OCCUPIED AL-QUDs (Dispatches) – Israel kicked off so-called annual independence day celebrations though tens of thousands of people decided instead to again protest at divisive plans by the occupying regime to push through restrictions on the judiciary.
As the regime held the annual torch lighting ceremony in Jerusalem, protesters gathered in Tel Aviv that has become a symbol of the weekly protests against the judicial overhaul plans, now entering their 16th week.
While the so-called independence day would normally be an occasion for unity, settlers remain polarized over the planned legislation that critics say removes checks on those in power.
“This could be like the last independence day as we know it. Next year it might be completely different, it might be like different rules or restrictions,” protester Ido Durst, 23, told Reuters. “We have to make a stand especially today.”
The Zionist regime is marking its 75th anniversary in a fractious and uncertain mood, with some of the deepest social divisions since the foundation of the entity in 1948.
“I am convinced that there is no greater existential threat to our people than the one that comes from within: Our own polarization and alienation from one another,” the regime’s president Issac Herzog told the General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America in Tel Aviv this week.
Behind his anxiety lies a fear of a sharp deepening of divisions which have always existed in Occupied Palestine between European Ashkenazis and Middle Eastern Mizrahi, between religious Al-Quds and laid back Tel Aviv and between right-wing settlers and urban liberals.
The growing power of the religious parties that helped Netanyahu to power last year has alarmed many Zionists, who often resent the special conditions and subsidies that enable many Orthodox men to avoid military service and study in Torah schools rather than take paid employment.
According to a survey by Channel 12 News last week, around 51% of Israelis are pessimistic about the future of the entity.