Since the beginning of the summer, the biweekly demonstrations in front of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s residence have grown steadily in size. Matti Friedman reports from one of the more relaxed Friday-afternoon protests, which he contrasts with the larger, rawer ones that take place Saturday nights:
Here and there came whiffs of pot. There was only one guy in a Che Guevara shirt. Right-wing thugs have threatened violence, but the crowd was relaxed and the police seemed bored. There were a few signs about the occupation of the West Bank and some about the banks. The Israeli left finds it hard to concentrate. But it’s creative, and has a good sense of humor. At a recent protest someone had a sign saying, “I’m single.” Another sign read, “Sign.”
The protests are driven by real political and economic fury across many sectors of society, but there’s no question that much of what makes them fun is specifically a result of all of [the country’s] theater people being at loose ends.
Yet, in a democracy, elections matter far more than protests, and voters aren’t on the protestors’ side:
Despite the heady eruption of liberal energy on the street, in parliament, where it counts, the center-left is toothless. The Labor party never recovered from the waves of Arab violence that shattered the peace dreams sold to the Israeli public in the 1990s. Centrist alternatives have come and gone. . . . Netanyahu’s Likud party may have just a quarter of the vote, but right now it’s the only substantial political movement in Israel. No vuvuzelas or dancing aliens can change that.
Indeed, the current protest movement shares a lot with that of 2011, when Israelis took the streets to express dissatisfaction with economic inequality and the high cost of living:
Netanyahu weathered those protests and delivered a decade of economic growth, relative safety, and cynical, hopeless politics. One of the few accomplishments of those demonstrations was to elevate two charismatic young organizers into the Knesset as a new generation of liberal leaders. One of them left after a few terms. The second is now a minister in Netanyahu’s government.
Read more on New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/13/opinion/israel-protests.html