Against Netanyahu 400 thousand in the square

Israeli indignados raise the challenge

TEL AVIV – The Israeli indignados called them. They have been pounding the government for eight weeks, protesting against high prices, demanding economic reforms under the banner of greater social equity. They had left by setting up a single tent on Rothschild Boulevard, in Tel Aviv. Now they have managed to bring 400 thousand people into the streets, in 15 different Israeli cities. The most impressive demonstration in Tel Aviv, with 250,000 people in the square: but they were tens of thousands in Jerusalem, in Haifa in the north, in Eilat on the Red Sea. Shaking the whole country from a long period of social apathy.

Their goal, in reality, was to bring one million people into the streets. And that is why someone now speaks of failure. But it was an unrealistic challenge, given the numbers of the Israeli population (7 million). And it is still the largest mobilization ever in the country. So much so that the premier, Benyamin Netanyahu, has been forced to promise a package of reforms in public with respect to the liberal policy followed so far. Probable intervention to reduce tax burdens in favor of employees and middle-class sectors that remained excluded from the growth of the GDP of these years; and then a popular housing plan and more education funds. All recommending measures by an ad hoc commission, led by the economist Manuel Trajtenberg. September.

For the square – which has not spared even sarcastic posters today and teased the premier – at the moment it is only words: the government, in short, would only be trying to take time. And the protesters said they were ready to continue. “They claimed that our protest is marking time,” said one of the organizers, the general secretary of Israeli students, Itzik Shmuli. “We, the new Israelis are determined to continue the struggle for a more just and better society, knowing that the road will be long and difficult”. The movement had lost some momentum last week, after the pause imposed by the escalation of attacks in the south and the tensions on the front of the Gaza Strip. But he managed to go beyond just the themes of security and fear, war horses from the right side of the government.
(September 3, 2011)