Saturday, July 30, 2011

The manifestations in Israel go on

The manifestation last Saturday was amazing. It's the first time ever that organizations of all different types combined effort.Yet, it was still a strong manifestation only in Tel Aviv and the organizations were center-left (from greens to communists).

The past week was amazing. It started with various protest movements joining forces: the tents people manifesting all over the country for the cost of life, the physicians, the students, the diary products cost protest, the fuel cost protest and political movements who made their best to assist without getting in the light spots.

The government made a great offer to the students organizations trying to neutralize them and maneuver them out of the manifestations. The physicians were threatened by a court decision, but they didn't turn back and threatened back with a collective resignation.

The government is pushing forward a move to privatize more public lands, promising this will ease the housing problem and bring down the prices. I knew immediately this was a manipulation - this obviously will make the rich people richer, will allow selling them more lands without any restrictions, because of the 'urgency' and eventually will further damage the general public interest. I was astonished by the fact that 'the street' understood it perfectly, and only the prime  minister and his greasers kept repeating their twisted version.

The central trade union stepped up to support the manifestations, and it's leader promised that he is not taking over the manifestations but joining it and will use all its power to help complying with the cry: "The people want social justice!"

Nobody is sure where is this heading. The change requested by the people is very big. Actually, people are asking for a welfare country, while in the past 20 years Israel has decisively moved to a ultra capitalist economy, leaving behind a shredded society.  The right wing masses are still a bit reluctant to join because of the government propaganda. If they would just come once and see with their own eyes and see that the people in the tents represent the whole Israeli society they'll change their mind and understand once and for all that this government is lying.

Today, we expect big manifestations in all the major cities: Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and others.  I will report once I'm back home.

No housing!

Dario

 

 

1 comment:

  1. [...] The first public protest was an important milestone to prove the public support for the case of social justice. This is also the moment where the cry “The people demands social justice” crystallized and became the movement’s mantra. The 20-30 K people that attended were hard-core followers of civil organizations, and showed a wide and varied support. Read more here About July 23, 2011 protests [...]

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