On video: about 80,000 people demonstrated in Tel Aviv against the legal revolution (photo: Yotam Ronan, Shlomi Gabai, Sima Sasson, Network 13, the Black Flags, Crime Minister)
Under pouring rain, armed with Israeli flags and umbrellas, tens of thousands of citizens went out yesterday to demonstrate in Tel Aviv against the reform to weaken the justice system.
Men and women, young and old, Arabs and Jews, secular as well as religious, Tel Aviv hipsters and army chiefs and former officers. Apart from ultra-Orthodox, almost everything was there. Politicians too: members of the state camp Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, the chairman of the Labor Party Merav Michaeli , activists of Meretz and Knesset members of Yesh Atid.
Even RA chairman Mansour Abbas was there in an unusual guest appearance.
Tzipi Livni spoke on stage, Zehava Galon and Bogie Ya'alon ran between the media booths.
Ehud Barak jumped after a round on television.
All the leaders of the center-left camp for generations were there, except for one, who stood out by his absence: opposition leader Yair Lapid, who holds, at least officially, his current title of leader.
It is not clear how Lapid did not have FOMO, or in Hebrew: anxiety of missing out, and how he could sit at home while his entire clan gathers together for such a big event, only half an hour away from his home in Ramat Aviv.
As at the end of last week, when he took off for a vacation in Paris only a few hours after Justice Minister Yariv Levin presented his plans, this time too Lapid's absence cried out to the heavens.
Especially since he himself stated at the beginning of the week that he will join the upcoming protest, that "we will fight in the streets" and that it is a "war for the house".
The message worked.
His people showed up en masse to shout their anxiety and protest about the extreme and hasty changes that the new government is promoting, despite the rain and the cold and the roadblocks and the traffic jams.
The fighters for the rule of law and democracy arrived, but the one who is supposed to be their commander - preferred to stay at home.
left a vacuum, into which Gantz entered.
Lapid (Photo: Flash 90, Olivier Fitoussi)
Behind his absence there is of course a lot of politics and ego.
On Monday, Lapid convened the heads of the opposition parties, excluding the banned Hadash-Ta'al, and suggested that they organize a joint demonstration, at the same time or as part of the civil protest that had already begun in Tel Aviv the previous Saturday evening.
It didn't go very smoothly.
Israel Beitenu Chairman Avigdor Lieberman disapproved of demonstrations in collaboration with "leftists and Palestinian flags", and the meeting ended without an announcement or a joint statement. An hour later, the protest organizations in Bhima announced another demonstration, and made it clear that politicians are invited to attend - but as one person, without making a speech or To take an official part on stage, so as not to color the protest in a strong political color.
On Wednesday, Lapid was interviewed by News 13 and said that he - and Gantz - agreed together that they would not come to the demonstration.
Well, whether there was an agreement or not, Gantz did not live up to it.
The next day, he publicly confirmed his arrival in Habeme and scolded his former partner in the cockpit, for the second time in two weeks: when the head of the opposition was in Paris, Gantz quickly filled the vacuum when he sent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a proposal to establish a joint team that would formulate agreements on legal reform.
And while Shalapid was playing power games with the leaders of the protest in Bhima, Gantz snatched the ownership of the demonstration from him.
without speaking.
With a megaphone, an Israeli flag and troopers, he walked among the enthusiastic crowds like a groom on his holiday, grabbing the photographers and the screen time, and making Lapid's absence so present.
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stung Lapid.
Gantz (Photo: Flash 90, Yonatan Zindel)
Under pouring rain, armed with Israeli flags and umbrellas.
The demonstration in the Bhima square last night (photo: official website, drone photo: Amir Goldstein)
MK Eisenkot, in his first demonstration in life, was also the star of the evening. Eisenkot, who at the end of November already called to "take a million people to the streets" in response to the planned measures of the Netanyahu government, received the prestigious slot at the end of "Ofira and Berkovic" on Shish and called to show up in the demonstration with thousands Israeli flags. Without a pompous entourage of security guards like Gantz, only with his son and two advisers, the former Chief of Staff made a hasty debut at the demonstrations, plowing the square lengthwise and widthwise and wading through the rain among the crowds and umbrellas.
He didn't make fiery speeches, he just met the demonstrators at eye level and stood among them and by their side during the speeches and songs.
But actually his presence lit up the face of everyone who came his way.
"We don't have the option of being discouraged. There is no such word in the lexicon," he repeated to the occasional passers-by who asked to shake hands or take a selfie as a souvenir.
The democratic-liberal camp, which went out to demonstrate yesterday en masse, is defeated and frightened by the apparent regime changes, and longs for leaders who will fight with and for it.
From the beginning, Lapid heads a conflicted and divided opposition, with limited to zero ability to stop or influence the government's moves in the Knesset, which enjoys an overwhelming coalition majority of 64 mandates.
Therefore, the front of opposition to the government will move through the streets, and into the public and conscious arena.
Lapid's decision to be absent from the demonstration transmits a disconnection from the collective anxiety of his base, and like the trip to Paris, may burn him in the mind as someone who does not understand the magnitude of the event.
And in the space created - others will enter.
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Political-political
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Yair Lapid
demonstrations
Benny Gantz
Gadi Eisenkot