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‘Two Israels’: What’s really behind the judicial reform protests
(JTA) — When Benjamin Netanyahu put his controversial calls for judicial reform on pause two weeks ago, many thought the protesters in Israel and abroad might declare victory and take a break. And yet a week ago Saturday some 200,000 people demonstrated in Tel Aviv, and pro-democracy protests continued among Diaspora Jews and Israeli expats, including those who gather each Sunday in New York’s Washington Square Park.
On its face, the weeks of protest have been about proposed legislation that critics said would sap power from the Israeli Supreme Court and give legislators — in this case, led by Netanyahu’s recently elected far-right coalition — unchecked and unprecedented power. Protesters said that, in the absence of an Israeli constitution establishing basic rights and norms, they were fighting for democracy. The government too says the changes are about democracy, claiming under the current system unelected judges too often overrule elected lawmakers and the will of Israel’s diverse electorate.
But the political dynamics in Israel are complex, and the proposals and the backlash are also about deeper cracks in Israeli society. Yehuda Kurtzer, president of the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, recently said in a podcast that the crisis in Israel represents “six linked but separate stories unfolding at the same time.” Beyond the judicial reform itself, these stories include the Palestinians and the occupation, a resurgent patriotism among the center and the left, chaos within Netanyahu’s camp, a Diaspora emboldened to weigh in on the future of Zionism and the rejection on the part of the public of a reform that failed the “reasonableness test.”
“If these protests are effective in the long run, it will be, I think, because they will have succeeded at reorganizing and mobilizing the Israeli electorate to think and behave differently than before,” said Kurtzer.
I recently asked observers, here and in Israel, what they feel is really mobilizing the electorate, and what kind of Israel will emerge as a result of the showdown. The respondents included organizers of the protests, supporters of their aims and those skeptical of the protesters’ motivations. They discussed a slew of issues just below the surface of the protest, including the simmering Israeli-Palestinian conflict, divisions over the increasing strength of Israel’s haredi Orthodox sector, and a lingering divide between Ashkenazi Jews with roots in Europe and Mizrahi Jews whose ancestry is Middle Eastern and North African.
Conservatives, meanwhile, insist that Israeli “elites” — the highly educated, the tech sector, the military leadership, for starters — don’t respect the will of the majority who brought Netanyahu and his coalition partners to power.
Here are the emerging themes of weeks of protest:
Defending democracy
Whatever their long-term concerns about Israel’s future, the protests are being held under the banner of “democracy.”
For Alon-Lee Green, one of the organizers of the protests, the issues are equality and fairness. “People in Israel,” said Green, national co-director of Standing Together, a grassroots movement in Israel, “hundreds of thousands of them, are going out to the streets for months now not only because of the judicial reform, but also — and mainly — because of the fundamental question of what is the society we want to live in: Will we keep living in a society that is unequal, unfair and that is moving away from our basic needs and desires, or will it be an equal society for everyone who lives in our land?”
Shany Granot-Lubaton, who has been organizing pro-democracy rallies among Israelis living in New York City, says Netanyahu, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and the coalition’s haredi Orthodox parties “are waging a war against democracy and the freedoms of citizens.”
“They seek to exert control over the Knesset and the judicial system, appoint judges in their favor and legalize corruption,” she said. “If this legal coup is allowed to proceed, minorities will be in serious danger, and democracy itself will be threatened.”
Two researchers at the Institute for Liberty and Responsibility at Herzliya’s Reichman University, psychology student Benjamin Amram and research associate Keren L.G. Snider, said Netanyahu’s proposed judicial reform “undermines the integrity of Israel’s democracy by consolidating power.”
“How can citizens trust a government that ultimately has no limitations set upon them?” they asked in a joint email. “At a time when political trust and political representation are at the lowest points, this legislation can only create instability and call into question the intentions of the current ruling party. When one coalition holds all the power, laws and policies can be swiftly overturned, causing instability and volatility.”
