Former Pittsburghers in Israel protesting judicial reform alongside other Israelis

Kally Kislowicz, a former Pittsburgher who now lives in Israel, said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is popular in her conservative West Bank settlement of Efrat.

But she said that doesn’t make Netanyahu, known as “Bibi” to most Israelis, above reproach. Controversial judicial reforms proposed by Netanyahu have triggered protests across Israel, including several attended by Kislowicz in Efrat’s Eitan Square.

“The people here are pretty right-wing and they support Bibi, but we’re not fans of his judicial reform,” said Kislowicz, a self-identifying “religious Jew” who grew up at an Orthodox synagogue and Jewish day school in Squirrel Hill and still has family in the city.

“(Netanyahu) has held the country hostage, and we need new leadership,” she added. “He’s not able to make decisions in the best interest of Israel because he’s trying to stay afloat. His time is over, and he should step aside.”

Netanyahu on Wednesday rebuffed President Biden’s suggestion that the premier walk away from the contentious plan to overhaul the legal system, saying the country makes its own decisions.

The frosty exchange came a day after Netanyahu called for a halt to his government’s contentious legislation “to avoid civil war” in the wake of extensive protesting throughout the country.

Netanyahu and his religious and ultranationalist allies announced the judicial overhaul in January just days after forming their government, the most right-wing in Israel’s history.

The proposal has plunged Israel into its worst domestic crisis in decades. Business leaders, top economists and former security chiefs have come out against the plan, saying it is pushing the country toward dictatorship.

The plan would give Netanyahu, who is on trial on corruption charges, and his allies the final say in appointing the nation’s judges. It would also give parliament, which is controlled by his allies, authority to overturn Supreme Court decisions and limit the court’s ability to review laws.

Former Pittsburgher Steve Sokol, who lived in Squirrel Hill for 30 years and moved to Israel’s Bet Shemesh in 2015, didn’t vote for Netanyahu in December’s election but feels media coverage of the protests is creating a false narrative.

“The media has been blowing things out of proportion,” said Sokol, who was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., and moved to Pittsburgh in the mid-1980s. “What sells newspapers is negative things.”

Sokol sided with Netanyahu, to a degree, when it came to the Israeli judiciary.

“As far as people in America complaining that a political party is selecting their judges, maybe they should look at themselves,” he said. “The president chooses people for the Supreme Court, for a lot of courts. I don’t see why they’re concerned in America with parties in control choosing judges.”

Rehovot resident Ramy Rubin, who grew up in Pittsburgh and moved to Israel in 2014, doesn’t see it that way. The former Jewish Federation staffer who now works for a crowdfunding platform for U.S.-based nonprofits, called the days of demonstrations “a perfect display of collective free speech.”

“There may be too much distrust for serious negotiations here, but the decision to (have) dialogue is a very necessary step in the right direction — and it’s because of the protests,” he said.

Nimrod Goren, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington, D.C., noted the U.S.-Israel relationship has had previous points of crisis — over, for example, the now-defunct agreement to limit Iran’s nuclear capabilities. In contrast, he said, now the White House appeared to be “questioning Netanyahu’s competence as prime minister, and whether he’s reliable or responsible.”

Critics say the legislation would concentrate power in the hands of the coalition in parliament and upset the balance of checks and balances between branches of government. Netanyahu said he was “striving to achieve (it) via a broad consensus” in talks with opposition leaders that began Tuesday.

Yair Lapid, the opposition leader in Israel’s parliament, wrote on Twitter that Israel was one of the closest U.S. allies for decades but “the most radical government in the country’s history ruined that in three months.”

Kim Salzman, a Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh staff member who lived in Pittsburgh from 2016 to 2019, said this week she is praying “for compromise and for the country to unite in this difficult moment and come out stronger in the end.” She stressed her opinions were not those of her employer.

“All my friends and acquaintances are taking about proposed judicial reform all the time — it has been all-consuming for practically all Israelis I know,” said Salzman, who lives in Misgav and whose family has attended protests in Misgav, Pittsburgh’s sister-region in Israel, and in Jerusalem and Haifa.

“Even people who did not support Bibi in the past agree that he was always a cautious and deliberate leader, but that something has changed in him in the past few months. He seems to have lost all control and all connection to the reality on the ground,” Salzman said.

“The demonstrations started off as mostly against the judicial reform since it was removing checks and balances crucial to a democracy, but they have become more than that over time,” she added. “The people demonstrating are Israeli Zionists who care deeply about ensuring the future of Israel as a Jewish and democratic nation.”

The Associated Press contributed.