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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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In its first detailed response to ‘NAZA’ documentary, IDF claims ‘fundamental errors’
(JTA) — The IDF on Thursday issued its first detailed response to “NAZA” after viewing the full documentary alleging Israeli forces knowingly killed large numbers of civilians in the Gaza war, accusing the filmmakers of making fundamental errors about how civilian-casualty estimates, strike approvals and intelligence tools were used.
“The film’s narrative is based on substantial factual errors stemming from a misrepresented and manipulative depiction of reality,” the IDF said in a statement accompanying its findings. The film “presents a distorted, misleading and disingenuous picture of the IDF’s target planning and striking process,” the military said, arguing that it conflates preliminary intelligence work with the later operational and legal process used to decide whether and how a target can be struck.
The filmmakers, who are Israeli, have previously defended the film’s reporting, saying the identities of its anonymous sources and the cases they described were verified and that editors at the Guardian, which produced the film, had access to the underlying material.
The 10-page response came after an IDF representative attended a screening of “NAZA,” directed by filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, in Bologna, Italy, allowing the military to assess the full film for the first time. The army had previously rejected the documentary’s allegations based on excerpts and publicly available material, saying at the time that the filmmakers had not provided it with a copy despite a request to do so.
The film is based on interviews with 24 Israeli soldiers, most of them intelligence personnel, who describe their roles in surveillance, target selection and strikes in Gaza. NAZA is the Hebrew acronym for collateral damage. The film, which won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival last month, argues that the military accepted high civilian casualty estimates, relied heavily on AI tools to generate targets and weakened safeguards governing strikes.
The IDF in its response Thursday rejected one of the documentary’s most prominent claims, that a strike had been approved despite an estimated civilian death toll of about 500. The military said it had “never planned, approved or carried out” a strike in which 500 civilians, or “anything close to that number,” were expected to be killed.
The IDF also rejected the film’s claim that junior Hamas operatives could be approved for targeting with up to 20 expected civilian casualties, and that senior commanders could be targered with as many as 200. It said the film had confused thresholds requiring approval from more senior commanders, who could then reject the operation, with permission to kill a fixed number of civilians. The military said that no 200-casualty approval threshold had ever existed and that actual thresholds were “much lower,” without specifying what the thresholds were.
The IDF did acknowledge that several incidents involving civilian deaths near humanitarian aid distribution sites prompted operational reviews, changes to instructions and other measures in those areas. However, it disputed testimony that soldiers fired indiscriminately at civilians near the sites and said troops were permitted to fire only at militants or people posing an immediate threat.
Abraham has accused Israeli media of failing to seriously investigate civilian casualties and rules of engagement in Gaza during the war.
The IDF also rejected the film’s suggestion that civilians who remained in evacuation zones could then be treated as legitimate targets. It said evacuation orders did not change a civilian’s status and that every strike still required identification of a military target and a separate proportionality assessment.
When it came to the film’s portrayal of “Lavender” as an AI-powered list of targets approved for attack, the military said the production had misunderstood what the program was: a database used to cross-reference intelligence on members of militant groups which did not make someone in the database a target.
“Artificial intelligence does not determine whether an object or a person is designated as a target, nor whether a target is struck,” the IDF said, adding that those decisions are made by human analysts and commanders.
The IDF also argued that many of the anonymous soldiers featured in “NAZA” were describing only “limited, initial stages” of the targeting process. “Such testimonies therefore cannot be treated as a complete account of the policies at hand, the decisions made and what ultimately happened,” the military said.
A Guardian News & Media spokesperson, in a statement sent to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, said the Guardian “stands fully behind the film,” which it said was based on three years of reporting by the outlet and its partners and interviews with more than 100 sources familiar with IDF systems used in Gaza, including senior commanders involved in authorizing strikes.
The Guardian also rejected what it described as the IDF’s attempt to portray the film’s interviewees as “junior-ranking officers involved only in the early stages of the targeting process.”
