You could even say it all started with a poor vegetable salesman in Tunisia. On a local scale though, it started with cottage. The price of cottage went up, and suddenly people were protesting. All on facebook, nothing out in the streets, but protesting, and in large large numbers. This meant they stopped buying cottage, a meagre protest but still, a protest. Now if you have never had Israeli cottage then maybe you don’t know, but it’s really good and for many was a staple food, a basic product on the table. Either way, people showed some will to organize for social causes, albeit only for cottage and only on facebook, but still.
Then about three weeks ago, a 20 something lady who couldn’t find housing in Tel Avid and was getting frustrated at how difficult it was to live in this country unless you were rich or had rich parents, decided to take a tent and sleep in arguably the best known street in Israel, Tel Aviv’s Rotschild’s Avenue.
Within three days there were over 50 tents there.
A week later, a huge protest over the government’s repeated policy of ignoring the poor and helping the rich ensued. Suddenly people were taking to the streets. Tent-villages popped up like mushrooms after the rain in Jerusalem, Beer Sheva in the south and Kiryat Shmona in the north and in many other cities. The tent village in Rotschild suddenly grew to enormous size, taking over the entire walkway of the avenue (circa a mile long) and many groups joined the cause. Everyone suddenly had something to say. The doctors fighting for public medicine better wages and livable hours, the students asking for lower tuition and more public housing, mothers wanting public education for their toddlers, everyone suddenly had a booth and tents. Every street corner on Rotschild suddenly had some major activity – a lecture discussing a cause, a movie explaining an issue, a musician coming to support.
The government tried to paint the entire protest as a leftwing thing. Now in Israel left and right are mostly identified with the security situation with the left wing willing to give the West Bank for a Palestinian state and the right wing wanting to hold on to it for security or religious reasons.
But this issue dragged people from all over the map. This was evident in the different visitors who came to Rotschild, which became the center of the protest. Further, various groups opened tents – an Arab-Jewish coalition at one part, settler teenagers at another end, orthodox Jews next to supporters of gay rights. Everyone came out, and the most amazing thing was that people talked! And are still talking - about social policy, about better living conditions, about the peace process, about how fricken hot and humid it is! About everything and anything. But mostly about social justice.
The people want social justice became the slogan of the protest. Bumper stickers, signs, posters were seen just about anywhere stating this.
The events culminated in tonight’s huge protest. Estimates are that over 350,000 people showed up to protest. Now just to put that into scale, Israel has circa 7.5 million inhabitants. In the UK, if a similar percentage came out to the streets, that would mean 2.9 million. In the U.S.? 7.2 million people!!! And on top of that, it was ridiculously hot and humid – an Israeli summer.
And people came. From near, from far, with their kids, with their grandparents. Walked in the streets, painted signs, yelled till their voices went coarse. What will happen? A smart (very smart) man once said, man plans and God laughs.
“The people want social justice, the people want social justice!”
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