The protest organized by opposition parties in the Tel Aviv Museum Plaza on May 25 was impressive. According to data compiled by one of the cellphone service providers, over 50,000 Israelis came to protest the plot by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his associates to undermine the state’s democratic foundations. The speeches delivered by leaders of the Blue and White, Labor and Meretz parties, and by the head of the Arab Hadash-Ta’al list, were also impressive.

At the same time, the incitement against the country’s courts as reflected in several unbridled legislative proposals being promoted by Netanyahu and his allies has brought quite a few guardians of democracy out of their ivory towers. Supreme Court Chief Justice Esther Hayut took off her gloves. Retired judges lashed out at the proposed Override Clause that would allow the Knesset to override Supreme Court rulings and limit its authority. Philanthropists threatened to withhold funding for public institutions. Academics announced that they would start their classes with lectures on the meaning and importance of democracy. Pundits called for popular revolt and even for mass legal violations.

We have not witnessed such widespread public uproar since the trauma of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s Nov. 4, 1995, assassination. Then, too, tens of thousands took to city squares in protest. Then, too, it appeared that the anxiety over the fate of Israeli democracy would alienate Israelis from every politician and party identified, even remotely, with the radical nationalist camp that raised the assassin, Yigal Amir. Polls conducted at the time indicated that Rabin’s Labor party was recovering from the blows it sustained in the wake of a wave of suicide bombings, which intensified after the February 1994 assassination of Muslim worshippers in the West Bank town of Hebron in the Cave of the Patriarchs by an Israeli settler. Several months later, on May 29, 1996, exactly 23 years ago, Netanyahu kicked out Rabin’s temporary successor, Shimon Peres, from the Prime Minister’s Office in a hotly contested election.

The elections of April 9 did not topple Netanyahu. The assumption/hope that the severe pending indictments hanging over Netanyahu’s head would remove him from office and result in a regime change proved unfounded. Still, Netanyahu faced obstacles on his way to composing a government. Thus, he started promoting a bill for dissolving the Knesset and holding snap elections. On May 27, Netanyahu sent his new henchman, Knesset member Miki Zohar, to table a resolution dispersing the Knesset — the proposal was adopted by the Knesset at a first hearing. Head of the main Blue and White opposition party Benny Gantz demanded that President Reuven Rivlin entrust him instead with forming Israel’s next government given that Netanyahu had failed in his efforts to do so since the elections. “Netanyahu insists on holding on to his seat at any cost; he is the only obstacle to forming a national consensus government that can truly take care of all citizens,” Gantz said. If the Likud replaces Netanyahu as its leader, he added, “Such a government could be formed in an instant.” His party co-chair, Knesset member Yair Lapid, declared, too, “a unity government without Netanyahu is possible and needed. That is what Israel needs.”