During the Covid-19 pandemic, Israel experienced two years of intense, multi-generational and cross-sector weekly demonstrations against corruption in the Netanyahu government.

How did a public health emergency that threatens everyone’s health figure into protests against government corruption and other political and social justice issues? How did people and social movements tackle the wide range of issues that have come up during the pandemic? And what are possible effects of the current moment?

This talk uses various visual materials and takes the perspective of the sociology of social movements – how do social movements form, act, and mobilize people – in order to discuss these questions.

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About the speaker

Smadar Ben-Natan is a longtime Israeli human rights lawyer who completed her Ph.D. in the Buchmann Faculty of Law, Tel-Aviv University. She specializes in law & society and international law, with a particular focus on the intersection of criminal justice, national security and human rights. She holds a Master in International Human Rights Law, with distinction, from the University of Oxford (2011), and an LLB from Tel-Aviv University (1995). She is the 2020-2022 Postdoctoral Fellow in Israel Studies at the University of Washington.