Published: 9 December 2019
Last updated: 4 March 2024
The protesters, mostly pensioners, sat on plastic chairs amid nylon tents and banners that read “Israel is stronger than Netanyahu,” and “loving Israel, bidding Netanyahu goodbye”. With an abundance of cookies, fruit, and freshly brewed coffee, the atmosphere was almost joyous.
“The reason why you don’t see young people here is that they’re either working or studying at this hour, but they’ll be here this evening,” a bearded elderly man told the crowd through a loudspeaker.
The organiser of the demonstration is professor Yoram Yovel, a renowned Israeli psychiatrist and the grandson of firebrand thinker Yeshayahu Leibowitz. Wearing a baseball cap with the Israeli flag and a black t-shirt with the word “go!” printed on it, Yovel arrived late.
He was carrying paintbrushes and blank white signs ready for painting. This was Yovel’s second week camped out in the leafy park, which he said was “the closest location to the prime minister’s residence that doesn’t block traffic.”
Yovel’s passionate message, soon delivered to the crowd in a calm and measured impromptu speech, was unmistakable. “Bibi is a danger to Israel,” he says, referring to Netanyahu. “He will subjugate not only his party Likud, but the entire state of Israel, to his personal needs.
“The only thing he sees ahead of him right now is the VIP wing at Maasiyahu prison. I don’t blame him for doing everything he can to save his skin.”
According to Yovel, there is indeed no chance that Netanyahu will resign voluntarily, so 61 members of Knesset, a parliamentary majority, must depose him before new elections are called. “119 MKs can prevent elections,” he says. “I think I know what number 120 will vote.”
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A man in a car driving by shouted “only Bibi,” but Yovel remains unfazed. “I don’t judge him. This man is the product of the best marketing person in the world,” he says.
Yovel’s words clearly resonated with his audience, which he characterised as people, like himself, who “don’t like to shout.” He therefore encouraged them to paint a sign and silently carry it with them when they go shopping. “Writing things on social media will change nothing. We need boots on the ground.”
This tired, nostalgic, elite, stood in stark contrast to the angry, energised protesters who gathered at Tel Aviv Museum last month to support the prime minister.
Avraham Shochat, who served as finance minister in the Labour governments of Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres and Ehud Barak, said he and his wife decided to heed Yovel’s call to action, which they read about in the newspaper.
“Netanyahu’s claim that there’s a conspiracy by the police and legal authorities to depose him exceeds his personal case and has become a national problem of the first order,” Shochat says. . “What he’s doing poses a great danger to Israeli democracy and to our way of life.”
Netanyahu had consulted the veteran Shochat when serving as finance minister in Ariel Sharon’s government in the early 2000s. But Shochat said he could never forget Yitzhak Rabin -- who sat next to him in Knesset -- stomping out of the plenary in protest when Netanyahu got up to speak, a day after leading an infamous anti-government demonstration in Jerusalem in October 1995.
“In my opinion, his unacceptable behaviour is part of his personality,” Shochat says. “From the first moment, he was dishonest and didn’t tell the truth.
Chava Kristal, 65, of Kibbutz Evron near the Lebanese border, took the train to the protest “to support a country I’ll like and that will be worthy for my children.
“Yoram Yovel came out of academia to act instead of standing by, and we’re here to support him,” says Michal Shmueli of Kibbutz Matzuba, Kristal’s childhood friend. “Democracy is in decline, religiosity is on the rise, and no one’s doing anything about it.”
“Netanyahu’s forgotten that we elected him, not the other way around,” she adds.
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Photo: Yoram Yovel speaks to a protest rally (Elhanan Miller)