A struggle between two Israels
Other commentators said the protests revealed fractures within Israeli society that long predated the conflict over judicial reform. “The split is between those that believe Israel should be a more religious country, with less democracy, and see democracy as only a system of elections and not a set of values, and those who want Israel to remain a Jewish and democratic state,” Tzipi Livni, who served in the cabinets of right-wing prime ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert before tacking to the center in recent years, recently told Haaretz.
Author and translator David Hazony called this “a struggle between two Israels” — one that sees Israel’s founding vision as a European-style, rights-based democracy, and the other that sees that vision as the return of the Jews to their ancient homeland.
“Those on the first side believe that the judiciary has always been Israel’s protector of rights and therefore of democracy, against the rapaciousness and lawlessness of politicians in general and especially those on the right. Therefore an assault on its supremacy is an assault on democracy itself. They accuse the other side of being barbaric, antidemocratic and violent,” said Hazony, editor of the forthcoming anthology “Jewish Priorities.”
As for the other side, he said, they see an activist judiciary as an attempt by Ashkenazi elites to force their minority view on the majority. Supporters of the government think it is entirely unreasonable “for judges to think they can choose their successors, strike down constitutional legislation and rule according to ‘that which is reasonable in the eyes of the enlightened community in Israel,’” said Hazony, quoting Aharon Barak, the former president of the Supreme Court of Israel and bane of Israel’s right.
(Naveh Dromi, a right-wing columnist for Yediot Achronot, puts this more bluntly: “The problem,” she writes, “lies in the fact that the left has no faith in its chance to win an election, so it relies on the high court to represent it.”)
Daniel Tauber, an attorney and Likud Central Committee member, agrees that those who voted for Netanyahu and his coalition have their own concerns about a democracy — one dominated by “elites,” which in the Israeli context means old-guard Ashkenazi Jews, powerful labor unions and highly educated secular Jews. “The more this process is subject to veto by non-democratic institutions, whether it be the Court chosen as it is, elite military units, the Histadrut [labor union], or others, the more people will lose faith in democracy,” said Tauber.
Green also said there is “a war waging now between two elites in Israel” — the “old and more established liberal elite, who consist of the financial, high-tech army and industry people,” and the “new emerging elite of the settlers and the political far-right parties.”
Israelis protest against the government’s planned judicial overhaul, outside the Supreme Court in Jerusalem, March 27, 2023. (Jamal Awad/Flash90)
And yet, he said, “I think we will lose if one of these elites wins. The real victory of this historic political moment in Israel will be if we achieve true equality, both to the people who are not represented by the Jewish supremacists, such as the Palestinian citizens of Israel, and to the people who are not represented by the ‘old Israel,’ such as the haredi and Mizrahi people on the peripheries.”
The crises behind the crisis
Although the protests were ignited by Netanyahu’s calls for judicial reform, they also represented pushback against the most right-wing government in Israeli history — which means at some level the protests were also about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the role of religion in Israeli society. “The unspoken motivation driving the architects and supporters of the [judicial] ‘reform,’ as well as the protest leaders, is umbilically connected to the occupation,” writes Carolina Landsmann, a Haaretz columnist. If Netanyahu has his way, she writes, “There will be no more two-state solution, and there will be no territorial compromises. The new diplomatic horizon will be a single state, with the Palestinians as subjects deprived of citizenship.”
Nimrod Novik, the Israel Fellow at the Israel Policy Forum, said that “once awakened, the simmering resentment of those liberal Israelis about other issues was brought to the surface.” The Palestinian issue, for example, is at an “explosive moment,” said Novik: The Palestinian Authority is weakened and ineffective, Palestinian youth lack hope for a better future, and Israeli settlers feel emboldened by supporters in the ruling coalition. “The Israeli security establishment took this all into account when warning the government to change course before it is too late,” said Novik.
