Israeli producer and actress Noa Tishby made an appearance as a guest on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher on Friday to discuss judicial reform and the subsequent protests in her home country.
“I have read some really disturbing things," said Maher. “In the past, it was Israel against the people - their neighbors - who are not big fans of them... Now it's internal."
"Now Israel seems to be fighting with itself. I see protesters in the streets - hundreds of thousands - for people who are not following this, please tell us why the president of Israel said civil war is possible. He said, ‘The abyss is within touching distance.’ Why is this?”
“What's happening in Israel right now, what we're seeing is literally democracy on full display," Thisby replied.
"It's actually quite extraordinary. So, let's backtrack for a little bit. So, a few months ago [Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu - you know very well - won the election and because of how the parliamentary system is built in Israel, he started this coalition, which is on the extreme side, it's right-wing, more religious.."
“As it happens in the U.S., when new governments come in, they jump in to make sweeping changes quite quickly, and that's what this government decided to do,” Tishby continued. “They suggested a judiciary overhaul, which is going too far, and the Israeli people are basically rebelling against it.”
(Noa Tishby on Real Time with Bill Maher)
”Over 60% of the Israeli public wants to stop this overhaul,” Tishby noted.
She continued to cite polling that suggested that most voters of Netanyahu's own ruling Likud party were not aware that the shakeup of the judiciary would be the first item on the new government's agenda.
"...I do believe that it's going to stop," she adds. "It's not going to pass in its current form, it shouldn't pass in its current form, and what we are seeing... nearly 10% of the Israeli population is out on the street and they are no riots, there's no violence, there's no blood, one person got hurt but that's about it.
So it's an extraordinarily creative demonstration. The Israeli people are speaking up, they don't want this.”
Last year, then-foreign minister Yair Lapid named Tishby, a prominent Israel advocate, the country's first-ever Special Envoy for Combating Antisemitism and Delegitimization.