A different sight has turned into a regular occurrence at the ongoing anti-government protests in Israel as a group of women wearing red robes and white caps, resembling the characters from Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel "The Handmaid's Tale" and its television adaptation, walk with their heads down and hands clasped.
The women, growing in numbers as the demonstrations against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s policies intensify, say they are protesting to ward off what they believe will be a dark future if the government follows through on its plan to overhaul the judiciary.
"This display is a representation of the things that we fear," said Moran Zer Katzenstein, founder of the women's rights advocacy group Bonot Alternativa, or "building an alternative,” which is behind the Handmaid's protest.
"Women are going to be the first to be harmed” under the overhaul, she added.
In a move that has sparked widespread opposition, Netanyahu's government is pushing to weaken the Supreme Court and limit the independence of the judiciary, steps they say will restore power to elected legislators and make the courts less interventionist. Critics say the move upends Israel’s system of checks and balances and pushes it toward autocracy.
The overhaul has sent tens of thousands of people into the streets in protest each week.
Unmissable in the crowd are the women in red robes, turning the otherwise usual protest scenes into an otherworldly sight.
Ahead of one demonstration, a group of women rode the train from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in costume, transforming the cars and the platform into what could have been a scene from the Hulu series. on another occasion, they encircled a central fountain in the seaside metropolis of Tel Aviv, a site that is typically home to kids in strollers and dogs on leashes. They have also blocked intersections, staying in character during the protests and keeping quiet as they walk in formation.
Their jarring appearance is meant to drive home the notion that Israel could morph into a chilling dystopia where women are deprived of their rights.
Atwood’s 1985 novel about a futuristic patriarchal society where the robed handmaids are forced to bear children for leaders, has re-emerged in recent years as a cultural touchstone thanks to the popular TV series. Its themes of female subjugation and male domination have resonated with women today who see threats in limits on abortion rights, or in Israel’s case, in the rise of its conservative, religious government.
The costume, which has come to globally embody the threat to women under patriarchy, has been used in protests elsewhere. American women opposing former President Donald Trump’s conservative Supreme Court nominees have donned the garb, as have Iranian women demonstrating in Britain to support the protests in Iran, and Polish women calling to preserve abortion rights.