Kurtzer too noted that the Palestinians “also stand to be extremely victimized following the passage of judicial reform, both in Israel and in the West Bank.” And yet, he said, most Israelis aren’t ready to upend the current status quo between Israelis and Palestinians. “It can also be true that the Israeli public can only build the kind of coalition that it’s building right now because it is patently not a referendum on the issue of Palestinian rights,” he said.
Religion and state
Novik spoke about another barely subterranean theme of the protests: the growing power of the haredi, or ultra-Orthodox, parties. Secular Israelis especially resent that the haredim disproportionately seek exemption from military service and that non-haredi Israelis contribute some 90% of all taxes collected. One fear of those opposing the judicial reform legislation is that the religious parties will “forever secure state funding to the haredi Orthodox school system while exempting it from teaching the subjects required for ever joining the workforce. It is to secure for them an exemption from any military or other national service. And it is to expand the imposition of their lifestyle on non-Orthodox Israelis.”
What’s next
Predictions for the future range from warnings of a civil war (by Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, among others) to an eventual compromise on Netanyahu’s part to the emergence of a new center electorate that will reject extremists on both ends of the political spectrum.
David E. Bernstein, a law professor at the George Mason University School of Law who writes frequently about Israel, imagines a future without extremists. “One can definitely easily imagine the business, academic and legal elite using their newfound political voice to insist that future governments not align with extremists, that haredi authority over national life be limited, and, perhaps most important, that Israel create a formal constitution that protects certain basic rights,” he said. “Perhaps there will also be demand to counter such long-festering problems as corruption, disproportionate influence over export markets by a few influential families, burgeoning lawlessness in the Arab sector and a massive shortage of affordable housing.”
Elie Bennett, director of International Strategy at the Israel Democracy Institute, also sees an opportunity in the crisis.
In the aftermath of the disastrous 1973 Yom Kippur war, he said, Israel “rebuilt its military and eventually laid the foundations for today’s ‘startup nation.’ In this current crisis, we do not need a call-up of our reserves forces, or a massive airlift of American weaponry to prevail. What we need is goodwill among fellow Israelis and a commitment to work together to strengthen our society and reach an agreed-upon constitutional framework. If we are able to achieve such an agreement, it will protect our rights, better define the relationships between the branches of government, and result in an Israel that is more stable and prosperous than ever as we celebrate 75 years of independence.”
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Western Countries Crack Down on Hamas Terror Threat in Europe
A flag is flown during a protest in support of Palestinians in Gaza, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, outside the European Parliament, in Strasbourg, France, Nov. 27, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Yves Herman
Western authorities are intensifying efforts to curb Hamas’s terror threat in Europe, arresting suspected operatives in Germany and imposing US sanctions on key Hamas-linked figures and organizations.
On Friday, German authorities arrested a 36-year-old man, identified as Mohammad S., at Berlin Brandenburg Airport, who is suspected of belonging to a terrorist cell that plotted attacks on Israeli and Jewish targets across the country
According to local media, he is the fourth member of a cell – three of whose members were arrested last year – with links to Hamas, and he is accused of supplying the Palestinian terrorist group with weapons.
The German federal prosecutor’s office ordered the arrest of Mohammad S. upon his return from Lebanon, after investigators found that he acquired 300 rounds of ammunition in August 2025 in preparation for potential Hamas attacks on Israeli and Jewish institutions in Germany and across Europe.
Last year, local police arrested Lebanese-born Borhan El-K, a suspected Hamas operative, after he crossed into Germany from the Czech Republic — part of an ongoing probe into the Islamist group’s network and operations across the continent.
German authorities confirmed the suspect had obtained an automatic rifle, eight Glock pistols, and more than 600 rounds of ammunition in the country before handing the weapons to Wael FM, another suspected member of the terrorist group, in Berlin.
Local law enforcement also arrested Lebanese-born Wael FM, along with two other German citizens, Adeb Al G and Ahmad I, who prosecutors say are foreign operatives for Hamas.
