Michael,
Thank you for sending these -- three of the most
riveting articles I have read in a long time. I
have only scanned these so far, still less
ruminated on them but, as an Israel observer
(neither pro- nor anti-) there are four items
that I would like to throw into the melting pot
if discussion ensures. They are activities which
have grown rapidly in the last 10-15 years and in
which Israel is already ahead of the world, or
(in one case) probably soon will be.
Two involve crucial resources: 1. Solar energy
(by both inorganic and biochemical means); 2. water recycling.
Two involve methods of warfare which may well be
the ultimate ones and in which the size of a
proactive nation-state hardly matters in
prevailing over, or at least holding its own
against, conventionally superior powers: 3.
cybernetic warfare (the recent stuxnet attack on
Iran's centrifuge system is an example); 4.
development of drones which are small enough to
be virtually undetectable and which can be used
for assassination of any politician anywhere in
the world if necessary (the assassination of a
Chechnyan general by Russia about 15 years was
the first (crude) intimation of such a
technology, and the assassination of individual
Taleban leaders in Afghanistan is another more recent example).
Research in the latter two are in close
association with America, but we can be pretty
sure that Israel will also be researching and
developing independently. But all four areas are
so crucial to the future of the world that,
unless Israel comes to grief in some way in the
next few years, then Israel is almost certainly
going to have a far more powerful role than it has now.
Keith
At 03:30 06/08/2011, you wrote:
-----Original Message-----
From: Tikkun [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Friday, August 05, 2011 9:08 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Israel's Tent Cities--a Movement
Suddenly Emerges. Perspectives from Uri Avnery,
Zeev Sternhell, & Bernard Avishai
[]
Three perspectives on the amazing growth of tent
cities of protest across Israeli society.
Uri Avnery
August 6, 2011
âHow Goodly Are Thy Tentsâ
FIRST OF all, a warning.
Tent cities are springing up all over Israel. A
social protest movement is gathering momentum.
At some point in the near future, it may endanger the right-wing government.
At that point, there will be a temptation
perhaps an irresistible temptation to âwarm
up the bordersâ. To start a nice little war.
Call on the youth of Israel, the same young
people now manning (and womanning) the tents, to go and defend the fatherland.
Nothing easier than that. A small provocation, a
platoon crossing the border âto prevent the
launching of a rocketâ, a fire fight, a salvo
of rockets and lo and behold, a war. End of protest.
In September, just a few weeks from now, the
Palestinians intend to apply to the UN for the
recognition of the State of Palestine. Our
politicians and generals are chanting in unison
that this will cause a crisis Palestinians in
the occupied territories may rise in protest
against the occupation, violent demonstrations
may ensue, the army will be compelled to shoot
and lo and behold, a war. End of protest.
THREE WEEKS ago I was interviewed one morning by
a Dutch journalist. At the end, she asked:
âYou are describing an awful situation. The
extreme right-wing controls the Knesset and is
enacting abominable anti-democratic laws. The
people are indifferent and apathetic. There is
no opposition to speak of. And yet you exude a spirit of optimism. How come?â
I answered that I have faith in the people of
Israel. Contrary to appearances, we are a sane
people. Some time, somewhere, a new movement
will arise and change the situation. It may
happen in a week, in a month, in a year. But it will come.
On that very same day, just a few hours later, a
young woman called Daphne Liff, with an
improbable manâs hat perched on her flowing
hair, said to herself: âEnough!â
She had been evicted by her landlady because she
couldnât afford the rent. She set up a tent in
Rothschild Boulevard, a long, tree-lined
thoroughfare in the center of Tel Aviv. The news
spread through facebook, and within an hour,
dozens of tents had sprung up. Within a week,
there were some 400 tents, spread out in a double line more than a mile long.
Similar tent-cities sprang up in Jerusalem,
Haifa and a dozen smaller towns. The next
Saturday, tens of thousands joined protest
marches in Tel Aviv and elsewhere. Last
Saturday, they numbered more than 150,000.
Thisâ] has now become the center of Israeli
life. The Rothschild tent city has assumed a
life of its own a cross between Tahrir Square
and Woodstock, with a touch of Hyde Park corner
thrown in for good measure. The mood is
indescribably upbeat, masses of people come to
visit and return home full of enthusiasm and
hope. Everybody can feel that something momentous is happening.
