Jeff Halper is the Director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD). He writes for CounterPunch on the tent protests throughout Israel and what it all means.
"The demonstrations currently roiling Israel constitute a grassroots challenge to Israel's neo-liberal regime. Beginning as an uprising of the middle classes – especially young people who have trouble finding affordable housing – it has spread to the working class, the poor and the Arab communities as well, though not the religious as yet. Many of the working sectors have joined the three-week protest: doctors, single mothers, parents demanding free education, taxi drivers upset with the price of petrol, even the police. The Histadrut, Israel's general trade federation, and many municipalities have joined as well. Last night's protests brought some 320,000 people into the streets.
The big argument is whether it should be "political" or not. I attended the demonstration last Saturday night, and while the main slogan was "We demand social justice," (although chants of "Mubarak, Assad, Netanyahu" could also be heard), it was clear that most of those attending wanted the movement to remain "non-political," rooted squarely in the mainstream consensus. Its thrust is anti-neo-liberal, though not in framed those exact words. Instead, issues are still defined in more narrow, technical ways: affordable housing, affordable education, etc. This may be an effective beginning strategy, since it does bring in the wider public. Many of those support the protests, the taxi drivers for example, tend to vote for Netanyahu's Likud. The politics, however, are just under the surface. "Bibi [Netanyahu] go home" is all over the place, from posters to leaflets to chants."
AlJazeera also has an interesting piece "Will the Israeli left talk about occupation?" on the vexed subject of the cursed Occupation.
"The demonstrations currently roiling Israel constitute a grassroots challenge to Israel's neo-liberal regime. Beginning as an uprising of the middle classes – especially young people who have trouble finding affordable housing – it has spread to the working class, the poor and the Arab communities as well, though not the religious as yet. Many of the working sectors have joined the three-week protest: doctors, single mothers, parents demanding free education, taxi drivers upset with the price of petrol, even the police. The Histadrut, Israel's general trade federation, and many municipalities have joined as well. Last night's protests brought some 320,000 people into the streets.
The big argument is whether it should be "political" or not. I attended the demonstration last Saturday night, and while the main slogan was "We demand social justice," (although chants of "Mubarak, Assad, Netanyahu" could also be heard), it was clear that most of those attending wanted the movement to remain "non-political," rooted squarely in the mainstream consensus. Its thrust is anti-neo-liberal, though not in framed those exact words. Instead, issues are still defined in more narrow, technical ways: affordable housing, affordable education, etc. This may be an effective beginning strategy, since it does bring in the wider public. Many of those support the protests, the taxi drivers for example, tend to vote for Netanyahu's Likud. The politics, however, are just under the surface. "Bibi [Netanyahu] go home" is all over the place, from posters to leaflets to chants."
AlJazeera also has an interesting piece "Will the Israeli left talk about occupation?" on the vexed subject of the cursed Occupation.
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