As part of an internationally coordinated investigation into a global terrorist network linked to the Islamist group, German authorities uncovered evidence that it had smuggled weapons into the country for potential attacks in Europe.
The United States is also stepping up efforts to counter the threat of Hamas-linked terrorism in Europe, including imposing renewed sanctions on the group and its operatives.
Last week, the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated UK-based pro-Palestinian activist Zaher Birawi, an alleged senior Hamas member, as a supporter of a Hamas-linked group, freezing his US assets and barring Americans from doing business with him.
The US government also sanctioned Birawi’s organization, the Popular Conference for Palestinians Abroad (PCPA), identifying him as one of its founding members and a senior official.
According to the Treasury Department, the PCPA “does not only work with, and in support of, Hamas — it operates at Hamas’s behest.”
Birawi also runs the Palestinian Forum in Britain (PFB) and holds leadership positions in the Hamas-affiliated European Palestinians Conference (EPC), organizing anti-Israel protests, flotillas, and campaigns.
Birawi drew international attention in 2025 as a key organizer of the Gaza-bound aid flotilla.
Israel, which designated Birawi as a key Hamas operative in Europe in 2013, uncovered documents last year in Gaza revealing the terrorist group’s direct role in organizing and funding the flotilla.
Among those documents was a detailed list of PCPA activists involved in the flotilla, identifying Birawi as the head of the PCPA’s Hamas sector in Britain.
According to a 2024 report on Hamas civilian fronts in the UK and Europe, Birawi was identified as “one of the most prominent Hamas- and Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated operatives in the UK.”
The OFAC also sanctioned six Gaza-based charitable organizations — Waed Society, Al-Nur, Qawafil, Al-Falah, Merciful Hands, and Al-Salameh — for supporting Hamas’s military wing.
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Iran’s Rising Death Toll Ramps Up Pressure on Trump to Respond
Protesters gathered on Jan. 24, 2026, at Joachimsthaler Platz in western Berlin, Germany, to rally in support of anti-regime demonstrations in Iran, calling for US military intervention. Photo: Michael Kuenne/PRESSCOV via ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
More than 30,000 people may have been killed by Iranian security forces during a brutal crackdown on widespread anti-government protests earlier this month, according to new estimates that far exceed earlier death tolls.
The new figures have intensified pressure on the international community to respond to the Iranian regime’s shocking scale of violence, especially amid a US military buildup in the region following President Donald Trump’s repeated warnings to Iran and calls to help the protesters.
Two senior Iranian Ministry of Health officials told TIME that the scale of the killings and executions has overwhelmed the state’s capacity to dispose of the dead, as anti-regime protests erupted across more than 400 cities and towns, with over 4,000 clashes reported nationwide. According to the officials, as many as 30,000 people could have been killed in the streets of Iran on Jan. 8 and 9 alone.
The Iranian regime has reported an official death toll of 3,117. But new evidence suggests the true number is far higher, raising fears among activists and world leaders of crimes against humanity.
The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), which tracks deaths by name and location, has confirmed 5,937 deaths, including 214 security personnel. Nearly 20,000 potential deaths are still under investigation, and tens of thousands of additional Iranians have been arrested amid the crackdown.
According to Dr. Amir Parasta, a German-Iranian physician, the latest figures do not include protest-related deaths recorded at military hospitals or in regions the investigation never reached, suggesting the toll is likely to keep rising.
More than 30,000 fatalities have been registered so far. With the support of my dedicated colleagues in Iran, we have been able to submit verified figures on deaths, injuries, and executions to the United Nations and to governments, and we will continue to update these data.
— Prof. Dr. Amir-Mobarez Parasta (@ProfParasta) January 25, 2026
Aligned with the Ministry of Health’s new figures, Iran International reported that security forces killed over 36,500 Iranians during the Jan. 8–9 nationwide crackdown, marking the deadliest two-day protest massacre in modern history. Thew news outlet cited newly obtained classified documents, field reports, and accounts from medical staff, witnesses, and victims’ families.
