How not to storm Balfour Fortress
It’s as if the organizers don’t realize that their actions make it impossible for them to convince anyone on the Right of their cause
It’s become an almost daily occurrence: Protests in the middle of Tel Aviv, outside the Knesset or outside the Prime Minister’s Residence on Jerusalem’s Balfour Street.
The angry demonstrators call for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ouster. Invariably, there’s a giant banner reading “crime minister.” People chant “bribery, fraud, breach of trust,” the allegations on Netanyahu’s rap sheet. Small numbers of protesters clash with journalists covering the event, others with police, finding themselves arrested.
But are they getting to their target, Netanyahu, at all? Probably not.
These protests must be analyzed separately from protests of various industries in Israel, whether it’s entertainment, event halls and caterers, restaurateurs and others, that have been either put on ice or are operating under a cloud of uncertainty due to the coronavirus crisis.
Anecdotally, it seems that people who have been hurt economically in recent months are turning away from Netanyahu and the Likud, which has dropped several seats in recent polls. The most prominent person on this front was known Likud supporter and owner of Jerusalem’s famous Pinati Hummus joint, Meir Micha, complaining that Netanyahu is trying to get himself tax breaks while his business is collapsing.
“He used to be a god to us, Bibi,” Micha sighed to pro-Netanyahu journalist Yinon Magal and anti-Netanyahu journalist Ben Caspit.
Netanyahu and Finance Minister Israel Katz have shown sensitivity to these laments. One can disagree with their responses – and, in fact, many do, including in their own party – but Netanyahu has made it amply clear in repeated public statements that he understands the current economic crisis is deep and needs to be dealt with effectively.
The anti-corruption protests, however, are inherently ineffective.
Netanyahu is not going to respond positively to a protest calling for his ouster, especially on grounds that he believes are trumped-up. Netanyahu still hopes to prove in court that his actions were within the bounds of the law, he is considered innocent until proven guilty, he built a coalition after the last election, so why should he go home just because a few thousand angry people say so?
Beyond that obvious reasoning, it seems like these protests are not really looking to convince anyone who isn’t already against Netanyahu.
As Netanyahu himself pointed out in a recent tweet, the “Black Flag” protest movement behind the anti-corruption demonstrations in recent months, has suspicious ties to former prime minister Ehud Barak, who is one of Netanyahu’s most vocal opponents. An NGO called National Responsibility spent nearly NIS 100,000 on protests in March, Channel 13 reported at the time. The organization’s board consists of people with close ties to Barak – his former advisers and aides, his niece, Labor activists who supported him, and more.
The NGO received more than NIS 1.6 million in donations from the US in 2017, including NIS 144,000 from HBRK, which Haaretz reported was partly owned by Jeffrey Epstein. When asked about the Epstein connection, National Responsibility told Haaretz they will give the donation to youth at risk. This is not a LeftRight issue like the Barak connection, but it’s just an easy peg for Netanyahu to employ to delegitimize the protests.
Beyond the funding, there’s how the protesters conduct themselves. Last week’s protest had a Bastille Day theme, and rock star Assaf Amdursky received a lot of attention for imploring people to join. Among the things Amdursky said was to call to march with torches.
Netanyahu’s son Avner wrote on Facebook: “This is a clear call of incitement. What do you think you do with torches? Do you know how the storming of the Bastille ended? With a chopped-off head and dozens killed. Everyone has a right to protest (during corona times I think it’s a stupid thing to do) but this is a call for incitement.”
Bastille Day is a symbol of “liberty, equality and brotherhood,” as the Facebook invitation to the protest reads. But the French Revolution also descended into chaos, violence and a reign of terror. That made the symbol something easy for Netanyahu’s supporters to subvert. And the fact that protesters vandalized property and lit it on fire during the protest further delegitimized them.
On Tuesday, a demonstrator perched herself, bare-breasted, atop a sculpture of a menorah in the traffic circle outside the Knesset. Commentators on the Left mocked Knesset Speaker Yariv Levin for saying that he will try to press charges against the woman for degrading symbols of the state. Notably, none of the female commentators trying to make the would-be Lady Godiva into a feminist cause is known to walk around topless in public. We live in a society. The woman was very obviously trying to be provocative, and she succeeded.
Other protesters waved Palestinian flags or the red flags of “Antifa,” which is not really one organization, but loosely tied anarchist groups and a favorite bogeyman for the Right, especially in the US of late.
Some of the more extreme behavior could be waved away as a small number of people, while the rest were peaceful. And perhaps this is so. But these are just a few examples. And, again, they’re just making it easy for the Right and Netanyahu to dismiss the demonstrations.
It’s as if the organizers don’t realize that Israelis who supported Netanyahu or the Right that helps him build his coalitions tend to be pretty conservative, and radical left-wing messages and connections will only make it impossible for them to convince anyone on the Right of their cause.
They may be cosplaying as French Revolutionaries storming the Bastille, but they have no idea how to storm Balfour Fortress.