“They include officers and soldiers who were involved in multiple stages of the targeting process in Gaza, including intelligence, operations and the final authorization process,” the statement said.
The military did not describe all 24 participants as junior personnel and said only that the testimony of the soldiers interviewed in the film “generally” focused on “limited, initial stages” of the targeting process.
The Guardian said the “process of assessing the credibility of the testimonies was rigorous” and included “leaked classified documents, detailed verification of specific strikes and corroboration via a wider pool of confidential journalistic sources who did not appear on camera in the film.”
The Guardian also said the New York Times, Washington Post and Associated Press had “confirmed the IDF’s use of AI-driven systems in the Gaza offensive and the loosening of safeguards to protect civilians.”
The IDF disputed the film’s suggestion that it did not examine civilian casualties after attacks. Several units tracked strike outcomes and civilian-casualty reports and hundreds of incidents had been reviewed during the war, the military said, arguing that intelligence personnel interviewed in “NAZA” do not appear to belong to those units and “are not positioned to testify on this matter.”
The IDF rejected the film’s criticism that its collateral-damage estimates did not distinguish between adults and children. It said international law treats all civilians as protected regardless of age, adding that when commanders knew children were present, that information “led commanders to cancel, postpone or replan strikes.”
It also pushed back on an interviewee’s claim that the IDF believed there were “no uninvolved civilians in Gaza,” saying that may have reflected the soldier’s personal views but did not represent military policy or orders. It also rejected the film’s genocide allegations, saying the interviewees were not in positions to establish genocidal intent by senior commanders or political leaders.
The IDF also criticized the filmmakers’ reporting methods, saying they provided no dates, locations or other identifying details for alleged strikes and did not put their specific allegations to the military before the film’s release. “The filmmakers could have identified and avoided the substantial errors apparent in the film had they conducted adequate verification and corroboration in good faith. The end result shows they did not,” the military said.
The Guardian statement did not say whether the filmmakers solicited detailed responses from the IDF, and why if they did not..
The military said “NAZA” also gave insufficient weight to the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, the group’s use of civilian areas for military activity and measures Israel says it took to reduce civilian casualties, including warnings, changes to strike plans and the cancellation of attacks.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post In its first detailed response to ‘NAZA’ documentary, IDF claims ‘fundamental errors’ appeared first on The Forward.
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Zara removes Halloween costume likened to concentration camp uniform
(JTA) — Spanish fashion retailer Zara removed a children’s Halloween costume from its website on Wednesday after social media users noted that the gray-and-blue striped outfit resembled prison garb worn by inmates in Nazi concentration camps.
Zara described the ensemble as “Kids costume featuring vertical stripes with decorative topstitching, a lapel flower and a distressed effect. Includes a cardigan and shorts. Gray / Blue.”
The post was visible via a Google search that continued to display an indexed version of the Zara product page after the listing itself had been removed.
The costume resembles the suit worn by Michael Keaton’s title character in the 1988 horror-comedy “Beetlejuice” and its 2024 sequel, “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.” Even so, social media users said the vertical stripes and shiny crisscrosses, which some media outlets described as “fake stitched scars,” resembled concentration camp uniforms and the barbed wire visible in many World War II photos.
Priced at $59.90 in the U.S., according to another indexed version of the listing, the costume drew criticism online in Europe on Tuesday. It gained wider attention Wednesday after Israeli journalist Dov Gil-Har, activist Hen Mazzig and others shared images of it on X.
The listing was no longer accessible by Wednesday afternoon. It was unclear exactly when Zara removed it. No reason was given for its removal, and Zara has not made any public statements regarding the controversy, nor has it responded to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s request for comment.
One Instagram commenter wrote “@zara how many levels of approval did this go though (sic)? Who is working for you?” A Facebook user said “It’s supposed to be a groom costume. It does somewhat resemble a (sic) Auschwitz uniform. With all the anti-semitism on the rise I am not surprised.” Another Instagram user asked, “What were they claiming it was meant to be?”
