DONE WITH WARS’

Ismail Zayda, 40, a father of three, displaced from a suburb in northern Gaza City where Israel launched a full-scale ground operation last month, said: “We want President Trump to keep pushing for an end to the war, if this chance is lost, it means that Gaza City will be destroyed by Israel and we might not survive.

“Enough, two years of bombardment, death and starvation. Enough,” he told Reuters on a social media chat.

“God willing this will be the last war. We will hopefully be done with the wars,” said 59-year-old Ali Ahmad, speaking in one of the tented camps where most Palestinians now live.

“We urge all sides not to backtrack. Every day of delay costs lives in Gaza, it is not just time wasted, lives get wasted too,” said Tamer Al-Burai, a Gaza City businessman displaced with members of his family in central Gaza Strip.

After two previous ceasefires — one near the start of the war and another earlier this year — lasted only a few weeks, he said; “I am very optimistic this time, maybe Trump’s seeking to be remembered as a man of peace, will bring us real peace this time.”

RESIDENT WORRIES THAT NETANYAHU WILL ‘SABOTAGE’ DEAL

Some voiced hopes of returning to their homes, but the Israeli military issued a fresh warning to Gazans on Saturday to stay out of Gaza City, describing it as a “dangerous combat zone.”

Gazans have faced previous false dawns during the past two years, when Trump and others declared at several points during on-off negotiations between Hamas, Israel and Arab and US mediators that a deal was close, only for war to rage on.

“Will it happen? Can we trust Trump? Maybe we trust Trump, but will Netanyahu abide this time? He has always sabotaged everything and continued the war. I hope he ends it now,” said Aya, 31, who was displaced with her family to Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.

She added: “Maybe there is a chance the war ends at October 7, two years after it began.”

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Mass Rally in Rome on Fourth Day of Italy’s Pro-Palestinian Protests

A Pro-Palestinian demonstrator waves a Palestinian flag during a national protest for Gaza in Rome, Italy, October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Claudia Greco

Large crowds assembled in central Rome on Saturday for the fourth straight day of protests in Italy since Israel intercepted an international flotilla trying to deliver aid to Gaza, and detained its activists.

People holding banners and Palestinian flags, chanting “Free Palestine” and other slogans, filed past the Colosseum, taking part in a march that organizers hoped would attract at least 1 million people.

“I’m here with a lot of other friends because I think it is important for us all to mobilize individually,” Francesco Galtieri, a 65-year-old musician from Rome, said. “If we don’t all mobilize, then nothing will change.”

Since Israel started blocking the flotilla late on Wednesday, protests have sprung up across Europe and in other parts of the world, but in Italy they have been a daily occurrence, in multiple cities.

On Friday, unions called a general strike in support of the flotilla, with demonstrations across the country that attracted more than 2 million, according to organizers. The interior ministry estimated attendance at around 400,000.

Italy’s right-wing government has been critical of the protests, with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni suggesting that people would skip work for Gaza just as an excuse for a longer weekend break.

On Saturday, Meloni blamed protesters for insulting graffiti that appeared on a statue of the late Pope John Paul II outside Rome’s main train station, where Pro-Palestinian groups have been holding a protest picket.

“They say they are taking to the streets for peace, but then they insult the memory of a man who was a true defender and builder of peace. A shameful act committed by people blinded by ideology,” she said in a statement.

Israel launched its Gaza offensive after Hamas terrorists staged a cross border attack on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 people hostage.

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Hamas Says It Agrees to Release All Israeli Hostages Under Trump Gaza Plan

Smoke rises during an Israeli military operation in Gaza City, as seen from the central Gaza Strip, October 2, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas

Hamas said on Friday it had agreed to release all Israeli hostages, alive or dead, under the terms of US President Donald Trump’s Gaza proposal, and signaled readiness to immediately enter mediated negotiations to discuss the details.

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