“There is no democracy without equality,” Bar Peleg quoted an organizer of the protest movement against the government’s planned legal overhaul as saying (Haaretz, April 30). And I was ready to think that now the protests are going in the right direction, and Arabs will also find their place under the umbrella of this sought-after equality.
But then I read the end of the quote, and I started to worry, because for the protest movement, even equality is connected to militarism: “The days when one side serves the state while also funding the yeshivas that aim to build a halakhic dictatorship are over.”
On top of Israel’s Arab citizens – 20 percent of the population that feels alienated from the protests, their slogans and their military spokespeople, and for whom the protests offer no great tidings – now, with this militaristic statement by the organizers, the protest movement is also fanning ultra-Orthodox hatred of it. And all this is happening because parts of the Israeli mainstream are obsessed with forcing the ultra-Orthodox to be drafted into the army. And even if the army were an earthly paradise, it’s impossible to lead people to it in chains.
The word “equality” is almost sacrosanct. It is spoken with great awe by philosophers, revolutionaries and intellectuals. But the Israeli protest movement is beating it with a brutal baton. In the name of equality, they seek to force an entire community to do something it doesn’t believe in. Shame, shame, shame.
The beautiful protest movement that has arisen in recent months hasn’t improved its talking points to diversity the community of its supporters. On the contrary, it has withdrawn more and more into itself and has highlighted the slogans of the parliamentary mainstream, whose centers of life are militarism, munitions and occupation.
A few days ago, a large demonstration was organized by supporters of the judicial overhaul. The ultra-Orthodox constituted only a small proportion of the demonstrators, and one ultra-Orthodox newspaper, Yated Neeman, even urged the ultra-Orthodox community not to attend. Given this, why position that community as a target of the anti-overhaul protests? Is that wise?
On the other hand, if the fire of equality is burning in the hearts of the protest leaders, why haven’t we heard so much as a single tweet from them while this principle is being trampled by the government’s clumsy feet? The cabinet is slated to approve a resolution by Negev and Galilee Development Minister Yitzhak Wasserlauf (Otzma Yehudit) stating that Zionism is a “guiding value for government activities,” and this resolution, as Daphna Liel noted on Twitter, “is meant to translate the nation-state law into operative policy and enable Jews to be given preference in a variety of fields.”
But that evidently isn’t the kind of equality that speaks to the hearts of our revolutionaries. Too bad.
The battle for democracy is in essence a civic struggle that is supposed to gather everyone under its umbrella. That is why my friends and I urged Arab citizens to participate in the protests, so as to bolster their civic aspect. We also urged the protest organizers to institute the necessary conditions for the entire public to feel at home in their tent.
The same is true for the ultra-Orthodox community. If they feel excluded, their alienation will intensify and the right wing will continue to celebrate all the way to the polling booth.
Moreover, I don’t understand why the protest movement has to shove its nose into issues that aren’t central to its goals. The protests were supposed to focus solely on aspects of the legal overhaul. That is why they were launched and why they swept up the masses. The protests aren’t about continuing the parliamentary wrestling match between the governing coalition and the opposition.
The protest movement is controlled by the generals. That is the secret of its power, but also the secret of its weakness. It’s the secret of its power because Israelis worship generals, and we saw how the reservists’ protest shook the pillars of the earth for the parties in the government. But an officer who has been in the career army for many years will continue to see the army as the center of his life, even after he enters civilian life.
That is why my suggestion to the protest leaders is that they should restore the luster to the principle of equality so it will speak to all the excluded parts of society, Jews and Arabs alike. Otherwise, their obsession with militarism may yet lead to the opening of an army recruitment center at the site of the weekly demonstrations on Tel Aviv’s Kaplan Street.
Equality, Not Israeli Militarism, Must Be at the Heart of Pro-democracy Protests
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02.05.2023
“There is no democracy without equality,” Bar Peleg quoted an organizer of the protest movement against the government’s planned legal overhaul as saying (Haaretz, April 30). And I was ready to think that now the protests are going in the right direction, and Arabs will also find their place under the umbrella of this sought-after equality.
But then I read the end of the quote, and I started to worry, because for the protest movement, even equality is connected to militarism: “The days when one side serves the state while also funding the yeshivas that aim to build a halakhic dictatorship are over.”
On top of Israel’s Arab citizens – 20 percent of the population that feels alienated from the protests, their slogans and their military spokespeople, and for whom the protests offer no great tidings – now, with this militaristic statement by the organizers, the protest movement is also fanning ultra-Orthodox hatred of it. And all this is happening because parts of the Israeli mainstream are obsessed with forcing the ultra-Orthodox to be drafted into the army. And even if the army were an earthly paradise, it’s impossible to lead people to it in........
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