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In Berlin, Netanyahu faces tough questions from a key ally, while Israelis abroad protest
BERLIN (JTA) – Approximately 1,000 people — most of them Israelis living in Berlin — gathered Thursday at the iconic Brandenburg Gate here to show solidarity with protests against judicial reform in Israel.
The protesters’ messages were intended for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was in the German capital for meetings with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Netanyahu also visited a Holocaust memorial, which is located at a site from which some 10,000 Berlin Jews were deported by train to slave labor or concentration camps in 1941 and 1942.
But Netanyahu never came near the protesters: Berlin took extreme security measures to keep the public away from the Israeli leader, who stayed at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, more than three miles away from the site of the protests. Many streets leading to the hotel were blocked.
That didn’t spare Netanyahu from hearing criticism of his legislation, which would sap Israel’s Supreme Court of much of its power and which is currently advancing in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset. At a joint press conference after a private meeting, Scholz said he had urged Netanyahu to consider a compromise proposal advanced by Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog.
“As democratic value partners and close friends of Israel, we are following this debate very closely and — I will not hide this — with great concern,” Scholz said. “The independence of the judiciary is a high democratic good.”
Netanyahu rejected Herzog’s proposal before leaving for Berlin but sought to reassure Scholz, who leads a key ally of Israel, that he would not reject democratic norms. “I want to assure you that Israel will stay a liberal democracy,” Netanyahu said.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz (R) and Benjamin Netanyahu. prime minister of Israel, hold a press conference at the chancellor’s office in Berlin, March 16, 2023 (Kay Nietfeld/picture alliance via Getty Images)
It was Netanyahu’s second trip abroad in a week, after a visit to Italy last week that also drew protests, though fewer questions from Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. The judicial reform proposals have drawn concern from many world leaders, including U.S. President Joe Biden, as well as from an ideologically diverse coalition of Israelis.
Those gathering at the Brandenburg Gate, a few miles away from Netanyahu’s meeting with Scholz, said it was important to show their solidarity with protesters back home, even if the Israeli prime minister could not hear or see them. By some estimates, there are up to 10,000 Israelis living in Berlin, not including those who have come here with European passports, which many have by virtue of the fact that their grandparents escaped or otherwise survived the Nazi regime.
“We want to let our people at home, our families, our brothers and sisters, know that we are here, we see them and they are not alone,” one of the local organizers, graduate student Yael Hajor, 33, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency before the event. She said her loose coalition worked together with an Israeli counterpart to reach out to sympathizers in Berlin, posting regular updates in Hebrew via WhatsApp.
“Actually, the visit of Netanyahu here helped us create more bridges between the groups” in the two countries, said Hajor, who plans to return to Israel after her studies.
At the Brandenburg Gate, a mixed bag of protesters gathered with posters, some waving Israeli flags, chanting and dancing to Israeli music. Some carried homemade signs with pro-democracy messages; other signs called Netanyahu a would-be dictator and compared him to Russian president Vladimir Putin. A group of women paraded in red robes meant to resemble those worn by women in the novel and TV series “The Handmaid’s Tale,” which is also an emerging symbol of the protests in Israel.
“Most Jews are democratic and therefore this is really embarrassing, what is happening in Israel,” said German-Jewish scholar and pundit Micha Brumlik, one of about 30 Jewish intellectuals to sign a statement this week calling on Germany to “to distance itself clearly and publicly from the anti-democratic and racist policies of the Netanyahu government.”
Demonstrators protest against the Israeli government in front of the Brandenburg Gate during Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Berlin, March 16, 2023. (Carsten Koall/picture alliance via Getty Images)
American scholar Jonathan Schorsch, a professor at the School of Jewish Theology in Potsdam, said he had a positive impression after wending his way through the crowd.
“I see that people care, and are trying to voice some opposition to this crazy putsch,” said Schorsch, using the German word for coup that is associated with Adolf Hitler’s rise to power. “It really is an appropriate word to use. It is very scary to me.”
But tensions over what messages to prioritize, which have also arisen in the protests in Israel, replicated themselves in Berlin.
“We are here to protest together with other Israelis against the new legal overhaul,” said Israeli graduate student Nimrod Flaschenberg, who previously worked for the left-wing Hadash Party in the Knesset. “But we also are saying that the deeper problem is the occupation and the oppression of the Palestinian people. And we think you cannot talk about one thing without the other.”
Brumlik, who made the rounds through the crowd on Thursday, described the protest crowd as both pro-Israel and anti-Zionist. “I am not really happy with the posters,” he said, explaining that “Israel within the borders of 1967 is not an apartheid state, and on the West Bank it can be debated.”
Berlin Jew Evelyn Bartolmai, who lived in Israel for about 20 years, said she normally does not go to demonstrations in Germany that criticize Israel.
“I don’t want to be lumped in with the antisemites who come to take advantage of the situation,” she said. “But this demonstration is not against Israel. Rather, it is against this government. It is for Israel, and that is why I am here.”
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Jared Kushner Arrives in Israel for Gaza Talks with Netanyahu, Source Says
Jared Kushner listens as US Vice President JD Vance (not pictured) speaks to members of the media in Kiryat Gat, Israel, October 21, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad
US President Donald Trump’s influential son-in-law, Jared Kushner, arrived in Israel on Sunday for talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on implementing the US plan to end the Gaza war, a source familiar with the matter said.
