The flags, the signs and the great cry: this is what the great demonstration in Tel Aviv looked like | Israel Today

The size and power cannot be ignored.

Yesterday, Tel Aviv looked like a swarm of people who navigated themselves to a protest on Kaplan Street or to the one in Bhima, like on the day of command.

Tens of thousands are equipped with Israeli flags, homemade signs, megaphones, drums.

The viewer Binyamin Netanyahu must have chosen to remember November 1, happier and less threatening moments.

Tens of thousands are equipped with Israeli flags, photo: no credit

Express their protest, photo: Noam Rivkin Fenton Flash 90

I didn't know what to start the evening with.

In the protest of the movement for the quality of government in the Bima Square, or of the protestors, the opponents, those who closed Kaplan Street in front of Kiryat Yavlat.

I started with Kaplan, hoping that with the check they also serve refreshments and soft drinks.

Documentation from the drone: about 110 thousand people came to a demonstration in Tel Aviv against the legal reform, January 21, 2023 // Gil Kramer

"I'll tell you why I chose to come here," volunteered to tell Avrom, who made the long journey from Kibbutz Kfar Rupin in the Beit Shan valley.

"Eliad Shraga is doing a great job, I even donate to him, but I think he got a little pissed off and I won't add. The main thing is that both places will be full. Such processes take time."

The place filled up quickly.

Yom Kippur in the middle of the year.

On the road, in front of the Government Kiryat, I met the head of the Institute for National Security Studies, former member of the Knesset Manuel Trachtenberg, who following the 2011 protest was appointed to head a public committee that sought to find a solution to the cost of living.

A committee appointed by Prime Minister Netanyahu.

Israeli flags and slogans against the government, photo: Herzi Shapira

"It's important that this voice be heard," Trachtenberg said as the surrounding protest turned up the volume.

"I am in favor of changes in the judicial system, but not like this. Not in such haste and unilaterally. In football, when a team has a small advantage over the other, it cannot change all the rules."

"We divided forces"

I made a big round to look for representation from the other side of the political map.

Right-wingers are difficult to identify, but at least they wear a kippah.

Maybe there were, I didn't find it.

"That's a good question," agreed Nadav Itan, from the front.

"The protest is not against them. The ultra-Orthodox and religious Zionists are our brothers. We are here because of things that can harm them too, such as individual rights. Issues because of which normative, nerdy and quiet people like us will continue to come week after week."

Demonstrator waving a sign, photo: Noam Rivkin Fenton Flash 90

Not far from him walked Professor Oren Zemachouni, director of the Infectious Diseases Unit at Kaplan Hospital, with a sign.

The doctors' protest sought to convey a message.

"It's not right or left - it's democracy, and without it you can't have good and equal medicine," said a vegetarian professor.

"The right-wing has ruled here since '77, so there was no democracy with Begin and Shamir?"

The protest spread throughout the country, photo: Gideon Markovich

I ended up at Bima Square where the demonstration was more modest, but still one that created an impressive territorial sequence in the center of Tel Aviv. "We divided forces," explained Dina from Ramat Gan.

With all due respect to the outgoing Prime Minister, Yair Lapid and the senior opposition leaders - this was the people's protest.

She may be polite at the moment and not break dishes, but she is as strong as a gloomy sky that foretells that soon, literally, the flood will catch us.

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