Ex-PM Ehud Barak unveils strategy for bringing down Israel’s government

Persistent protests, boycotts and civil disobedience by 3.5% of the population win out, the former prime minister said.

By JNS

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak revealed his strategy for a “counter-revolution” to bring down the Netanyahu government, speaking in an address to Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, a London-based think tank, on Monday.

Barak, a supporter of the anti-judicial reform protests which have roiled Israel and led Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to call for a temporary halt to the legislation, said he was sure his side would win “because I know our people, and we have even empirical evidence for this.”

He referred to the U.S. research of Professor Erica Chenoweth and political scientist Maria J. Stephan, who co-authored a 2012 book, “Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict.”

Barak said the two researchers looked at hundreds of civil protests from 1900 to 2006, and “they found a common denominator”—protests that succeeded included 3.5% of the population, or roughly 8% of the adult population, and “tenaciously and persistently” kept up the protests, boycotts and civil disobedience.

“At the end the government either falls or capitulates,” Barak said. “We already crossed this number in less than three months so we are heading in the right direction.”

Barak said Israel’s government is acting “in a blatantly illegitimate manner,” and is trying to make Israel “basically a dictatorship or a non-democratic kind of entity.”