It was the first time such a protest took place in Washington. In a video that was shared online, some two dozen protesters could be seen holding signs with slogans such as “No doubt – Bibi out” and “Game over Bibi.”
“Although we live, at the moment, outside of Israel, Israel is still our home, our culture,” said Yoni Charash, who planned to attend the Washington protest. “This year, I was released from my duties as an officer in the IDF’s reserve forces, and for me to join the protest even from here, out of my love for Israel and precisely because I care so much about it, is the best service I can do right now for Israel.
“I see from here how and where the country is deteriorating, and I am genuinely afraid that if there is no real change, which must begin with the removal of a corrupt and criminally charged prime minister, my children and I will have nowhere or for what to return home.”
The protest movement by Israeli expats is gaining momentum. For the past seven weeks, disgruntled Israelis have flooded the streets of Jerusalem and other major cities in Israel, demanding an end to alleged corruption in Israeli politics and calling for Netanyahu to step down. Now they are getting support from Israelis abroad.
There was a protest on Sunday near the Harbor Bridge in Sydney, Australia. More demonstrations were set to take place on Sunday in London, Cambridge, Toronto, New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Demonstrations were held in Miami and Boston and Basel, Switzerland, over the weekend.
“These are not demonstrations of Right and Left,” international protest leader Offir Gutelzon said. “In Los Angeles, there are right-wing people who don’t want an indicted person to be Israeli prime minister and want to maintain Israeli democracy.”
The UnXeptable protest movement wants to challenge a prime minister indicted for criminal bribery, which threatens the foundations of Israeli democracy, it said in a statement. It called upon the people of Israel to band together to fight against a culture of corruption and fearmongering and to reinstate the values upon which the State of Israel was founded.
“We are the native Israeli ambassadors,” Gershon Diner, of UnXeptable San Francisco, told the Post. “We are tightly connected to the State of Israel and the people who protest to defend our democracy. The faithful ambassadors will always be involved and stand by our state, regardless of their location. We cannot let a corrupted prime minister tear us apart and ruin everything our founders established in the past 72 years.”
“We are demanding the obvious: No to corruption, no to bypassing democracy, no to violence, and Prime Minister Netanyahu is the cause for these violations,” Diner said.