What future awaits Israel's protest movement? This is a question worthy of deep debate right now – because otherwise, it will be too late. The tree of protest grew in a wondrous manner, hundreds of thousands of people gathered together under its enormous shade. It blocked, at least temporarily, the coup against Israel’s system of government, spurred the average person not to remain closed off in their own private world, but to take an active role in larger-scale matters too, and more.
But nonetheless, it seems the tree of protest has been blocked by an armored glass ceiling, and cannot break through into the necessary new spaces. And when the ceiling is blocked, the branches search for any available opening to break out – and in doing so, lose their direction. Once they corrupt the value of equality by jumping from “equal rights” to a strange hybrid: “sharing the burden.”
Later, all the energy is directed at a marginal sum of money, the 150 million shekels ($41 million) of the local property tax fund. Now, it’s the campaign against looting the government budget. All of this, or any part of it, is not the main point.
The protest movement must reinvent itself, and fast. Hundreds of thousands of people won't stand for an embarrassing end to the protests, a conclusion that will declare: We are returning to normal, to the days before the attempted coup.
The main problem of this enormous movement is that it’s not offering anything new. It simply has no vision, and the maximum it’s asking for is to preserve the status quo. But the existing order is what brought about the tidings of dictatorship. If Justice Minister Yariv Levin and his allies don’t succeed this time, the chairman of the Kohelet Policy Forum, Moshe Koppel, promises us that soon they will succeed – and then they will be more sophisticated, stronger and more populous. Time works in favor of the Messianists.
So it's understandable why the protest movement is treading water and filling the space with empty slogans – which, because they are so general, become hollow. This is simply because the forces that make up the backbone of the protests are people of the past, who filled it with the content of contemporary reality.
Here is a short list of the these forces: Security experts, industrialists, academics, high-tech people, lawyers, doctors and journalists. Some of these forces are those who created the springboard for the anti-democratic revolution – and, with the tidings of destruction, are facing these people from the past on the other side. The messianics come with a plan to establish a land free of Arabs, and at the same time with plans for religion coercion that will cover everyone.
The problem with the protest movement is that it only sees the means, the tool – the overthrowing of the legal system – but is not interested in the goal that the means are meant to achieve. The extreme right wants to appoint all the judges not just because of its lust for power, but to implement its own agenda.
This is why the obvious question is whether – and let’s put aside the changes to the rules of the game – the plans of the radical right don’t mesh well with the agenda of some in the central stream of the protest movement. It’s worth checking out.
Doesn’t Messianism serve the security establishment, even if it declares it’s against the judicial coup? Is it a coincidence that Jerusalem Day, with all its fascist displays, remains under the radar of the protest movement? Is it also a coincidence that the terrifying wave of murders in the Arab community remains under the radar of the protest movement? A coincidence that the protests don’t touch the open wound – the government’s suspicious ignoring of organized crime groups – and so the murderous cycle continues?
Someone will say that the protest movement cannot deal with all the ills of society. Interesting – but over the local property tax law an enormous cry rang out, while the 79 murder victims are accepted in thunderous silence.
So, here too the protest movement – which represents the powerful forces in society – is put to the test. And the test is its attitude to the Palestinians, those over the Green Line and those who are citizens of Israel. This attitude is what will determine the protest movement’s future.
Does Israel's Anti-government Protest Movement Have a Future?
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23.05.2023
What future awaits Israel's protest movement? This is a question worthy of deep debate right now – because otherwise, it will be too late. The tree of protest grew in a wondrous manner, hundreds of thousands of people gathered together under its enormous shade. It blocked, at least temporarily, the coup against Israel’s system of government, spurred the average person not to remain closed off in their own private world, but to take an active role in larger-scale matters too, and more.
But nonetheless, it seems the tree of protest has been blocked by an armored glass ceiling, and cannot break through into the necessary new spaces. And when the ceiling is blocked, the branches search for any available opening to break out – and in doing so, lose their direction. Once they corrupt the value of equality by jumping from “equal rights” to a strange hybrid: “sharing the burden.”
Later, all the energy is directed at a marginal sum of money, the 150 million shekels ($41 million) of the local property tax fund. Now, it’s the campaign against looting the........
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