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On the streets of Tel Aviv, protesters on cusp of a big victory vow to keep fighting
TEL AVIV (JTA) — Yaniv, a resident of Tel Aviv, has lost count of how many protests he’s been to during the past three months. But on Monday afternoon, he headed once again to Kaplan Street, the urban artery that has become ground zero of the anti-government demonstrations, to demonstrate once again.
Israel’s current rupture, said Yaniv, 34, is the “biggest crisis in my lifetime.”
“We’ll keep going until something changes,” he said. “They left us no choice. The damage has been done.”
Week after week, Yaniv and tens of thousands of other Israelis have filled the streets of Tel Aviv to protest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposed overhaul of the country’s judiciary — which would sap the Supreme Court of much of its power and influence. Then, on Sunday night, massive protests again took shape to oppose Netanyahu’s firing of his defense minister, who called for a pause on the legislation.
Now, the following day, the protesters came with a different feeling: that their activism might actually succeed, at least in the short term. After people gathered in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and elsewhere, Netanyahu announced that he would pause the legislation to allow time for dialogue. Several of his ministers had already called for him to do just that.
Justin Jacobs, a recent immigrant to Israel from the United States, said he is hopeful about the outcome of the protest movement. (Deborah Danan)
But even as the campaign to stall the legislation was poised to achieve an at least temporary victory, protesters were not in a celebratory mood. They vowed to continue demonstrating against what some described as Netanyahu’s broader authoritarian impulses.
“You see how the liberal voice that has been missing for so long is returning to the street and has become the mainstream,” said Ben Luria, a resident of Jaffa protesting in Tel Aviv. “It looks like they’ve succeeded in passing the message across.”
But for Luria, that success doesn’t translate into any desire to ease the pressure. “You can’t deny that this is no longer just a question of Bibi being Bibi, this is a dictator in the making,” he added, using Netanyahu’s nickname. “We need to put the line somewhere.”
Even as Israelis were glued to their TV screens, waiting to hear Netanyahu announce a suspension of the legislation, Daria, who immigrated to Israel with her family from what is now Russia, did not pin her hopes on Netanyahu changing course.
“I don’t think that even if they stop this legislation, they will stop anything else,” said Daria, who came to the protest with Yaniv and, like him, declined to give her last name. “Even if they say they’ll postpone until Pesach or for forever, that doesn’t mean that we stop protesting what this government is doing.”
Sunday night’s protests were followed by a countrywide general strike. Blocked streets and canceled bus routes in downtown Tel Aviv meant that a 20-minute journey to a high-risk pregnancy clinic on Monday instead took an hour and a half for Natalie Solomon, who is eight-and-a-half months pregnant. She said she hoped Netanyahu would concede and spare Israelis further disruption.
“Our country is falling apart,” she said, expressing her hope that an end to the political standoff is near. “I really hope Bibi backs down today, that’s the only option. … We care about democracy but we really just care about the health of our baby.
At the end of the day it really does disrupt day-to-day lives.”
Despite being on the cusp of their first major victory, protesters said the potential respite offered by Netanyahu would be a minor gesture, not one that could overcome the hard feelings that have built up over the past three months.
Justin Jacobs, an immigrant to Israel from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, said Israel has “turned a corner” after Sunday night’s protests.”So, [there’s] a glimmer of hope that we’ll go back to the status quo, which to me remains not good enough,” he said. “But not good enough is still better than horrifying.”
Others were less optimistic. “My feeling, the feeling of my parents, my grandparents, [is] that there’s no future here, I don’t know if I’ll raise kids here,” said Yotam Weingrad.
Like Weingrad, Daria, recalling her family’s experience, is also considering her future in the Jewish state.
Yariv and Daria, left, walk in Tel Aviv after participating in anti-government protests on Monday, March 27, 2023; at right, Natalie Solomon said her trip to a high-risk pregnancy clinic took more than four times longer than normal because of the protests. (Deborah Danan)
“I grew up in a family with intimate knowledge of what it feels like to live under oppression, and I feel like it’s our duty to do whatever we can to prevent it,” she said. “But if push comes to shove, if nothing’s going to change, I’ll make the same decision my parents did — my kids aren’t going to live in a dictatorship.”
