Protesters supporting women’s rights dressed as characters from ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ TV series attend a protest in Tel Aviv on February 20, 2023. Photo by Getty Images

This article originally appeared on Haaretz, and was reprinted here with permission. Sign up here to get Haaretz’s free Daily Brief newsletter delivered to your inbox.

An increasingly large group of women has joined the demonstrations against the Israeli government’s planned judicial overhauls in the past two weeks. Its members dress up as handmaids from the Hulu TV series “The Handmaid’s Tale,” based on the book by Margaret Atwood.

They have already staged their protest performances in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, and on Saturday night, about 150 of them arrived at the latter city’s Dizengoff Square, before the main marches and demonstration began.

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The Israeli protest joins a worldwide wave – demonstrators have donned the same red cloaks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, Argentina, Ireland and elsewhere. Referring to the growing phenomenon the British daily The Guardian described the handmaids’ performances as one of the most powerful symbols of contemporary feminist protest.

Hadas Ragolsky, a veteran journalist and one of the initiators of the Israeli handmaids’ protest, says that they decided to use the image of the handmaid because it is so well-known. “Everyone is familiar with this image, and it works. In fact, it’s caught on unusually well. The number of participants kept increasing and our photos made their way all over the world. Even Margaret Atwood shared a picture of us on Twitter.”

Ragolsky says that the initiative began in the WhatsApp group for Bonot Alternativa (Building an Alternative) – an apolitical group of women from all walks of society: secular, religious and ultra-Orthodox, Arab and Jewish. “This whole big, diverse group is fighting for women’s rights, equality, representation and an uncompromising war to end violence against women,” she says.

The group was established two and a half years ago after a 16-year-old girl was gang raped in the southern resort city of Eilat. Among other things, they promoted a number of campaigns and demonstrations, such as a protest at a Tel Aviv concert by the singer Eyal Golan, who has long been dogged by allegations of sexual misconduct; a protest against the early release of rapist Alon Kastiel from prison and a campaign for equal working conditions for male and female players on Israel’s national soccer teams.

Ragolsky spoke at a pro-democracy demonstration in Kfar Sava last week: “Four women were murdered in the past three weeks. But this government isn’t dealing with that, they and we aren’t important to them. To them, it’s more important to oppose the High Court of Justice, to give a seal of approval for criminals to become government ministers, or to take care of the lodging and cosmetics budgets of the prime minister and his wife.”

How did these performance protests start?

“Before the first demonstration in Jerusalem, about two weeks ago, someone mentioned the idea that we should do a performance based on ‘The Handmaid’s Tale.’ It looked organized, but it was a guerrilla event. We bought cloaks that were sold as Little Red Riding Hood or Wonder Woman costumes, and sewed the white bonnets.

“I consulted with photographers about how we should join the demonstration so that we would stand out, and walked through a mass of Israeli flags with our red cloaks. We walked from Agranat Square opposite the Supreme Court building to the platform next to the traffic circle across from the Knesset, and we got onto the stage without coordinating it in advance. [Last] week there were handmaids’ protests all over the country, including at demonstrations in Kfar Sava, Ra’anana, Kiryat Ono and Haifa.”

What is your goal?

“The [Handmaid’s Tale] book and TV series present a dystopian reality that we’re afraid of. They’re trying to police us, to restrict us. We aren’t waiting until they put headscarves on us. We don’t want them to decide when we can go shopping in the supermarket, where we’ll sit on the bus and when we’ll take our child to the doctor. And that’s already happening in certain communities in Israel.

“The law to expand the powers of the rabbinical courts, which advancing almost under the radar, is an important step toward a significant blow to women’s rights. What will happen, for example, is that a kindergarten teacher who has a problem with her employer and wants to sue him will be dragged into a rabbinical court – and we already know that those courts discriminate against women. We have been warning for several weeks now against the attempt to reduce our presence in the public domain, the pathetic representation of women in the government and in government ministries, and the legislative attempts that will undoubtedly expand to include measures excluding women and [against] abortions.”

One of the main criticisms of the protests is that the State of Israel has been harming Palestinian citizens of Israel and the territories, but now that it’s harming Jews, people are waking up. It’s the same situation with Haredi women – they have been discriminated against within their communities for years.

“The Bonot Alternativa group includes ultra-Orthodox women. And several months ago there was a court hearing after the High Court decided that the Agudath Israel party is required to include women, which the party didn’t honor. [The Haredi women] told us – ‘Don’t come to the hearing, we’ll protest and you’ll support us.’

We’re saying that the deterioration we’ll likely see will hurt them first and further worsen their status. There are women in Israel who are dressed the same way we dress for the performances, and are required to behave in a certain way.”

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