Israel has seen continuous protests on the streets for the last three months against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s judicial reforms. Citizens say that the measures will finish off the independence of the courts once and for all and turn the country into a dictatorship.
“There has never been a more extremist coalition than the present one in Israel,” says Danny Ben-Moshe, an award-winning filmmaker currently in the country shooting a VR (Virtual Reality) documentary on the protests. “They want to appoint judges and also have the powers to override the law,” he tells Sidharth Bhatia in this podcast interview. The Supreme Court is very activist-like and this they do not like, he says.
Netanyahu himself is also facing corruption charges, “and he wants to bring down the House of Israel to save his own skin”, says Ben-Moshe.
Not just the public, but economists have warned that if these changes go through companies will move out of Israel. “At the same time, military reservists have also joined the protests, saying they won’t serve a dictatorship. This is an economic and security disaster for Israel,” he says.