For those not emotionally invested in the Israeli crisis, the streets of Tel Aviv on Monday provided a rare experience, and a sense of uncertainty. Jennifer, a tourist from Utah visiting Israel with her two daughters, Holly and Diana, wanted to know if “it is going to get scary” and wondered if they’d be able to get back to the United States, as airports had closed due to the general strike.
“We’ve never been to this part of the world so we’re kind of like ‘Wow,’ just taking in everything,” said Diana. “We don’t know what it’s like without the protests, and we’re like, ‘This is Tel Aviv. It’s a lot.’”
Support for the protests isn’t unanimous across Tel Aviv, a bastion of left-wing politics in Israel. Josh Eidelshtein called the protests “hypocritical,” and blamed them for fanning the flames of conflict.
“What if the protesters were right-wingers, Orthodox Jews, or Palestinians?” he said. “Would their strategies still be OK? There is too much hate being bred here, and it’s as if the collective stress and anxiety this country has lived on for so long has been set aflame. The same people who went out to vote [for the left] are now trying to work against the system because they didn’t get what they wanted.”
Khalil, who originally hails from the Arab village of Ein Hawd in Israel’s north, and has lived in Tel Aviv for 50 years, also opted to stay away from the protests, which he felt did not speak for him.
“The Arabs are a minority, what do they have to do with these protests?” Khalil said as he walked his dog near a giant yellow sign reading “Nonstop Democracy,” painted by the Tel Aviv municipality on the boardwalk.
“Bibi has done good things but now he’s silent. This is a man who knows how to speak,” Khalil said. Then, referring to Netanyahu’s coalition partners, he added, “He’s not the king of Israel anymore. He made big mistakes by taking those criminals into the government with him. They want to throw out all the Arabs.”
Also sitting out the protests was Meir Dayan, who counts himself among the supporters of Netanyahu’s proposed judicial reform. He is especially in favor of the legislation that was due to be brought for a final vote on Monday, which would have increased the governing coalition’s control over Supreme Court appointments. But Dayan added that he didn’t appreciate the way Netanyahu attempted to pass the measures into law.
The path along the beach in Tel Aviv has been painted with pro-democracy messages. (Deborah Danan)
“The way they went about it was reckless,” he said. “Change to heavy organizational processes — because this is what this basically is, after all — doesn’t happen with legislation, it happens with people. It must be bottom-up and from a place of education, not ignorance.”
Dayan predicted that Netanyahu will halt the legislation now, and then in the summer months “when the left are overseas,” he will return it to the Knesset floor.
Roughly four miles away from the main protest, a smaller demonstration coalesced near Jaffa’s clocktower, a landmark at the entrance to Tel Aviv’s older counterpart. At this protest, children as young as 5 chanted “Shame!” and “Save Democracy!” while their parents stood to the side.
“Here the adults are quiet so the children are taking the lead. It’s exciting,” said Gavri, 10.
There are a few things he’d like to bring about in Israeli society: the failure of the judicial overhaul, as well as an end to fighting between Jews and Arabs. Like the adults protesting across the city, he vowed not to give up.
“I will be here until the end,” he said. “I hope it won’t be a long time.”
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Is this Apple TV thriller hasbara — or societal critique?
AppleTV+’s new thriller Unconditional has the trappings of so much streaming content.
A young woman disappears into hostile territory. Her mother, already juggling a family health crisis, does her own sleuthing to get her daughter back. People die, twisty alliances emerge. It’s all part of the suspense boiler plate, and it sizzles just enough to keep your interest. What makes the show, airing May 8, different from every other show is the early response.
Sight almost entirely unseen, the internet was in an uproar. The show is Israeli, and the announcement trailer showed the character Gali (Ronn Talia Lynne) in her IDF uniform. Pro-Palestine accounts were quick to shout “hasbara” or “overt ziopropaganda” for a show whose premise is ostensibly a sympathetic story of an Israeli taken prisoner by the evil, Putin-era Russian state. (The trailer makes no mention of Palestinians or a war in Gaza. The show doesn’t either.)
The online response alone proves the challenging optics for anything Israeli, but the show actually has quite a bit to say about the Jewish state’s propaganda apparatus — within the country and without.
