Some 3,000 Israelis, the vast majority of them Jewish, answered the call to rally on Aug. 9 in support of an Israeli family. Members of the Likud came in droves, many of them bussed in, to demonstrate their solidarity with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara, who portray themselves as besieged by the media and the liberal left, which they say is plotting a coup against the Israeli government.
Thousands of other Israelis have been going out every Saturday night for almost 40 weeks to demonstrate against corruption. On Aug. 18, dozens of demonstrators gathered in Jerusalem’s Palestinian Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood to express solidarity with the Shamasna family, who faced an eviction order from their hovel of a home. Had Israel been merely the “state of the Israeli people,” the willingness of its citizens to leave their air-conditioned homes at the height of the summer months would have been a commendable display of civic involvement.