Seeing the tents, I was reminded of the words of
Balaam, who was sent by the king of Moab to
curse the children of Israel in the desert
(Numbers 24) and instead exclaimed: âHow
goodly are thy tents, O Jacob, and thy tabernacles, Oh Israel!â
IT ALL started in a remote little town in
Tunisia, when an unlicensed market vendor was
arrested by a policewoman. It seems that in the
ensuing altercation, the woman struck the man in
the face, a terrible humiliation for a Tunisian
man. He set himself on fire. What followed is
history: the revolution in Tunisia, regime
change in Egypt, uprisings all over the Middle East.
The Israeli government saw all this with growing
concern but they didnât imagine that there
might be an effect in Israel itself. Israeli
society, with its ingrained contempt for Arabs,
could hardly be expected to follow suit.
But follow suit it did. People in the street
spoke with growing admiration of the Arab
revolt. It showed that people acting together
could dare to confront leaders far more fearsome
than our bumbling Binyamin Netanyahu.
Some of the most popular posters on the tents
were âRothschild corner Tahrirâ and, in a
Hebrew rhyme, âTahrir Not only in Cahirâ
Cahir being the Hebrew version of al-Cahira, the
Arabic name for Cairo. And also: âMubarak, Assad, Netanyahuâ.
In Tahrir Square, the central slogan was âThe
People Want to Overthrow the Regimeâ. In
conscious emulation, the central slogan of the
tent cities is âThe People Want Social Justiceâ.
WHO ARE these people? What exactly do they want?
It started with a demand for âAffordable
Housingâ. Rents in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and
elsewhere are extremely high, after years of
Government neglect. But the protest soon
engulfed other subjects: the high price of
foodstuffs and gasoline, the low wages . The
ridiculously low salaries of physicians and
teachers, the deterioration of the education and
health services. There is a general feeling that
18 tycoons control everything, including the
politicians. (Politicians who dared to show up
in the tent cities were chased away.) They could
have quoted an American saying: âDemocracy
must be something more than two wolves and a
sheep voting on what to have for dinner.â
A selection of the slogans gives an impression:
We want a welfare state!
Fighting for the home!
Justice, not charity!
If the government is against the people, the
people are against the government!
Bibi, this is not the US Congress, you will not buy us with empty words!
If you donât join our war, we shall not fight your wars!
Give us our state back!
Three partners with three salaries cannot pay for three rooms!
The answer to privatization: revolution!
We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, we are slaves to Bibi in Israel!
I have no other homeland!
Bibi, go home, we'll pay for the gas!
Overthrow swinish capitalism!
Be practical, demand the impossible!
WHAT IS missing in this array of slogans? Of
course: the occupation, the settlements, the huge expenditure on the military.
This is by design. The organizers, anonymous
young men and women mainly women are very
determined not to be branded as âleftistsâ.
They know that bringing up the occupation would
provide Netanyahu with an easy weapon, split the
tent-dwellers and derail the protests.
We in the peace movement know and respect this.
All of us are exercising strenuous
self-restraint, so that Netanyahu will not
succeed in marginalizing the movement and
depicting it as a plot to overthrow the right-wing government.
As I wrote in an article in Haaretz: No need to
push the protesters. In due course, they will
reach the conclusion that the money for the
major reforms they demand can only come from
stopping the settlements and cutting the huge
military budget by hundreds of billions and
that is possible only in peace. (To help them
along, we published a large ad, saying:
âItâs quite simple money for the
settlements OR money for housing, health services and educationâ).
Voltaire said that âthe art of government
consists in taking as much money as possible
from one class of citizens to give it to the
otherâ. This government takes the money of
decent citizens to give it to the settlers.
WHO ARE they, these enthusiastic demonstrators,
who seemingly have come from nowhere?
They are the young generation of the middle
class, who go out to work, take home average
salaries and âcannot finish the monthâ, as
the Israeli expression goes. Mothers who cannot
go to work because they have nowhere to leave
their babies. University students who cannot get
a room in the dormitories or afford accomodation
in the city. And especially young people who
want to marry but cannot afford to buy an
apartment, even with the help of their parents.