On a layover in the Moscow Airport, Gali and her mother, Orna (Liraz Chamami), are taken in for questioning. Security claims to have found drugs in Gali’s backpack — an echo of the Naama Issacher affair from 2019 — and she’s summarily sentenced to seven years in a Russian jail.
Orna returns to Israel and hires a PR handler to plead Gali’s case. Together they curate a specific image to sell to the state media.
Gali is a “happy, good-hearted girl. She served in the army, like everyone” and even extended her service, Orna says in radio and television interviews. The file photo for news segments is exactly what so many outside of Israel would object to: Gali in uniform. In Israel it tugs heart strings. Abroad, it makes the abductee a war criminal who had it coming.
It’s probably not giving much away, given that the hands behind this show are the creators of Hatufim, which became a hit in the U.S. as the antihero-forward War on Terror commentary Homeland, that Gali is not a perfect victim. This is a strange sort of hasbara, if one Israel often produces, the kind that’s peopled by problematic characters operating in the society’s gray zones. (See streaming hit Fauda, following a morally-dubious undercover unit made up of trigger-happy adulterers exploiting their Palestinian contacts.)
What’s surprising, given the premise, is how much time the show spends not in Russia or Israel, but in India, where Gali and Orna were touring before their fateful missed connection in Moscow. It’s here we’re given entree into the Ugly Israeli abroad, a stereotype that is growing increasingly common thanks to reports of poor behavior — stealing money from temples, creating chaos in hospitals and restaurants — in the global East. (On the flip side, many Israelis, like a couple at a noodle shop in Vietnam, are being harassed by other tourists for no reason other than their country of origin and some feel the need to hide their identity while traveling.)
Gali sings the praises of an Indian gastropub that will give you dysentery. “We are so lucky because for the last three months the kitchen has been condemned by the health department,” she smirks. “But yesterday some truck driver hit a wild boar, so they gave them an exemption. So it won’t be a waste.”
In a later episode, one of Gali’s companions wisecrack about the pestilential heat and jibe that prisons in India are particularly atrocious. (This must ring alarm bells for those aware of Israel’s carceral system for Palestinians.)
Russia is equally backward. Unlike in Israel, “not everyone here is happy to work with a woman,” a Russian arms dealer weighs in. If you didn’t get it, these countries are backward. Israel has its problems, but at least it has women in power!
Watching, I was reminded of social media posts by Indians complaining about racism and drug use from IDF veterans on the so-called “Hummus trail.” One post by AJ+ said the soldiers come there to “detox” from “carrying out a genocide in Gaza.”
Unconditional is under no illusions that Israelis can be a disruptive presence. If anything, it pushes the concept to new places. These Sabras ruin mindfulness workshops and start shoot-outs in hotel lobbies. It’s not great for the brand.
But then again, we live in a climate where simply acknowledging the existence of Israelis — as seen in a recent ballyhoo surrounding author R.F. Kuang — can prove controversial or politically-loaded, no matter how neutral the depiction.
Why Apple would give their imprimatur to an Israeli project today, when public opinion of the Jewish state has fallen off a demographic cliff, is a valid question likely explained by the positive reception of another Israeli import on the streamer, the show Tehran, about an IDF hacker stuck in Iran. From within the silos it’s hard to tell if audiences will cancel their subscriptions, as some have threatened.
Maybe, like Gali’s uniform, the show is a Rorschach. BDS types may boycott, yet the show seems to echo many of their talking points about Israel’s overzealous campaign in Gaza after Oct. 7 — at least by way of metaphor.
In a late episode, Orna tells her government companion Rita (Evgenia Dodina) about a time a classmate broke Gali’s arm, and the teacher excused his actions because his mother was in the hospital.
“You’re exactly like the teacher,” Rita tells Orna. “You give me a thousand excuses for Gali. ‘It’s because of me. It’s not her fault. Poor thing.’ It doesn’t matter she didn’t understand what she was getting into, and it doesn’t matter she didn’t mean to.”
Orna says it’s different with Gali — because it’s her daughter. One can overlook a lot when it’s your family, or, for that matter, your country.
The post Is this Apple TV thriller hasbara — or societal critique? appeared first on The Forward.
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Israeli man indicted in attack on Catholic nun in Jerusalem’s Old City
(JTA) — An Israeli man was indicted on Thursday in connection to the violent assault of a Catholic nun in Jerusalem last month, after prosecutors said he targeted her over her Christian identity.
