From the tents to the Israeli street

August 7, 2011 - 8:45 AM by

Estimates of the crowds on Saturday night at the social protest marches that took place in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem – and to a lesser degree in other spots in the country – topped 300,000.

That’s a pretty astonishing number – more than gathered for any anti-war or pro-Gilad Schalit release rally in the country’s history. It’s almost five percent of the country!

In comparison, can you imagine if five percent of the population of the US or China came out for a grassroots rally? There would be something like 15 million people converging in Washington DC or many millions of Chinese people marching in Beijing – sorry, my math skills are not so great.

And we’re not talking about five % of the ‘Jewish population’ of the country, as most public opinion polls state – this protest movement seems to encompass the Arab sector, and despite attempts to label it as a political movement aimed to bring down the Netanyahu government, cuts across the political Left-Right spectrum and the religious-secular schism.

Across the board, the middle class in Israel is fed up at not being able to make ends meet and pay for adequate housing despite holding down decent jobs. The naysayers (myself included) who thought that the tent protests would fizzle out after a few days of hot summer weather and/or some unforeseen development on the diplomatic-security front (both the 2006 Lebanon War and Operation Cast Lead in Gaza took place in the summer months) have been proven wrong.

At home, we briefly discussed heading in to join the Jerusalem protest last night. After Shabbat ended after 8 pm, though, we realized we had run out of toilet paper. So we waited for the local supermarket to open up, we did a couple other errands around town. Then I noticed that one of my favorite films – 12 Angry Men (not the lesser remake with Tony Danza but the black and white original with Henry Fonda, Martin Balsam et al) was on cable at 10 p.m.). And to top if off, from my porch I could see that the traffic headed into Jerusalem was way backed up at the roadblock on the Ma’aleh Adumim-Jerusalem border, approximately a 20 minute wait by my eagle-eye assessment. Whether the travellers were headed to the rally or to a movie at the Jerusalem Cinemateque was unclear.

So we missed the rally, as 300,000 of our fellow citizens took to the streets to demand their basic rights that come with living in a democracy – of not just cable TV and soft toilet paper, but the right to earn a living.

I hope to make the next rally – if I don’t, I may start thinking that instead of being part of the solution, I’m part of the problem.

Tags: • Category: A New Reality, coexistence, education, General, Israeliness, Life, News, Politics, Social Justice 

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One Comment on From the tents to the Israeli street

  1. Customer support | ISRAELITY on Mon, Aug 8th 2011 7:40 AM

    2. [...] no question I’m glad to be here, even with, or perhaps because of the enticement of housing protests, stroller protests (read this), dairy farmer protests, the high cost of cottage cheese, and, [...]

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