Add Israel to the growing list of countries (Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Syria, Spain, Italy, England…) where a new form of network-based mass protest against the status quo has suddenly blossomed on the streets. Writes Noam Sheizaf, an Israeli journalist and blogger:
It happened almost overnight. Several weeks ago, there was a call posted on Facebook for people to camp on Tel Aviv’s Rothschild Boulevard, the city’s most prestigious avenue. Soon there were a handful of tents in front of Habima Square, and a few dozen students that threw cottage cheese packages (the rising price of which has become a symbol of the revolt) at Likud Party headquarters. This brought the media, and suddenly everybody is talking of a new political era.
The protest was started by groups of middle class Israelis in their twenties, living in the cities, who were calling for affordable housing and rent control. In the first week, they were joined by the students association and various grassroots movements and organizations. By the third week, the movement became much harder to define, and its goals were no longer limited to housing issues. It seemed that everyone who had something to say on social issues got on board.
On Saturday, Israel saw the largest demonstration over social issues in the country’s history, with around 100,000 people marching in several cities. Smaller rallies are taking place every day all across Israel, and more are planned in the coming weeks. There are 40 tent camps scattered in all major cities, including four in Tel Aviv alone. Rothschild Boulevard, almost a mile long, is covered with tents from one end to the other. Thousands of Israelis visit the place every evening. Political debates take place everywhere in the camp, signs and graffiti are scattered all around. There are daily screening of documentaries (followed by the inevitable discussion panel) and live music performances. Part protest, part political festival, this is something Israel has never seen before.
On July 26, a little over a week into the protests, Haaretz published a shocking poll: 87 percent of Israelis supported the protests. Various polls conducted later had similar results. Netanyahu’s approval ratings dropped overnight from 51 to 31 points….
The various tent camps are very different from each other. Some, mostly in the smaller towns, represent Israel’s poorest populations. In Jerusalem there is a strong showing of civil society organizations. In Haifa the students lead the struggle. In Tel Aviv the original groups still run the show, but the huge tent camp is very chaotic, with people walking around everywhere, handing leaflets or making speeches. By now, there are camps in Arab towns and even in a few settlements.
Yet, at its core, this is still a middle class protest: the messages heard over and over again address the cost of living, especially in the cities, social inequality and deteriorating government services (I wrote more about the economic basis of the protest here). But there is something else in the air. A general feeling of mistrust with all political parties — some members of Knesset were chased away from the tent camp in Rothschild Boulevard — and even a certain sense of alienation from society, which led several politicians, including deputy defense minister Matan Vilnai, to publicly warn of “the protest deteriorating to anarchy.”
Like the protests breaking out elsewhere in the Middle East, the Israeli rallies appear to come from nowhere (meaning that older elites didn’t see the youthful surge coming), have their own networked media resources (but still need the amplification of TV and other mass media), are fed by the boneheaded and stubborn reactions of the country’s leaders (Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is known for his tone of condescension), dislike traditional forms of leadership (remember Wael Ghonim’s refusal to become the prince of Egypt’s opposition?), and are now creating physical versions of the networked public sphere–complete with cacaphonous pamphleteering and exuberant self-expression–in the central squares of its major cities.
For some time, I have wondered when or if networked politics might take hold in Israel (where I have a lot of family and friends). A few years ago, I participated in an Israeli conference about blogging, and my impression then was that the Israeli blogosphere couldn’t help but reflect and reproduce the country’s political fragmentation; no site had succeeded in playing a “DailyKos”-type role (uniting grassroots opinion around a major political project) because Israel’s political system enables more than a dozen political parties to gain representation in parliament. But these new protests, which appear rooted in core economic complaints about the high cost of living, insecurity and inequality, rather than the long-festering arguments about national security and settlements, and don’t appear to have a distinct ideological slant (yet), appear to have routed around the old party system that, until now, was all that there was of Israeli politics. Something new–or at least the shaking off of something old and dysfunctional–is happening here.
My friend Bernard Avishai, who writes cogently about Israeli politics (and spoke at PdF 2010 about the networked mobile device of the future, the electric car), says: “The politics are hard to predict; it is not impossible that the Arab spring has inspired an Israeli summer.”
August 03, 2011