Israeli CEOs ditch the C-suite to lead the anti-government protests

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Galit Altstein

Sixteen members of a roving paid workforce. A volunteer steering committee of former military chiefs of staff, public-relations gurus and top-tier lawyers who speak daily. A budget in the tens of millions of dollars.

Israel’s anti-government protest movement, the largest in the nation’s history, has taken over the streets for seven months since plans emerged to weaken the power of the courts. On Saturday night, they again brought hundreds of thousands out. But they are not radicals neglected by the establishment — they are the establishment. And they are using traditional symbols like the flag to fight the populist policies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“This is the backbone of Israeli society — people who’ve founded companies and headed large organizations,” says Shikma Bressler, a physicist and protest leader. “Some have carried out special military operations.”

“People arrested on the streets include CEOs of unicorns,” she adds, referring to the term for a startup valued at more than $1 billion.

Five other activists with inside knowledge gave behind-the-scenes details on condition of anonymity.

They estimate that 270 groups are active, involving some 800,000 individuals. They’ve deployed scores of photography drones, mobilized late-night operations to wrap monuments with slogan-filled banners, and sent out thousands of women dressed in the red capes and white bonnets of the Margaret Atwood novel “The Handmaid’s Tale.”

They succeeded in stopping Netanyahu’s right-wing religious government from rushing the entire judicial overhaul through the Knesset, as the parliament is known. With the government preparing to pass at least one key change, the movement is calculating its next steps.

Netanyahu’s plans have unnerved global investors, with Israel’s stocks, bonds and currency performing badly this year relative to similar assets in other countries. The US has also criticized the overhaul.

“We will have to direct our efforts against actions that will become possible under the new law,” says Bressler.

Her grassroots group, known as the “Kaplan Force,” after a street in central Tel Aviv that has hosted the weekly Saturday night demonstrations, is the largest. And she’s become the face of the movement.

She’s not new to the demonstration business. She led anti-corruption protests against Netanyahu starting in 2019. That meant that when the judicial overhaul arose seven months ago, the group had a solid infrastructure for getting people onto the streets. 

There are 140 sectoral or professional groups of military reservists, high-tech executives, women’s-rights activists, doctors and lawyers. At the Saturday night protests, they occupy the same spot, like at a farmers’ market. Some 130 additional groups organize local demonstrations across the country.

Netanyahu says doing ‘excellently’, plans to attend vote on Monday 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was “doing excellently” after an overnight hospitalisation and vowed to be in parliament on Monday to vote for a disputed judicial reform that triggered a fresh round of mass protests on Sunday. With Israel embroiled in its most serious domestic political crisis in decades, the 73-year-old leader was rushed to Sheba Medical Center near Tel Aviv on Saturday after a heart monitor implanted a week earlier in what was described as a dehydration episode.

Reuters