After the judicial reform vote, black front-page ads were published in Israeli newspapers

In response to the passage of significant judicial reform legislation the previous day, the front pages of several top Israeli newspapers were completely black on Tuesday morning.

The Israeli Hi-Tech Protest movement, a collection of hi-tech workers and company owners, paid for the advertisements, which were printed by “Israel Hayom,” “Haaretz,” “Yediot Ahronot,” and “Calcalist.”

The organization’s advertisement said, “A black day for Israeli democracy,” with the phrase “advertisement” only appearing in small letters at the top of the page.

On Tuesday morning, the protest group publicly claimed the advertisement, tweeting: “They got us! Our emblem, which we desperately tried to conceal, is visible on page 2 of the newspaper.

Itamar Ben-Gvir, the minister of national security for Israel, replied, “Your opinion will not be bought by the hundreds of millions [of shekels] spent by foreign entities that finance the demonstrations, bought all the front pages of the newspapers this morning, and are running a campaign to destroy the country.

Other social media users pointed out that a full front-page advertisement in an Israeli daily presently costs around 295,000 shekels, or roughly $80,000, bringing the initiative’s overall cost to at least $300,000.

Israeli election regulations prohibit publishers from declining to run specific political ads.

A bill to limit judges’ use of the “reasonableness” criteria was passed into law on Monday afternoon by all 64 members of Netanyahu’s ruling coalition. Senators from the opposition abstained from the third and final vote.

The Basic Law: The Judiciary Amendment prohibits judges from using “reasonableness” as a defense to overturn decisions taken by the Cabinet, ministers, and “other elected officials as set by law.”

In a speech on Monday night, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated that “Today, we performed a necessary democratic step,” adding that “Realizing the will of the voters is not the end of democracy… it is the essence of democracy.”