Israel’s simmering summer of discontent
Well acquainted with protests, the nation is experiencing a different kind of civil unrest this time, spurred by coronavirus policy, economics and politics
Against the value of free expression in a democratic society, wrote the attorney-general to the deputy head of police investigations, stands the principle of public order, “a value that must be protected in a democratic regime.
“Disturbing the public order, particularly continued disturbances, can lead to anarchy and the undermining of our democratic way of life,” the letter continued.
The author of that letter is not Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit expressing an opinion on the current season of street protests, but rather one of his predecessors, Michael Ben-Yair, who served in that position from 1993 to 1997.
Ben-Yair’s letter in August 1995 was an order to the police to investigate the leaders of Zo Artzeinu, an organization established in the early 1990s to protest the Oslo Accords, for inciting rebellion and preventing the police from performing their job. Two leaders of the movement – Moshe Feiglin and Shmuel Sackett – were actually convicted of sedition for their part in that movement.
The similarity in news reports about the protests during that period to what is happening today on the streets of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv is striking: the blocking of the roads, the water cannons, the mounted police, the chants of “police state,” the accusations of an exaggerated use of police force, and the police counterclaim that force is required because the protesters violated the terms of their demonstration permits and engaged in an illegal demonstration.
“The protest began in the late afternoon, when dozens of people congregated at France Square around the corner from the Prime Minister’s Residence. They were met by hundreds of police, riot police, and border policemen who filled the square and numerous side streets,” read a Jerusalem Post story from September 14, 1995.
“For the first 10 minutes of the protest, a few people, with their hands tied above their heads, walked into the street and stood or sat down in front of cars,” the report continued. “Mounted policemen tried to control the crowd about 20 minutes into the demonstration. The horses pushed people up King George Street in the direction of Jaffa Road. One policeman used his whip to hit demonstrators who did not get out of his way.”
It is striking how, with the substitution of a few names of people and organizations, that same story could have been filed during the last couple of weeks to describe the scene on Jerusalem’s streets during one of the current anti-government protests: “As the police were pushing people up the street, water cannons shot blue-colored water at people congregating...”
ISRAEL IS a nation well acquainted with protests – from the violent demonstration over German reparations in the 1950s, to the Wadi Salib riots in Haifa over the killing of a Moroccan immigrant in 1959, to the Black Panthers in the early 1970s, the reservists protests after the Yom Kippur War, the Peace Now protests in the 1980s, the anti-Disengagement demonstrations in 2005, and the social justice protests in 2011. The list is long, and it is only natural to look for similarities between what is happening on the streets today and what happened in the past.
But this time there is one significant difference: the demonstrations are an amalgam of different causes; there is not just one cause whose banner is being waved.
“The anti-corruption protests started first,” said
Chaim Weizmann, a lecturer in government at IDC in Herzliya who has studied Israel’s protest movements, “then the Shulman [small business people] protests, and then the coronavirus brought those protesting the difficult economic situation, who then joined with the social workers.
“Everyone comes for a different reason, but they go to the same place and take part in the same protest. Very few are leaving because they say they can’t identify with one of the messages. What this creates is a general atmosphere of dissatisfaction, of protests, of being anti.”
In the large demonstrations that took place from 1993 to 1995, there were also a number of different causes that mixed together: the Golan Heights (“Ha’am im Hagolan”), the settlements movement, Zo Artzeinu. But they were all from the “same family” – protesting against the diplomatic process being led by Yitzhak Rabin.
That is not the case today.
At the demonstrations popping up around the country, one can find “black flag demonstrators,” who have been protesting against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for years and believe he must leave office, “anti-occupation” activists, as well as “the Shulmanim,” who have been protesting in various forms since October on behalf of the self-employed. And these groups have now been joined by demonstrators protesting
the dire economic straits triggered by corona: restaurateurs, unemployed students, social workers.
This is creating a general atmosphere of dissatisfaction that should worry Netanyahu, Weizmann said. As long as the protests were dominated only by those who have been calling for his ouster for years, that was one thing, but as other voices are now joining in, it creates a different picture altogether.
That the protests are not showing any sign of disappearing is apparently concerning Netanyahu, the reason he took to Twitter on Saturday night to highlight a Palestinian flag at one of the demonstrations, and saying that the protests were being backed by his arch-nemesis, Ehud Barak, “the partner of convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.”
According to Weizmann, Netanyahu misses the mark when trying to paint the protests as just that of “leftists.” Rather, part of the protests reflects a general lack of confidence in the government’s ability to deal with the corona crisis.
On the one hand, Weizmann said, the anger and frustration on display could convince Netanyahu that this is not the time to go for early elections, even though some argue this is where he is headed. On the other hand, Weizmann also counseled against believing that all those joining the protests and frustrated at the situation would take it out against Netanyahu at the ballot box.
