5.5% of Israel's Population Attended Last Night's Protest Against Netanyahu's Attack on Supreme Court of Israel

For the past 10 Saturdays, there have been nationwide protests in Israel against Prime Minister Netanyahu's plans to strip Israel's Supreme Court and the judiciary of its independence. During last night's protests, an estimated 500,000 people turned out.

Let's put this number into perspective. Israel's current population is approximately 9 million people (perhaps 9.1 million). This means approximately 5.5% of Israel's population was on out the streets last night making their voices heard against Netanyahu's judicial policies. That is a critical mass.

To put this into further perspective, the largest single day protest in U.S. history took place on January 21, 2017. This, of course, was the Women's March which took place the day after Donald Trump's inauguration which I attended in Boston. More than 4 million people or an estimated 1.3 % of the U.S. population attended those protests. If there was a protest on the scale of what took place in Israel last night in this country, then we're talking about somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 million Americans. 

Of course, if 20 million Americans did attend a single day protest that would be spread out over several thousand miles. Israel is slightly larger than New Jersey and has similar population totals. If half a million people in New Jersey took to the streets, then you would have an approximate scale of what occurred in Israel last night. Then again New Jersey only has to contend with New York and Pennsylvania while Israel must contend with Iran and Saudi Arabia (which have now entered a rapprochement facilitated by China) and the Palestinians. 

So does any of this matter to Netanyahu? There might have been 500,000 this past Saturday night but what about next Saturday night? And the Saturday night after? Netanyahu and his coalition plan to proceed apace unless the coalition collapses from within and this does not seem likely at this point. There might be pressure brought to bear by the Biden Administration but Israeli officials will probably continue to tell the U.S. to mind its own business. This could very well create an impasse and with it a diplomatic crisis. 

While I don't think any U.S. administration should dictate what policies are enacted by Israel, we are now in a situation where Israel is enacting a policy that will effectively turn it into an authoritarian state and hundreds of thousands of Israelis are willing to take to the streets against it. If the Biden Administration does apply pressure, then it should be light and let Israelis themselves apply the bulk of the pressure as they have been doing. 

With that we shall see what happens next Saturday night.