In Israel, streets swell with an urgent battle cry: ‘Democracy!’
As protests go, there’s a difference between chants, over the years, of “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Bibi has got to go,” and repeated shouts of “Democracy!”
This one word – pronounced “De-mo-crat-ya” in Hebrew – is the protest slogan of the moment.
In recent weeks, it has echoed across Israel with increasing urgency, anxiety, and frequency. And it is repeated – often accompanied by a steady beat of drums – by citizens from a widening swath of the political spectrum.
The groundswell is a reaction to proposed legislation by the new hard-right religious-nationalist coalition led by “Bibi,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which would give the government more power to select judges and allow it to overrule Supreme Court rulings with a simple majority in parliament.
The government calls the legislation a
