More than a hundred Israelis gathered in the center of London on Aug. 2, protesting against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, against state corruption and against what they considered the erosion of democratic norms in their homeland. Assembled near the Israeli Embassy on High Street Kensington, the protesters flew black flags — the same black flags that have become the symbol of the anti-Netanyahu movement, raising a warning sign over the danger Israel’s democracy is currently facing. The demonstration was easily organized through Facebook via groups of Israeli expats and Israeli students in the United Kingdom.

The London demonstration was not the first of its kind. Similar protests have taken place before in Paris, New York, San Francisco and Berlin. Evidently, over time, these demonstrations kept growing, with the Aug. 2 demonstration generating much interest both in the UK and in Israel. The reason for the increased interest was its timing — London’s demonstration took place just hours after a mass anti-Netanyahu rally in Jerusalem outside Netanyahu’s official residence.

Since then, over the weekends that followed, more and more anti-Netanyahu demonstrations were organized outside Israel. On Aug. 11, some 50 Israeli students and lecturers protested at the University of Cambridge in the UK. The protesters chanted "crime minister’’ — the slogan of the anti-Netanyahu rallies. On the same day, other Israelis protested outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington, demanding that Netanyahu resign. It was the first time such a protest took place in the American capital.

These overseas demonstrations reached a peak on Aug. 29, when protesters gathered simultaneously in 18 locations across the globe. Israelis came together in Amsterdam, Atlanta, Basel, Berlin, Boston, Cambridge, Chicago, Copenhagen, Los Angeles, Madrid, Miami, New York, Oslo, Paris, San Francisco, Toronto, Vancouver and Washington, DC. The demonstration chain was coordinated with activists in Israel, who staged a mass rally simultaneously on Jerusalem's Balfour Street. The 18 protests were transmitted live on Facebook and screened outside Netanyahu’s official residence before thousands of demonstrators. Organizers of the overseas demonstrations said this was the largest protest event ever staged by Israelis living abroad against their government.