Kushner was expected to meet with Netanyahu on Monday, said the source, speaking on condition of anonymity as the meeting had not been formally announced. The White House and Netanyahu’s office did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Trump announced a 20-point plan in September to end the two-year-old war in the Palestinian territory, starting with a ceasefire that came into effect on October 10 and the handover of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza.
The militant group has released 20 living hostages and the remains of 24 hostages from Gaza since October 10. There are four deceased hostages whose remains are still being held in Gaza.
The next phase of the ceasefire is supposed to see the standing up of a multinational force that would gradually take over security inside Gaza from the Israeli military.
An Israeli government spokesperson said earlier on Sunday that there would be “no Turkish boots on the ground” in Gaza as part of that multinational force.
Asked about Israel’s objections to Turkish forces in Gaza, US Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack said at a Manama security conference earlier this month that Turkey would participate.
Vice President JD Vance said last month there would be a “constructive role” for Ankara to play but that Washington wouldn’t force anything on Israel when it came to foreign troops “on their soil.”
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Netanyahu Faces Criticism Over Efforts to Block National Inquiry Into Oct. 7
FILE PHOTO: Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gives a statement during a visit to the site of the Weizmann Institute of Science, which was hit by an Iranian missile barrage, in the central city of Rehovot, Israel June 20, 2025. JACK GUEZ/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo
i24 News – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met last Friday with Likud MK Ariel Kellner to discuss advancing a bill that would establish an alternative commission of inquiry into the October 7 massacre.
According to sources close to the matter, the legislative initiative has made no progress.
The meeting has drawn sharp criticism from opposition lawmakers. Deputy Vladimir Beliak (Yesh Atid) accused Netanyahu of “continuing to mistreat bereaved families and all the victims of the war,” asserting that a national commission of inquiry will be created, period.” Deputy Naama Lazimi wrote on X, “So Netanyahu is sending Kellner as a proxy to pass a law that will exempt him from all responsibility for the massacre that took place under his governance? Who would have thought that Hamas’s financier would act this way?”
The Knesset is scheduled to hold a debate on Monday, at the opposition’s request and in the presence of the Prime Minister, on the creation of a national commission of inquiry to examine the failures of October 7. Yesh Atid emphasized, “765 days after the outbreak of the October 7 war, the Israeli government refuses to create a national commission that would provide answers to bereaved families. We will not stop fighting for them.”
The debate comes just days before the government must respond to a petition filed with the Supreme Court calling for the establishment of a national commission. The court has noted that “there is no real controversy regarding the very need to create a national commission with broad investigative powers.”
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Hamas Says Fighters Holed Up in Rafah Will Not Surrender
Palestinian Hamas terrorists stand guard on the day of the handover of hostages held in Gaza since the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attack, as part of a ceasefire and a hostages-prisoners swap deal between Hamas and Israel, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, Feb. 22, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Hatem Khaled
Hamas fighters holed up in the Israeli-held Rafah area of Gaza will not surrender to Israel, the group’s armed wing said on Sunday, urging mediators to find a solution to a crisis that threatens the month-old ceasefire.
Sources close to mediation efforts told Reuters on Thursday that fighters could surrender their arms in exchange for passage to other areas of the enclave under a proposal aimed at resolving the stalemate.
Egyptian mediators have proposed that, in exchange for safe passage, fighters still in Rafah surrender their arms to Egypt and give details of tunnels there so they can be destroyed, said one of the sources, an Egyptian security official.
Sunday’s statement from Al-Qassam Brigades held Israel responsible for engaging the fighters, who it said were defending themselves.
“The enemy must know that the concept of surrender and handing oneself over does not exist in the dictionary of the Al-Qassam Brigades,” the group said.
US special envoy Steve Witkoff said on Thursday that the proposed deal for about 200 fighters would be a test for a broader process to disarm Hamas forces across Gaza.
Al-Qassam Brigades did not comment directly on the continuing talks over the fighters in Rafah but implied that the crisis could affect the ceasefire.
“We place the mediators before their responsibilities, and they must find a solution to ensure the continuation of the ceasefire and prevent the enemy from using flimsy pretexts to violate it and exploit the situation to target innocent civilians in Gaza,” the group said.
Since the US-brokered ceasefire took effect in Gaza on October 10, the Rafah area has been the scene of at least two attacks on Israeli forces, which Israel has blamed on Hamas. The militant group has denied responsibility.
Rafah has been the scene of the worst violence since the ceasefire took hold, with three Israeli soldiers killed, prompting Israeli retaliation that killed dozens of Palestinians.
Separately, Al-Qassam Brigades said it will hand over the body of deceased Israeli soldier Hadar Goldin in Gaza on Sunday at 2 p.m. (1200 GMT).
Since the ceasefire, Hamas has handed over the bodies of 23 of 28 deceased hostages. Hamas has said the devastation in Gaza has made locating the bodies difficult. Israel accuses Hamas of stalling.
Israel has released to Gaza the bodies of 300 Palestinians, according to the territory’s health ministry.
Local health authorities said on Sunday that one man was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Bani Suhaila east of Khan Younis, south of the enclave. The Israeli military made no immediate comment.