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‘We will not give up’ on judicial changes, right-wing protesters at Israel’s largest pro-reform rally are told
JERUSALEM (JTA) — The right-wing protest that took some 200,000 people to Jerusalem’s streets on Thursday night to demonstrate in favor of the government’s judicial overhaul felt bizarrely familiar.
In many ways, it mimicked the anti-government protests that it meant to oppose: Like the demonstrations that have filled Tel Aviv’s streets every week this year, this too featured lots of Israeli flags, chants to the tune of “Seven Nation Army” and signs declaring that the rally represents the majority of the country.
And like the protests in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem’s mass gathering felt driven by grievance: a sense that the country the rally-goers had fought for — the country they thought they had — was being taken away from them.
“There are those who have decided that they can make decisions for me, even though they have no right to decide for me,” said Michal Verzberger, who came from the central town of Mazkeret Batya with most of her family to protest in favor of the reforms. Verzberger was echoing a central message of Thursday’s protest: that the right won the recent elections, and therefore had every right to pass its desired judicial overhaul.
“The nation decided it wanted reform, and there are some who are protesting the reform, and they’re deciding in our place that there won’t be a reform,” she said. “The minority is deciding what is good for the majority.”
The idea that a loud minority is unjustly obstructing the will of the electorate inspired Thursday’s protest, which filled an artery of central Jerusalem with a largely Orthodox, religious Zionist crowd. The judicial overhaul would sap the Israeli Supreme Court of much of its power, and since it was proposed at the beginning of the year, hundreds of thousands have filled the streets — in Tel Aviv and elsewhere — weekly to decry the proposal as a danger to democracy.
Right-wing Israelis attend a rally in support of the government’s planned judicial overhaul in Jerusalem, April 27, 2023. (Erik Marmor/Flash90)
Those protests, and associated actions, led Israel’s right-wing government, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to pause the reforms for a month — a period that ends in several days. The governing coalition and opposition are now negotiating over the legislation, a process that, if successful, will by definition soften the reforms at least a little.
Thursday’s rally was a show of force that aimed to strengthen the position of the government majority, several protesters said. One of the crowd’s chants was “64 seats” — the majority the right-wing holds in Israel’s 120-seat parliament, the Knesset. One homemade sign read, “64 > 56.”
The government ministers who spoke at the rally did not seem interested in half-measures. They promised that despite the delays, the substance of the reform would become law.
“Listen well, because this is my promise: We will not give up,” said Bezalal Smotrich, the far-right finance minister. “We won’t give up on making Israel a better place to live. We won’t give up on the Jewish state. … We’re fixing what needs to be fixed, and promising a better state of Israel for us and for the coming generations. Most of the nation agrees that the judicial reform is the right and necessary thing to do for the state of Israel, and I say again: We will not give up.”
Who is, in fact, in the majority on this issue is a more complicated question than it seems. Israel’s electorate has had a right-wing majority for years, both according to polls and election results. While the ideological bent of coalitions has varied, the past 22 years have seen only several months — last year — with a prime minister who didn’t build his career in conservative politics.
Justice Minister Yariv Levin at a rally in support of the government’s planned judicial overhaul outside the Knesset in Jerusalem, April 27, 2023. (Arie Leib Abrams/Flash90)
But polls also show that a majority of the country opposes the court reform itself, which has been pushed through the Knesset without any support from opposition parties or even engagement with their concerns. The central motivation of the anti-overhaul protests has been the importance of defending democracy and an independent court system.
That idea vexed Thursday’s protesters. “We won’t give up on Israeli democracy, and no one will steal that word from us,” Smotrich said. Yariv Levin, the justice minister and architect of the judicial overhaul, said, “Two million Israelis, half a year a year ago, voted in the true referendum: the elections. They voted for judicial reform.”
Protesters who spoke to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency said they supported the overhaul’s provisions, which include giving the governing coalition a large measure of control over the selection of judges and allowing the Knesset to override most Supreme Court decisions with a bare majority. Observers across the political spectrum and around the globe have cautioned that those changes could damage Israel’s democratic character.
But protesters said that, rather than destroy democracy, the overhaul would restore balance to Israel’s branches of government, curbing an overly activist court.
“I want a real democracy in the state of Israel,” said Chanan Fine, a resident of the central city of Modiin. “In a democracy there are three branches that have balance between them, and what happened is that the judicial branch has taken for itself the powers of the legislative branch and the executive branch.”
