Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Back to Opinion

Israel’s Social Justice Protest, By the Numbers

In 1983, when news of the massacres at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps became known, about 300,000 Israelis jammed the streets of Tel Aviv to protest their government’s involvement. It was a very big deal, thought to be one of the largest demonstrations of its kind in Israel’s history.

The protests for social justice on September 3 eclipsed all that, and then some.

When 450,000 Israelis, Jews and Arabs alike, took to the streets of Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and other cities, that amounted to about 6% of the entire population of Israel. Just put that into an American context: If 6% of our 307 million-strong population gathered to demonstrate for anything, that would turn into 18.4 million people on the streets. If such a gathering were a city, it would edge out Los Angeles to be second to only New York City in population.

It would be the size of Shanghai. Or Jakarta.

Let’s just pause for a moment to appreciate the power of this comparison. The Israeli protests were well-organized and peaceful, energizing a public thought to be either fearful, apathetic, or both. They brought together a swath of society under a still-nebulous umbrella of demands. As you’ll read soon in the Forward in a story by our Israel correspondent Nathan Jeffay, the protest leaders are asking for no less than a radical remake of Israeli society, while Benjamin Netanyahu thinks he can respond with just a tinkering around the edges.

There is no telling where this dynamic is going politically, and whether the social justice movement can be sustained. But those of us who watch from afar and care about the exercise of political rights in a democracy can marvel over what ordinary Israelis are doing and what they have accomplished so far. Just do the numbers.

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.