Notre Dame expert available to comment on Israel's proposed judicial overhaul and subsequent protest movements

Atalia Omer, professor of religion, conflict and peace studies in the Keough School of Global Affairs and core faculty member of the Keough School’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame, focuses her research on religion, violence, peacebuilding, conflict transformation and justice.

Omer is available to speak to members of the media about the massive protests that are occurring in Israel over the proposed judicial overhaul by Prime Minister Netanyahu and his administration.

Omer's quotes are also available for immediate pickup:

"A few pockets within the Israeli Jewish protest movement recognize that there can be no democracy with occupation and in a context that privileges Jews over non-Jews," Omer said.

"Still, they are the exception to an otherwise privileged protest movement consisting of high-tech tycoons, former military generals and Israelis who inhabit a myopic understanding and sense of loss of a 'good old Israel.' Indeed, there is no 'democracy' to return to but rather an opportunity to reexamine the political discourse and realities from a starting point that recognizes that the entire space of historic Palestine operates now in ways that privilege one group over another."

Omer said it is essential to recall the recent wave of reports by human rights organizations that speak of the entire geopolitical space as constituting an apartheid regime based on an intricate fragmentation of Palestinians within the Green Line and in the territories occupied in 1967, including east Jerusalem.

"If we accept the reports by B'tselem and Human Rights Watch, the analysis of the massive protests remains sequestered from the need to tackle root causes and intersections of struggles of Palestinians, Mizrahi, Ethiopians and other marginalized communities," Omer said.

"The protests remain myopic and privileged without recognizing that the Supreme Court has offered a decades-long legal parachute for the occupation and without recognizing that the struggle against the anti-democratic and fascistic moves entailed by the judicial overhaul, including religious coercion and targeting LGBTQI+ and women's rights, must be connected to a fight against the occupation and a supremacist regime that foundationally relies on privileging Jews and, thus, cannot be labeled as democratic." 

In addition, Omer continued, "Netanyahu was able to suspend the legislation of the 'reforms' because of a concession he gave to Itamar ben-Gvir, the National Security Minister, to establish a National Guard, which entails the creation of a militia under an extreme right political party promoting an exclusionary political program, which directly attacks the Palestinian citizens of Israel and annexationist agendas regarding the territories Israel occupied in 1967."

Omer is available for interviews or further comments at .