He added, “The government needs to have the ability to determine policy and to pass laws, and if there’s a policy that contradicts the laws of the state then the Supreme Court needs to get involved,” but less often than it does now, he explained.
Under the proposed legislation, the governing coalition would not have to respect the determination of the Supreme Court.
The message of the protests wasn’t the only thing that separated it from the Tel Aviv demonstrations, which largely draw secular Israelis. While few haredi Israelis attended the event — a leading haredi newspaper instructed its readers not to go, even as it expressed support for the cause — religious ritual pervaded the demonstration. Men gathered in prayer quorums before sunset on the way to the protest, and rallygoers recited the Shema and traditional prayers for salvation en masse. Most of the men wore kippahs, and most of the women wore long skirts.
Some signs at the Tel Aviv rallies, in addition to opposing the overhaul, advocate for LGBTQ rights or Israeli-Palestinian peace. Signs and shirts at the Jerusalem rally instead trumpeted settlements in the West Bank and the belief that the late rabbi of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement is the messiah.
One thing that the two rallies had in common: a preponderance of Israeli flags, something that has been particularly noted at the anti-overhaul demonstrations.
“It’s a desecration of our symbol,” Chen Avital, a protester from the West Bank settlement of Shilo, said about the anti-government protesters’ adoption of the flag. “They took it for a certain side that isn’t supported by the whole country, and they changed it to their side over the past few months. … It’s a flag that represents all of us, and they took it for their own side.”
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Amid Iran tensions, Huckabee tells US embassy staff in Israel they should leave ‘TODAY’ if they wish
(JTA) — Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee has told U.S. government employees and their families that they may leave the country and should do so expediently, amid mounting signs of a possible U.S. attack on Iran.
Huckabee emailed embassy staff on Friday morning saying that if they want to leave, they should do so “TODAY,” according to a letter first reported by The New York Times. He noted that commercial flights could become scarce and urged them to accept passage to any country before returning to Washington, D.C.
“There is no need to panic, but for those desiring to leave, it’s important to make plans to depart sooner rather than later,” he wrote.
The letter comes a day after U.S.-Iran talks in Geneva ended without public breakthroughs. Iranian officials, as well as the Omani mediators, said additional conversations were planned for next week; the United States did not comment. Steve Witkoff and Jared Kusher, two Jewish advisors to President Donald Trump who successfully brokered a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war last year, are leading the U.S. delegation.
Trump has been threatening to attack Iran for weeks over its nuclear program and has built up U.S. military forces in the Middle East to levels not seen in decades. In recent days, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance have both said military intervention could be needed while saying the president continued to prefer diplomacy.
Vance’s comments were particularly notable because he typically opposes U.S. intervention overseas. He told the Washington Post in comments published Friday morning that there was “no chance” that the United States would get involved in an extended Middle East campaign.
Iran has said it would consider Israel a valid target in the event of a U.S. attack. Last year, Iranian missiles killed more than two dozen people in Israel during a 12-day war initiated by Israeli strikes on Iran’s military program. Now, Israelis have been living in limbo for weeks while waiting to learn whether a new war, expected to be more destructive, will begin.
In the past, when expecting Iranian retaliation, the embassy has warned staff against leaving population centers in Israel. Now, the Department of State has updated its Jerusalem embassy website to reflect “the authorized departure of non-emergency U.S. government personnel and family members of U.S. government personnel to leave Israel,” setting a status that means flights will be paid for by the U.S. government.
While El Al, Israel’s national carrier, does not fly during Shabbat, other airlines typically do run some flights to and from Ben Gurion Airport on Friday nights and Saturdays. Many of those are budget European airlines that have only recently resumed flying to Israel after last year’s Iran war; some airlines, including KLM, have already suspended Israel flights in anticipation of another conflict.
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San Francisco mayor Daniel Lurie condemns ‘Tax the Jews’ chant heard during protest
(JTA) — Jewish leaders and California elected officials have condemned an antisemitic chant that was audible during a protest Wednesday against the repeal of a local San Francisco tax ordinance.
During a news conference addressing a new housing construction development plan hosted by San Francisco mayor Daniel Lurie and San Francisco District 5 Supervisor Bilal Mahmood, protesters with the Democratic Socialists of America chanted “tax the rich.”