Weizmann recalled the economic protests of 2003 just prior to the Knesset elections that year. Ariel Sharon was the prime minister, and journalist Oshrat Kotler interviewed a single mother in Tel Aviv who said she came out because she did not have food for her child. Kotler, Weizmann said, asked the woman who she would vote for in the upcoming elections, and she replied Ariel Sharon.
When reminded that just a minute before she was bewailing the economic situation and saying she had no money for food, the interviewee replied “Yes, but only Arik knows how to deal with the Arabs.”
“It could be the same thing now,” Weizmann said. “It could be that people are saying it is all correct [the frustration vented at the protests], but the minute they have to cast their ballot, they will say there is nobody else.”
THAT SENTIMENT, at least, is the hope of a group
of about a dozen people who gathered Wednesday on Ben-Maimon Street in Jerusalem, just around the corner from the Prime Minister’s Residence, to face off against a group of maybe 75 anti-Netanyahu protesters sitting under makeshift tents on the sidewalk alongside them.
This scene, which repeats itself nightly in Jerusalem, was sandwiched in between a protest of a few thousand people on Tuesday night that will be remembered for a female student of social work who bared her chest while sitting atop the large menorah across from the Knesset, and what was expected to be a large demonstration in the city on Thursday night.
One part of the sidewalk – the much larger stretch – was taken up by the anti-government protesters, sitting on mattresses and plastic chairs, chanting from time to time and – at least part of them – listening to far-left speakers, such as Amiram Goldblum, who declared Israel an “apartheid state” engaging in crimes against humanity.
The signs hanging from metal barricades ranged from “The accused should rise to his feet,” “A detached government” and “Stop the dictatorship plague” to “Where are you, hope?” and “The siege of Balfour.” The much smaller pro-Netanyahu contingent shouted out slogans such as “traitors,” “leftists” and “leftist traitors.”
Each side tried to drown out the other with music blaring through speakers. The anti-Netanyahu protest played the classic Yoram Gaon song “Me’al Pisgat Har Hatzofim,” with its final words, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, come, Messiah, come.” While the pro-Netanyahu group blasted at full volume an Erez Simon song with a strong Mizrahi beat praising the prime minister. “Bibi, ya habibi, [Bibi my beloved], Bibi ya habibi, Bibi is a great Binyamin. Bibi, ya habibi, Bibi ya habibi, my Bibi is the king of the Right.” One of the anti-Netanyahu protests, swept up in the rhythm of the catchy song, began dancing to it in the street.
Another woman, who would give her name only as Revital, was also swinging to the melody, even as she was holding a sign connecting Epstein and Barak to the funding of the protests seemingly sweeping the country.
Asked if she really believed what was written on her sign, she replied: “Barak said himself that he would pay for people to protest to bring down the government.” She then went on to draw the connection between Barak and “that pedophile Epstein.”
The dueling chants, the extreme slogans shouted
from one side to the other, the competing music, the signs full of pathos, the large barrier erected to keep the protesters out of the view of the Prime Minister’s Residence, gave the scene the feel of a tragicomedy.
“I find the whole thing pretty ridiculous,” said Moshe Weinstein, 28, who happened upon the scene after visiting his grandparents who live nearby. He termed the protests “ridiculous” because he said that the demonstrators were deciding on Netanyahu’s guilt or innocence before the court heard the case.
“I defend their right to protest, but not to block roads,” said Weinstein, who emigrated from New York at the age of 12. “There is an educational problem when you have kids who say they have the democratic right to block my road.”
Weinstein drew parallels between the protests taking place here and those taking place all across America. “They are both saying that we need to burn everything down and then start again from the beginning, but that is not how it works.”
Across the street, another longtime immigrant – a man who would identify himself only as Daniel – explained why he had come to the protest, though making it clear he was there on his own and not as part of any organization.
Daniel grew up in Uruguay under a military dictatorship, and immigrated here in 1984. He said that Israelis take their freedoms for granted, and do not realize how quickly those freedoms can all disappear.
“I came to the protest to protect democracy,” he said. “I did not come because of anything to do with grants or money. I’m here because of democracy, not corona. I came from a dictatorship, and know what it’s like not to have the freedom of speech or protest.”
Asked if he genuinely thought that Israel was on the slippery slope toward losing its democracy, he replied: “What, it didn’t happen in Turkey? Turkey was also democratic.”
Soon after he spoke, someone from the pro-Netanyahu group took a megaphone and roared toward the anti-government protesters: “Bibi woke up today in [the Prime Minister’s Residence] on Balfour Street. He woke up yesterday on Balfour Street. And he will wake up there tomorrow. And you, you will continue to sleep on the ground here on your mattresses.”
To which the anti-Bibi crowd chanted “1000, 2000, 4000,” referring to the names of the criminal cases for which Netanyahu is currently on trial, as Israel’s summer of discontent continues to simmer. •