Iran International also noted the prevalence of extrajudicial execution of a number of detainees.
“Images released from morgues leave little doubt that some wounded citizens were shot in the head while hospitalized and undergoing medical treatment. It is evident that, had these individuals sustained fatal head wounds on the streets, there would have been no reason to admit them to hospital or begin treatment in the first place,” the outlet reported. “The images also show that in some cases, medical tubes and patient-monitoring equipment remained attached to the bodies. In other cases, cardiac monitoring electrodes are visible on the chest, suggesting these individuals were under medical care before being shot in the head. A number of doctors and nurses have also told Iran International that so-called ‘finishing shots’ were fired at wounded patients.”
Some families of protesters who were killed have reportedly been told they must pay up to $20,000 to bury their loved ones, while others were forced to sign papers falsely claiming their relatives had served in the security forces instead of participating in the protests.
According to Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, director of Norway-based Iran Human Rights, the Islamist regime is using this technique to conflate the number of security forces killed and downplay the death toll among protesters.
“One reason for this practice is that the regime seeks to avoid international pressure for killing protesters,” Amiry-Moghaddam said. “Another motive is to prepare the ground for future executions of protesters.”
Iranian judicial officials have previously dismissed US President Donald Trump’s claims about halting execution sentences for protesters as “useless and baseless nonsense,” warning that the government’s response to the unrest will be “decisive, deterrent, and swift.”
With Iranian authorities now maintaining an internet blackout for nearly three weeks, the actual number of casualties remains difficult to verify. Activists fear the internet shutdown is being used to conceal the full extent of the crackdown on anti-regime protests.
Iranian officials told The New York Times that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered security forces to suppress protesters “by any means necessary,” with explicit instructions to “shoot to kill and show no mercy.”
The latest figures, double previous estimates, come as the United States and the broader international community face growing pressure to act against the regime’s ongoing violence. For its part, the Iranian government has warned that any attack will be treated “as an all-out war.”
As regional tensions mount over the regime’s brutal crackdown on anti-government protests, Washington has increased its military presence in the region, moving a range of assets into the area — including the USS Abraham Lincoln and its strike group.
On Sunday, the US Air Force said it was set to begin a multi-day readiness exercise across the Middle East “to demonstrate the ability to deploy, disperse, and sustain combat airpower” in the region.
The UK Ministry of Defense announced last week it had also deployed Typhoon fighter jets to Qatar “in a defensive capacity.”
In the last few weeks, Trump has repeatedly warned that he may take “decisive” military action against Iran if the regime continues killing protesters.
“We’re watching Iran,” Trump said on his way back from the World Economic Forum in Davos. “I’d rather not see anything happen but we’re watching them very closely.”
With pressure mounting for Iran at home and abroad, experts say it remains unclear how Tehran will respond — whether by escalating militarily beyond its borders or by offering limited concessions to ease sanctions and mend ties with the West.
The nationwide protests, which began with a shopkeepers’ strike in Tehran on Dec. 28, initially reflected public anger over the soaring cost of living, a deepening economic crisis, and the rial — Iran’s currency — plummeting to record lows amid renewed economic sanctions, with annual inflation near 40 percent.
However, the demonstrations quickly swelled into a broader anti-government movement calling for the fall of Khamenei and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and even a broader collapse of the country’s Islamist, authoritarian system.
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Jewish Cemetery Desecrated in Barcelona, More Than 20 Graves Vandalized
Photo of vandalized tombstones in Barcelona via Federation of Jewish Community of Barcelona (CJB).
Vandals on Sunday targeted the Jewish cemetery in Barcelona, desecrating more than 20 graves and smashing tombstones.
The crime comes amid a sharp rise in antisemitic incidents and anti-Israel sentiment across Spain, whose Jewish community has expressed alarm over the increasingly hostile environment.