According to videos reviewed by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, one woman on the scene can be clearly seen and heard chanting “tax Israel” and “tax the Jews.”
For those curious, a source sent me this video of the press conference. You can hear a woman chanting “tax Israel” and “tax the Jews” about 30 seconds in. https://t.co/0fDb9H8TXH pic.twitter.com/PkdHLGzBc1
— Gabriel Lorenzo Greschler (@ggreschler) February 26, 2026
Lurie, who is Jewish, condemned the chants, which he said had come from a group of people.
“At an event this afternoon, a group of individuals that were chanting ‘tax the rich’ began to shout ‘tax the Jews,’” Lurie tweeted. “Suggesting that Jews are wealthy is a tired trope, and targeting our community at an event focused on creating economic opportunity for San Franciscans is decidedly antisemitic. I will never accept hate directed at the Jewish community or any community in our city. Those are not San Francisco values—we’re better than that.”
The DSA, the largest socialist organization in the country, distanced itself from the chants, saying that only a single person was involved and that she was not a DSA member.
“During today’s protest of the Prop I repeal, a non-member joined the crowd and spouted disgusting antisemitic remarks,” the DSA said in a statement. “DSA members and other protesters asked her to stop, but she refused. We want to be clear that whatever hate she holds isn’t shared by DSA members and we categorically reject antisemitism.”
In the videos, the woman is wearing a head covering and glasses and appears to be pacing a distance away from the other protesters.
The incident comes as the DSA, which endorses the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement and opposes economic and military aid to Israel, has both notched major wins and drawn repeated allegations of antisemitism. After Oct. 7, it broke with one of its political stars, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, following her appearance on a panel where she condemned antisemitism. More recently, one of its members, Zohran Mamdani, was elected mayor of New York City. There, a DSA member last week challenged a DSA-affiliated elected official for condemning Hamas during an open meeting.
In San Francisco, the chant was condemned by other Jewish organizations, leaders and government officials, like the San Francisco Jewish Community Relations Council, California Rep. Ro Khanna, and Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt.
In a statement shared on X, Amy Spitalnick, the CEO of Jewish Council for Public Affairs, said, “What does antisemitism look like? This. This is hate and extremism masquerading as progressive politics when, in fact, nothing about it is progressive — and it only undermines the fight for justice, all of our safety, and our democracy.”
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HarperCollins to publish book of conversations with Rabbi Eli Schlanger, Chabad emissary slain in Sydney
(JTA) — A book featuring testimony from Rabbi Eli Schlanger, the Chabad emissary who was killed in December in an antisemitic terror attack in Sydney, will be published this spring, HarperCollins Publishers announced on Thursday.
Schlanger, who moved to Bondi Beach as an emissary of the Chabad movement 18 years ago, was the father of five children, including a newborn son. On Dec. 14, Schlanger was hosting the Chabad of Bondi’s Hanukkah celebration when two gunmen opened fire on the festivities, killing Schlanger as well as 14 others.
The book, titled “Conversations With My Rabbi: Timeless Teachings for a Fractured World,” was written by Nikki Goldstein, a Jewish author who first encountered Schlanger during a hospital stay in 2022.
Last January, Goldstein and Schlanger began recording their conversations together for a book, but weeks before finishing its final chapter, Schlanger was killed.
“I was devastated, shocked, and grieving. But I knew that Eli’s legacy, his mission to bring light and love to the world, would not die with him,” Nikki Goldstein said in a statement. “Eli saved my life those years ago, and it’s my honor and privilege to ensure that his voice, memory, and mission are not silenced by terror and continue to work miracles.”
The book, which is set to be published on May 26, is the second major work centering a Jewish victim of terrorism to be released within a year. Former hostage Eli Sharabi’s memoir “Hostage,” published last fall, was named Book of the Year by the National Jewish Book Awards earlier this month. The memoir, which details Sharabi’s abduction by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, and 15 months he spent in captivity before learning that his wife and daughters had been murdered, was a bestseller in Israel before coming out in English.
A book by another icon of the Israeli hostage crisis is slated to hit the shelves in April. Rachel Goldberg-Polin’s memoir, titled “When We See You Again,” chronicles her relentless advocacy to free her son Hersh, who was kidnapped from the Nova music festival in Israel on Oct. 7 and subsequently murdered by Hamas in August 2024.
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