Melbourne rally: ‘This is the time to stand up for the democratic Israel’

Rabbi Yonatan Sadoff told crowd of 200-plus at Caulfield demo on Sunday: 'Hundreds of thousands of Israelis have turned out to protest. In Melbourne today we join those voices.'

More than 200 members of Melbourne’s Israeli and Jewish community gathered at Caulfield Park on Sunday to voice solidarity for a “democratic Israel” in protest at the far-Right government.

The rally, which was much bigger than the first one held the week before, was addressed by Rabbi Yonatan Sadoff from the Kehilat Nitzan congregation, who told the crowd that “we are concerned, frightened sad and even angry about the moves of the current government to make a sudden and complete break with the basic values of the State of Israel as it was founded.”

Rabbi Sadoff specified the government’s policies that had brought the protesters together. “We stand in protest at the government’s proposed judicial overhaul that would radically alter Israel’s system of checks and balances, giving the ruling coalition absolute control over the selection of judges and allowing that coalition to overrule Supreme Court decisions with a 61-seat majority.

“We stand in protest of proposed changes to the law of return.

“We stand in protest of a discourse within the leading political coalition openly discriminating against Jews of liberal streams representing millions of Jews around the world and in Israel, against secular Jews, against the LGBTQ community and against Arabs.”

Rabbi Madoff reminded the rally that they were a part of an international protest movement. “Each week, hundreds of thousands of Israelis have turned out to protest in major cities. Here we are in Melbourne Australia today joining those voices.”