Zara has in the past faced similar controversies over clothing that evoked Nazi or Holocaust imagery. In 2007, it withdrew a handbag from its stores after a customer discovered a swastika embroidered on it; Inditex, Zara’s parent company, said the symbol had not appeared on the design Zara had approved.
In 2014 Zara apologized for selling a blue-and-white-striped shirt with six-pointed yellow-star badges on the chest. The Zara Israel website identified it as a “striped sheriff t-shirt” and the word sheriff was cut out in small letters on the star. The likeness to concentration camp uniforms and the yellow Star of David badges Jews were forced to wear under Nazi rule led Zara to stop selling the shirts and destroy the remaining inventory.
When reached for comment, the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, which represents Holocaust survivors in compensation negotiations, said the repeated incidents underscore the need for Holocaust education.
“This is not the first time this has happened and it once again makes abundantly clear: The glaring absence of Holocaust knowledge is pervasive,” Gideon Taylor, Claims Conference president, wrote in an email to JTA. “It shouldn’t take the risk of a Shoah survivor opening their door and seeing children that look like they are in concentration camp uniforms for us to see where we have to do better. This should serve as a message to us all of why Holocaust education is so important.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Zara removes Halloween costume likened to concentration camp uniform appeared first on The Forward.
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Jewish groups hail California law making it the first state to list ‘Jewish’ as an ethnicity
(JTA) — California is now the first state in the nation to deem “Jewish” an ethnic and racial identity, rather than just a religious affiliation.
Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday signed SB 1387, a bill that expands California’s legal definition of ethnicity “to include Jewish identity” in demographic data collection. As of Jan. 1, 2029, forms distributed by public entities like schools and prisons will need to include a “Jewish” category when asking for voluntary disclosures of ethnicity or race.
David Bocarsly, CEO of Jewish California, a group that lobbies on behalf of a number of Jewish organizations in the state, described the signing in a statement as “a historic step for the Jewish community.”
“Under the shadow of Nazi race theory, American Jewish leaders asked the government to count us only as a religion,” he said, noting that this approach “didn’t work” and led to exclusion from data that shapes policy.
“Now hate crime, health, poverty, and education data will reflect who Jewish Californians actually are so we can ensure the best support for our community,” Bocarsly added. “Most importantly, it allows us to be seen as the diverse, complex people we are.”
The legislation was a priority among many Jewish groups across the Gold Rush state, who believe that Jewish peoplehood should be connected to more than just religion — and that the law should reflect this relationship.
Newsom, however, expressed some reservations in signing the bill into law.
“I strongly support this bill’s goal: accurate data leads to better understanding to inform policy,” Newsom, who is considering a presidential run in 2028, wrote in a signing statement. But he said he was concerned that the bill’s strictures would make it hard for state agencies to comply with the new law and with federal laws, and recommended revisiting the bill.
In addition to signing SB 1387 on Wednesday — the final day on which he could approve or veto bills in this year’s legislative session — Newsom also authorized AB 395, which will prohibit public meetings and graduations from being scheduled on major cultural and religious holidays.
“Californians of all faiths and backgrounds should be able to fully participate in public life,” the bill’s author, Democratic Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel, said in a statement.
“For too long members of our religious communities have been forced to choose between observing their faith and participating in important public events and academic milestones,” added Gabriel, who chairs the California Legislative Jewish Caucus.
Also on Wednesday, Newsom approved AB 1763, which will include religious holiday observance as a type of excused absence in schools without requiring a written request from a parent or guardian.
Newsom signed other bills relevant to the Jewish community in the past few days, including AB 2664, which will establish 100-foot protective zones around entrances to houses of worship.
Another new law is AB 1836, which will close a gap in California’s nonprofit security grant structure by extending funds to off-site religious events like Hanukkah menorah lightings. The governor also approved AB 1853, enacting a ban on including misleading or threatening information, like hate speech, in California voter guides.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Jewish groups hail California law making it the first state to list ‘Jewish’ as an ethnicity appeared first on The Forward.