Yona Schreiber, 36, from the West Bank settlement of Peduel, was arrested last week and has since been indicted on charges of “assault causing actual injury motivated by hostility toward the public on the grounds of religion, as well as simple assault,” the state attorney’s office said in a statement.
According to the indictment, Schreiber, who is Jewish, attacked the nun just outside of the Old City in Jerusalem because he identified her as a Catholic nun. Schreiber allegedly pushed and then kicked the nun as she was lying on the ground and also attacked a passerby who attempted to intervene.
תקיפת הנזירה אתמול באזור קבר דוד בירושלים – שוטרי מרחב דוד איתרו את החשוד (36) ועצרו אותו בחשד לתקיפה ממניע גזעני >>> pic.twitter.com/agRpznR84X
— משטרת ישראל (@IL_police) April 30, 2026
The nun, a researcher at the French School of Biblical and Archeological Research, suffered bruises on her face and leg due to the attack, the state attorney’s office said.
The attack, which drew condemnation from Catholic leaders as well as faculty at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, comes amid mounting concern over hostility toward Christian clergy and holy sites in Israel.
Cases of Jews harassing Christians have risen sharply in recent years. Last month, the IDF punished a soldier who was filmed bludgeoning a statue of Jesus in southern Lebanon. This week, the IDF also announced that it would discipline a different soldier who was seen placing a cigarette into the mouth of a statue of the Virgin Mary in a photo posted on social media.
Israel’s attorney general asked the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court, where the indictment was filed, to hold Schreiber in detention for the duration of the legal proceeding.
The assault carries a maximum prison sentence of three years, which could increase to six years if prosecutors prove the attack was motivated by religious bias.
The post Israeli man indicted in attack on Catholic nun in Jerusalem’s Old City appeared first on The Forward.
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Jewish real estate magnate Steven Roth likens Mamdani’s ‘tax the rich’ rhetoric to ‘from the river to the sea’
(New York Jewish Week) — Jewish real estate mogul Steven Roth compared New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s “tax the rich” rhetoric this week to racial slurs and pro-Palestinian rhetoric on an earnings call for his company, Vornado Realty Trust.
“I consider the phrase ‘tax the rich’ when spit out with anger and contempt by politicians both here and across the country, to be just as hateful as some disgusting racial slurs and even the phrase, ‘from the river to the sea,’” Roth said, referring to the phrase commonly used at pro-Palestinian protests that many Jewish groups consider antisemitic.
The remark by Roth, who has long been a notable philanthropist to Jewish causes, adds to mounting tensions between New York business leaders and Mamdani over his recently announced “pied-à-terre” tax on second homes valued at more than $5 million.
During the call Tuesday, Roth also expressed support for Ken Griffin, the CEO of Citadel, whose $238 million dollar penthouse was featured in a video by Mamdani announcing plans for the tax last month.
“We are all shocked that our young mayor would pull this stunt in front of Ken’s home and single him out for ridicule,” Roth said. “The ugly, unnecessary video stunt is personal for Ken and sort of personal for me.”
Roth’s comments touched on a longstanding source of friction between Mamdani and some New York Jewish leaders, who have criticized the mayor over his views on Israel and his previous defense of the phrase “globalize the intifada,” another common pro-Palestinian slogan viewed by some as a call to violence against Jews.
In the wake of Mamdani’s election, some Jewish business leaders, including Dave Portnoy, the Jewish founder of Barstool Sports, said that they planned to leave the city altogether, citing the mayor’s fiscal policies and concerns about antisemitism under his leadership.
In a statement responding to Roth’s comments, Mamdani’s office said that he wanted all New Yorkers to succeed, including “business owners and entrepreneurs who create good-paying jobs and make this city the economic engine of America.”
“That does not negate the fact, however, that our tax system is fundamentally broken. It rewards extreme wealth while working people are pushed to the brink,” the statement continued. “The status quo is unsustainable and unjust. If we want this city to become a place that working people can afford, we need meaningful tax reform that includes the wealthiest New Yorkers contributing their fair share.”
The post Jewish real estate magnate Steven Roth likens Mamdani’s ‘tax the rich’ rhetoric to ‘from the river to the sea’ appeared first on The Forward.