“We have seen how, at demonstrations, online and on the street, hate speech against Jews became routine. Then signs appeared across the city. Later, posters were hung on public buildings with slogans,” the Jewish Community of Barcelona said in a statement. “After that, a map was published marking Jewish targets, including a school. And now, the desecration of graves. This is not random. This is an escalation. From slogans to marking. From marking to threats. And from threats to action.”
The statement referred to an online platform mapping Jewish-owned businesses, schools, and Israeli-linked companies in Catalonia, a region in northeastern Spain.
A spokesperson for the Catalan police told Agence France Presse that “we are aware of the [cemetery] incident and have opened an investigation,”
The European Jewish Congress (EJC) condemned the vandalism on X.
“What we are seeing is not isolated. It is part of a wider escalation that begins with words, continues with targeting and intimidation and ends in acts like this,” the EJC said. “When hate is normalized in public discourse, the step to physical action becomes smaller.”
Israel’s Foreign Ministry also released a statement with photos of the crime, saying, “We condemn the vandalism of the Jewish cemetery in Barcelona. This despicable act is a result of the anti-Israel campaign by the Sánchez government. We stand with Spain’s Jewish community. Antisemitism must never be normalized and must be firmly rejected in all societies.”
In September, Lorenzo Rodríguez, mayor of Castrillo Mota de Judíos in northern Spain, warned that Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez had fueled antisemitic sentiment.
“The government is fostering antisemitism that will prove deeply damaging for Spain,” Rodríguez said. “Sánchez’s moves are less about serious foreign policy and more about deflecting attention from his trials and failures in governance.”
Rodríguez described his view that Spain “isn’t leading anything — it’s merely whitewashing Hamas and other terrorist groups.”
Sánchez had told members of his Socialist Workers’ Party that month that Israel should not be allowed to participate in international sports and that the Jewish state “cannot continue to use any international platform to whitewash its image.”
Spain’s Culture Minister Ernest Urtasun has expressed similar calls for boycotting Israel, saying, “We have to make sure that Israel does not take part in the next Eurovision,” referring to the international song contest.
Madrid has been one of the West’s fiercest critics of Israel’s defensive military campaign in Gaza following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.
“What [Israeli] Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu presented in October 2023 as a military operation in response to the horrific terrorist attacks has ended up becoming a new wave of illegal occupations and an unjustifiable attack against the Palestinian civilian population – an attack that the UN special rapporteur and the majority of experts already describe as a genocide,” Sánchez said in a televised speech last year.
The diplomatic tension between the two nations reached a boiling point in September, when Madrid recalled its ambassador.
The American Jewish Committee (AJC) describes Barcelona as notable for its anti-Israel sentiment, characterizing its position as an “outlier status.”
The AJC wrote in May 2023 that in February of that year, “Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau announced that Spain’s second-largest city would sever ties with its twin city Tel Aviv. The move answered the demands of anti-Israel activists who in January had petitioned the city council to condemn Israel.”
The Anti-Defamation League’s Global 100 report names Spain as one of the most antisemitic countries in Europe (ranked 15 out of 18 in the region), with 26 percent of adults — 10.4 million people — expressing belief in six or more bigoted tropes against Jews.
The Spanish Jewish community recently filed complaints over an online platform that targeted Jewish establishments.
First reported by the local Jewish outlet Enfoque Judío, the interactive map — known as Barcelonaz — was launched by an unidentified group claiming to be “journalists, professors, and students” on the French-hosted mapping platform GoGoCarto.
As a publicly accessible and collaboratively created online platform, the map marked over 150 schools, Jewish-owned businesses — including kosher food shops — and Israeli-linked as well as Spanish and international companies operating in Israel, labeling them as “Zionist.”
Jewish leaders in Spain strongly denounced the BarcelonaZ initiative, warning that it fostered further discrimination and hatred against the community amid an increasingly hostile environment in which Jews and Israelis continue to be targeted.
Amid the backlash, GoGoCarto announced it had removed the BarcelonaZ project from its website after local groups denounced the initiative as blatantly antisemitic and dangerous.