Israelis rally for Netanyahu to resign, call new elections

JERUSALEM, June 29 (JTA) — Israeli protestors took to the streets of Tel Aviv this week in separate rallies calling for an end to the Netanyahu government and to Orthodox influence. Some 50,000 Israelis called on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to step down and call for early elections during a rally Saturday night at Rabin square in central Tel Aviv. The demonstration came after a week of growing crisis within the coalition. While the government defeated a no-confidence motion in the Knesset, several coalition members, including Foreign Minister David Levy, stayed away from last week’s vote to protest Netanyahu’s manner of running the country. Commentators said that growing strains within coalition ranks could increase the chances of early elections. The event was organized by a grass-roots organization formed in response to the Bar-On affair, an influence-peddling scandal in which police recommended earlier this year that Netanyahu and other top government officials be indicted for fraud in the short-lived appointment of an attorney general. State prosecutors closed the case against the prime minister for lack of evidence. At another rally in Tel Aviv, several thousand Israelis protested what they maintained are attempts at religious coercion by haredi, or fervently Orthodox, Jews. One of the slogans for the demonstration, “Stop the haredim” drew sharp criticism from both religious and political circles, who maintained that it was racist and intolerant. The rally came against the backdrop of the political strength the religious parties gained in the last elections and the resulting policy. Three religious parties, which hold 23 seats in the Knesset, are part of Netanyahu’s coalition. Earlier this year, the High Court upheld the transportation minister’s decision to close a main Jerusalem thoroughfare, which runs through religious neighborhoods, to traffic during Sabbath and Jewish holiday prayer times. Religious coalition members have also been trying to push through legislation that would set into law the Orthodox establishment’s sole authority over conversions conducted in Israel. That issue prompted a backlash from Reform and Conservative movements in the Diaspora. An interdenominational committee formed as a result of negotiations between non-Orthodox U.S. Jewish leaders and the government is trying to work out a compromise on the conversion legislation by mid-August.