Backstage at Monday’s rally outside the Knesset against the Netanyahu government’s legal overhaul there were enough retired generals and senior spooks to launch at least three military coups. At one point I counted there four former IDF Chiefs of General Staff, two Mossad bosses and one Shin Bet director. I asked Lieutenant-General Gadi Eisenkott, now a Knesset member of Benny Gantz’s National Unity Party, the one who was most recently in uniform if he and his colleagues were planning a takeover. He laughed and said “we’re waiting for the sergeants first.” But the heavy presence of ex-military figures, not just senior offices, but thousands of civilians marching in the protests, with T-shirts identifying themselves as miluimniks – active reservists and in groups representing their former units, was a heavily nuanced and loaded message.

On the surface, the protesters who are emphasising their military records are trying to contrast their movement with Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition partners, the leaders of the ultra-Orthodox parties who as yeshiva students were exempted from service and Jewish Power leader Itamar Ben-Gvir who was not even allowed to enlist in the IDF because of the Shin Bet’s objections due to his membership of the illegal Kach movement, which was disbanded in 1994. In more blunt terms, as many of the protesters were saying – “we serve in the army, our children serve, we pay the most taxes, we won’t let those who don’t take away Israel’s democracy.”

The more subtle message is that the opposition is trying to play the “patriot card,” not an easy move when facing an ultra-nationalist government and politicians like Mr Netanyahu who have spent years successfully branding all those who oppose them as traitorous “leftists.” That was the coalition’s attitude towards the protests when they were just starting out six weeks ago, when Justice Minister Yariv Levin first presented the government’s plan.

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with Justice Minister Yariv Levin (Photo: Flash90)

On that first demonstration on Saturday night in central Tel Aviv, most of the protesters were the “leftist” regulars and their main claim against the plan to weaken the Supreme Court was that the Palestinians would be the victims. Palestinian flags were waved in solidarity and Arab-Israeli politicians spoke on the stage. The next day, pro-government journalists had a field day. But the protest movement was just getting started and the hard-left activists were quickly marginalised.

“We realised immediately that the Palestinian flags were a problem,” says Dan Halutz, a former IDF Chief of Staff who is now a member of the committee coordinating thirty organisations supporting the protests. “But having stewards trying to remove them would also draw unwelcome attention so instead we decided to saturate the rallies with Israeli flags. We even set up a workshop in Ra’anana which now produces seven thousand new flags a week.” Another decision was to put as many right-wingers and religious figures as possible at the forefront of the campaign.

At the last Saturday night rally in Jerusalem, half the speakers were religious and the main speech was by Rabbi Yirmi Stavisky, a veteran educator who began by saying that the last protest he went to was against the police brutality during the eviction of the Amona settlement in 2006.

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Thousands waving the Israeli flag as they protested against the judicial overhaul outside the Israeli parliament in Jerusalem on February 13, 2023. (Photo by Erik Marmor/Flash90)

The new protest movement had created strange bedfellows. Backstage former Meretz MK and Peace Now CEO, Mossi Raz, was rubbing shoulders with Moshe “Bogy” Ya’alon, former IDF Chief of Staff and Likud defence minister (before he publicly broke with Mr Netanyahu) who once famously called Peace Now “a virus.” Mr Ya’alon and the leaders of the centrist opposition parties also spoke from the stage, Hadash leader Ayman Odeh who came for just a few minutes to mingle, wasn’t invited to speak. Neither he nor Ra’am leader Mansour Abbas were invited to the joint statement made by the opposition party leaders after the rally. A senior Labour party advisor said later “I’m very uncomfortable with the way Arab-Israelis aren’t part of the protest movement. This could have been an opportunity to create a broader front and I fear that this won’t help to improve political cooperation and social integration in the future. But the protest leadership has prioritised appealing to centrists and right-wingers and to be honest, it’s hard to argue with the results, it’s working.”

Every single poll conducted since the government’s plan was presented has shown a clear majority opposed to it, and that majority includes a fair chunk of Israelis who voted Likud just three and a half months ago. According to a survey by the Israel Democracy Institute, of the coalition parties, support for the “legal reform” is lowest, at just 57 percent among Likud voters. Bad news for the victorious prime minister who swept them back to power so recently.

Bibi's PR machine is missing in action

Six weeks ago when the Justice Minister Levin originally presented the plan, Likudniks were ecstatic. They had a solid majority to finally pass judicial reform. Now some of them are privately muttering about a squandered opportunity. The scale of the protests, the broad sections of the public taking part in them, especially the business community and the tech sector which were never political in the past, and the negative attention from abroad, especially from the Biden administration, has surprised them all.

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Israelis protesting against the judicial overhaul in Jerusalem on February 13, 2023 (Photo by Erik Marmor/Flash90)

“I’m shocked at how bad the rollout of the policy has been,” one senior Likudnik, a staunch supporter of Mr Netanyahu and true believer in limiting the court’s powers, told me this week. “They thought of every detail in the reform itself but there seems to have been no planning whatsoever in how to present it to the public. It’s really not like Netanyahu to ignore this.”

How to explain this oversight by a grand-master of political presentation?

“Netanyahu’s strengths have always been on diplomacy, security and economics about which he’s passionate. He sees those issues as his main roles as leaders. He’s much less knowledgeable about stuff that doesn’t interest him,” the Likudnik reasoned. “He never paid much attention to constitutional issues, even though for many in the party, the Supreme Court’s dominance has been a major issue for years. Perhaps that’s why he wasn’t really involved in planning this.”

But in the past, when needed, he’s also shown an immense capacity for mastering a new issue quickly. That was the case back in early 2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic began and he swiftly commandeered Israel’s national response, as well as delivering the nightly televised briefings to the public.

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Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara at a ceremony held for outgoing Supreme Court judge George Karra at the Supreme Court in Jerusalem on May 29, 2022 (Photo by Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Mr Netanyahu can’t be the public presenter for the legal programme as Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara has said that as a defendant in a criminal trial, he cannot be involved with such matters, due to a conflict of interest. But even behind the scenes, you would expect him at least to ensure that Likud spokespeople and proxies are broadcasting effective messages. That however isn’t the case. Likud’s devastating PR machine is missing in action.

Some in Likud are wondering whether perhaps this is a sign that despite his anger at being put on trial for what he considers trumped-up corruption charges, his appointment of Mr Levin and promises to the coalition partners to push through programme, his heart isn’t really in it. For years, he defended the Supreme Court’s independence, and despite all that has happened, he isn’t quite ready to let go.