Legal scholar tells Tel Aviv rally that proposed changes will make judiciary ‘a little Knesset’

Legal scholar Barak Medina tells some 1,000 anti-government protesters in Tel Aviv that the agreement reached this week between Justice Minister Yariv Levin and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar regarding changes to the Judicial Selection Committee will “destroy the judiciary as an independent branch of government,” making it “nothing more than a little Knesset” in which judges are appointed for their political positions.

It may not have been a coincidence, he asserts, that Levin and Sa’ar’s ceremonious announcement of the agreement Thursday coincided with the eve of the Tenth of Tevet, a Jewish fast day marking the start of the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem that led to the destruction of the First Temple in the sixth century BCE.

Medina is a former Hebrew University rector now representing 112 hostage relatives in a petition to the High Court accusing the government of denying the captives’ basic rights by failing to secure their release. Speaking at Tel Aviv’s Begin-Kaplan Junction, also known as Democracy Square, he says “the High Court is almost the last remaining recourse for the hostages” and their families, citing “the petition to make [the court] order the government to explain the abandonment” of the hostages.

He says the government has no mandate to overhaul the judiciary and should devote its time only to ending the war in Gaza, pulling out of the Strip and bringing back the hostages.

Limor Livnat, a stalwart-turned-critic of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, also slams the Sa’ar and Levin agreement.

“How wonderful,” she says acidly. “The coalition is able to agree with itself. They may yet agree to cancel the elections.”

Reading out a litany of provocative statements by Likud ministers this week, the ex-minister says “no ministers are dealing with their offices’ affairs, the cost of living is soaring and 80,000 citizens have left the country — doctors and tech workers.”

“And we haven’t even said a word about the convicted felon who is making a mockery of Netantahu and all of us, [National Security Minister] Itamar Ben Gvir.”

“[Former Prime Ministers] Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir — the fathers of the party I grew up in, which I served my entire life to better the country and its citizens — are turning in their graves,” Livnat adds.

“Better days are coming,” she continues.”We’re not going anywhere — we’re going to win.”

The Democracy Square rally features singer Dana Berger performing her aptly named 1998 hit “Waiting for Him.” She says the previous time she performed there was during the last weekend of anti-government protests before Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, sparking the war in Gaza.

The rally ends in time for participants to join anti-government hostage families protesting for a hostage deal down the block, in front of the Begin Road entrance to IDF headquarters. In tandem, the Hostage and Missing Families Forum holds a rally at Hostages Square, a block away.