TIME speaks to Alon-Lee Green, an organizer of the first pro-democracy protests, about where things stand in Israel.
Alon-Lee Green, the national co-director of the Arab-Jewish grassroots movement Standing Together, has been among the demonstrators ever since he helped launch the inaugural protest on Jan. 7. He spoke with TIME on Friday about how the protest movement came to life and why Monday’s vote is a decisive moment for Israeli democracy. His account of the last 29 weeks has been edited for length and clarity.
So eight full seats of the left-wing side of Parliament have been erased and that gave more proportional representation to the right. It led to the result that some people like, a new MP who is one of the most extreme settlers in Israel, got into Parliament. The party of Itamar Ben-Gvir got five seats and the most extreme fascist settlers have 14 seats together in the Parliament. That was scary.
Two days before the first demonstration, the Minister of Justice Yariv Levin held a press conference and he declared the new judicial reform and then a lot more forces from the political center joined this movement. And that’s how the first demonstration exploded, with 30,000 people on the street. But honestly, it also had a lot of tension because the main organizer of it was a movement that also addressed the occupation.
Then, the other day, it was declared by the government that Arab teachers are going to get the supervision of the secret service and also they’re going to extend this program now so that every person who wants to become a teacher in Israel will have to undergo supervision of the secret service of Israel.
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