There is a certain afterglow to mass protest. It’s a feeling strongest when the slogans have just ceased to echo in the streets, when the barricades have just come down, the banners rolled back up and the flags folded and put back in their place. It is also a dangerous moment, when what looks like sudden success can just as quickly turn into defeat.
That is the place where the protests against the Netanyahu government’s plan to strip the judiciary of its power stand right now. Last week saw street demonstrations of a size and intensity never seen before in Israel. It was, largely, a revolt of the educated and the middle class – of self-identified liberal, secular Israel against authoritarian, theocratic Israel. One of the movement’s most prominent organizers, and perhaps most representative, is Shikma Bressler, a professor of particle physics at the Weizmann Institute, who for 13 weeks exhorted her fellow Israelis into the streets.
