More than two hundred activists gathered on Saturday night for a second consecutive week in the Tzahala neighborhood in north Tel-Aviv to protest outside the home of Supreme Court President Esther Hayut.
The protesters, led by Im Tirtzu and the South Tel-Aviv Liberation Front, accused the High Court of being a politicized actor who quashes the will of the country’s elected officials. They began the noisy protest at 11 PM, using drums, bullhorns, and other noise-making accouterments.
“If Rehavia won’t be sleeping tonight, neither will Tzahala,” chanted the protesters, referring to the 15,000 anti-Netanyahu protesters who were gathered Saturday night in front of the PM’s official residence in the affluent neighborhood in Jerusalem.
Last month, the High Court of Justice rejected a petition submitted by Rehavia residents who argued that the noisy protests that continued into the late hours of the night posed serious damage to their quality of life. The Court empathized with their plight, but ruled that in weighing free speech against their claim to a peaceful life, free speech won out.
Residents of south Tel-Aviv, who also participated in the protest, accused the High Court of torpedoing every solution proposed by the government to resolve the illegal migrants’ problem. Tens of thousands of illegal infiltrators currently reside in Israel, the majority of them in poverty-stricken south Tel-Aviv.
Matan Peleg, CEO of Im Tirtzu, said: “The High Court justices twist the law and use it as a tool to advance their political goals.”
“This blatant violation of the basic principles of democracy endangers the future of the State of Israel, and the time has come for the judges to end their judicial dictatorship and realize that this is a democracy, not Iran,” Peleg said.
Anti-infiltrators social activists Sheffi Paz and Doron Avrahami of the South Tel-Aviv Liberation Front said “the High Court chooses time and time again to deny basic rights of the citizens of Israel. Now the High Court decided that the rights of the anti-Netanyahu protesters outweigh the rights of citizens to live in peace, just like it decided that the rights of illegal migrant workers outweigh the rights of Israeli citizens to live in peace and security.”