Protesters have prevailed in at least one battle – for the Israeli flag

By adopting the flag as their symbol, they have managed to brand their movement as one of patriotism and conservation of the status quo.

Virtually every afternoon, when Ha'aretz journalist Judy Maltz passes by the Hashalom train station in Tel Aviv, she sees a young man standing by himself on the bridge over the Ayalon highway, holding an Israeli flag that says, "Free in Our Land".

One day she asked him what he was doing. "I'm protesting," he said. “I come here most days after work and stand here for anywhere from half an hour to two hours to vent my outrage over the government of Israel.”

This short anecdote symbolises how powerful the Israeli flag has become as a symbol for preserving the status quo.

The protest movement that emerged in January to oppose the judicial reform will be remembered in Israeli history as one of the longest and most transformative in shaping the fault lines of Israeli society. Some 32 weeks into the protesters’ campaign, 60.5% of the country support their goals and strongly oppose the first law passed by the 64 MKs of the Netanyahu coalition.

In most anti-government campaigns around the world, the protesters are often marked by the establishment as being rabble rousers and unpatriotic. While the right-wing tried to do that in Israel, this line of attack ultimately fell flat, leading the democracy movement to have a wide array of support, including most parts of the mainstream media, academia, the banking sector and, especially, the high-tech sector.

By adopting the national flag as their symbol and making it synonymous with the most sustained anti-government protest we have seen in generations, they have managed to brand their movement as one of patriotism and conservation of the status quo, while depicting those who support the overhaul as dangerous revolutionaries.