Can a Protest Movement Topple Netanyahu?

Call it the Jerusalem pilgrimage of summer 2020. Every Saturday night, thousands of young people from around Israel gather outside the prime minister’s residence, on Balfour Street, beating drums, blowing whistles, and holding signs quoting biblical injunctions against bribery and demanding the resignation of Benjamin Netanyahu, who faces trial on three counts of corruption. Netanyahu, having presided over a plunging economy and a botched response to a second wave of COVID-19, finds his popularity slipping—although, according to polls, his Likud party would remain the largest after a new election. Netanyahu has dismissed the demonstrators as “anarchists” and “leftists”—read: elite Ashkenazis—while his son Yair, who tweeted his heartfelt wish that the protesters would die of the coronavirus, has mocked them as “aliens,” extraterrestrials. His father “finds them amusing,” Yair told an interviewer.

On a recent Saturday night, some demonstrators wore sparkling antennae and green masks, and carried posters with drawings of ET. Proud Alien, one read. Another proclaimed: The planet’s Hebrew name, Tsedek, means “justice.” The posters were mostly hand-drawn, expressions of the intensely personal way Israelis relate to their country. Strangers gave one another a thumbs-up for a particularly clever slogan. There were dozens of Israeli flags.