Tahrir In Tel Aviv?

By Benjamin Kerstein

For a moment, at least, it felt as if – to steal a line from Albert Camus – all the guns of Tel Aviv were firing at once. The night of Saturday, July 23, 2011 marked the largest political demonstration in Tel Aviv in over a decade. Tens of thousands of people took to the streets, marching to the plaza in front of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, across the street from the Kirya, the underground headquarters of the IDF.

Over the heads of thousands of protesters calling for a radical change in Israeli society, towered the massive communications tower of the Israel Defense Forces – Israel’s most revered and unchanging institution.

To be amidst tens of thousands of other people is a bizarre and fascinating experience. A crowd has its own movement and its own rhythm. Like a river, it seems to navigate of its own accord, snaking around obstacles and moving slowly but persistently in a specific direction.

There was energy in the streets last night, but there was also a sense of something that has not quite come to fruition. Whether it is still in its infancy or already reached its peak remains to be seen.

The demonstration is the largest manifestation of a movement that began only a week ago, when a group of young Tel Avivians, fed up with the high cost of housing, moved into tents on Tel Aviv’s wealthy Rothschild Street.

There are now well over a hundred tents and they stretch for blocks from Kikar HaBimah, home to Israel’s national theater, toward the poorer neighborhoods in the south of the city.

The protesters’ model appears to be the protests of the Arab Spring, especially that of Cairo’s Tahrir Square, which succeeded in toppling, largely peacefully, the thirty-five year old regime of Hosni Mubarak. And there is no question that they have struck a nerve. Israelis throughout the country are frustrated with Israel’s economic situation and they have some reason to be.

Salaries have been flat for years while the cost of living has been steadily rising. Israelis are told constantly by their government and media that Israel is an economic miracle and that its growth rate is astonishing, especially while the rest of the world is experiencing a major downturn. We are a high-tech superpower, an economic powerhouse, a model for the rest of the Middle East, etc.

But the average Israeli does not feel that he is benefitting from this miracle. We see that the wealthy are getting wealthier; we see the luxury apartment buildings going up in all the major cities, none of which we will ever be able to live in; we see our politicians selling themselves for donations and perks from wealthy contributors. Meanwhile, we work more and earn less and prices keep going up. Someone is making a fortune off the Israeli boom, but it is not us.

One could sense this frustration on the streets. Most of the people who made the march down Shaul HaMelech Street to the Tel Aviv Museum were those hardest hit by the economic inequalities of Israeli society: young people without assets of their own, students, doctors beholden to the steadily atrophying public health system, young families with newborn children, and there were the old as well, pensioners and Holocaust survivors who see their pensions collapsing in value as the cost of living relentlessly rises.

There were moments when it seemed that this crowd might well be the spark of a genuine change. To hear the words “the people want social justice!” shouted by a crowd of tens of thousands is a heady experience. But there were also obvious and potentially fatal flaws that were clear for all to see.

It is unclear precisely what the goals of the movement are outside of immediate action on the problem of housing. Is it a partisan leftwing movement? A general revolt against the neoliberal economic policies that have dominated Israel for almost thirty years? A call for better social services? All of these possibilities were voiced by the various speakers. The answer is not at all clear.

The movement is also in danger of being hijacked by groups whose intentions are less than honorable. Following the demonstration, a group of radicals clashed with Israeli police in Dizengoff Square and Kaplan Street. These factions were apparent on the night of the demonstration.

There were clusters of red flags throughout the crowd, mostly wielded by members of Hadash, an anti-Zionist party that was formed from an Arab nationalist offshoot of the Israeli Communist Party. There were also anarchist groups present, whose purpose was clearly a revolution that was very different from that desired by the majority of demonstrators.

Unless the leaders of the tent protests impose some kind of discipline on these totalitarian groups, they could threaten all of their goals. Indeed, supporters of free market economics are already using the presence of these groups to discredit the movement in general.

Most importantly, the movement does not appear to have any coherent and politically intelligent leadership. At times, in fact, it seems to have no leadership at all. A handful of young people have emerged as spokesmen for the tent protests, but their lack of political savvy and experience is painfully obvious. Daphne Leef, for example, whose Facebook page began the tent protests, looked severely intoxicated during her speech at the demonstration. This does not bode well for the future of the movement she helped to spark.

Nonetheless, the protesters have one enormous advantage: It appears that there is very widespread sentiment across the political spectrum in favor of their basic goals. The idea that Israel ought to embrace a more altruistic set of social values, based in Zionism and Judaism but opposed to the economic direction the country has taken over the last few decades, seems to have widespread appeal.

In order to succeed, however, the movement that has emerged over the last week must broaden its appeal. It must be able to bring people from all sectors of Israeli society into the streets: secular, religious, left, right, Jewish, Arab, public sector and private sector workers. Whether this movement has the ability and, more importantly, the intelligence and patience to do so remains to be seen.

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