(One tent bore the sign: âEven this tent was bought by our parentsâ)
All this in a flourishing economy, which has
been spared the pains of the world-wide economic
crisis and boasts an enviable unemployment rate of just 5%.
If pressed, most of the protesters would declare
themselves to be âsocial-democratsâ. They
are the very opposite of the Tea Party in the
US: they want a welfare state, they blame
privatization for many of their ills, they want
the government to interfere and to act. Whether
they want to admit it or not, the very essence
of their demands and attitudes is classically
leftist (the term created in the French
Revolution because the adherents of these ideals
sat on the left side of the speaker in the
National Assembly). They are the essence of what
Left means - (though in Israel, the terms
âLeftâ and âRightâ have until now been
largely identified with questions of war and peace).
WHERE WILL it go from here?
No one can say. When asked about the impact of
the French Revolution, Zhou Enlai famously said:
âItâs too early to say.â Here we are
witnessing an event still in progress, perhaps even still beginning.
It has already produced a huge change. For weeks
now, the public and the media have stopped
talking about the borders, the Iranian bomb and
the security situation. Instead, the talk is now
almost completely about the social situation,
the minimum wage, the injustice of indirect
taxes, the housing construction crisis.
Under pressure, the amorphous leadership of the
protest has drawn up a list of concrete demands.
Among others: government building of houses for
rent, raising taxes on the rich and the
corporations, free education from the age of
three months [sic], a raise in the salary of
physicians, police and fire-fighters, school
classes of no more than 21 pupils, breaking the
monopolies controlled by a few tycoons, and so on.
So where from here? There are many possibilities, both good and bad.
Netanyahu can try to buy off the protest with
some minor concessions some billions here,
some billions there. This will confront the
protesters with the choice of the Indian boy in
the movie about becoming a millionaire: take the
money and quit, or risk all on answering yet another question.
Or: the movement may continue to gather
momentum and force major changes, such as
shifting the burden from indirect to direct taxation.
Some rabid optimists (like myself) may even
dream of the emergence of a new authentic
political party to fill the gaping void on the
left side of the political spectrum.
I STARTED with a warning, and I must end with
another one: this movement has raised immense
hopes. If it fails, it may leave behind an
atmosphere of despondency and despair a mood
that will drive those who can to seek a better life somewhere else.
***********************
* Published 01:25 05.08.11
* Latest update 01:25 05.08.11
From protest to power
The young demonstrators would do well to
remember May 1968 in Europe; a protest that does
not find immediate political expression is destined to disintegrate.
By
<http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=AO%2Fr0xPdb5jKexSxSc8PmYKQwK%2BtCikZ>Zeev
Sternhell
In these times of hope and anticipation, it is
difficult not to wonder what form the protest
might have taken, and what results it might
already have achieved, if there had been a large
and authentic social-democratic party here with
a labor union worthy of the name, at its side.
Indeed a spontaneous uprising that does not find
political expression very soon, and does not
threaten those who are in power, will of
necessity have very limited achievements.
Even Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
understands that when there is no opposition
with an ideology of structural social change,
and which is capable of garnering electoral
support for a comprehensive national economic
program, the danger facing him and his party is
negligible. The truth is that the protesters
themselves have already presented him with a way
out. His representatives will anoint the protest
leaders with pure oil, will set up teams and
present ideas, will throw them a few bones and
then will move to the area where there is no
greater expert than Netanyahu: drawing out time
and making promises that no one intends to keep.
The real problem, however, is not the government
but rather the political elite. Except for a
small number of politicians on the center-left,
like Knesset member Shelly Yachimovich (Labor ),
most of the political leadership is partner to
the blind belief in the unique qualities of a
free market. There were indeed people outside
the political arena who for decades contended
that a free market creates no less poverty and
misery than wealth and welfare; there were those
who believed that poverty is not some kind of
natural phenomenon but rather something created
by man. But all of them were considered
"populist." There were people who saw in the
state a tool for correcting distortions and
supplying cheap and good-quality services to the
entire population, but they were denounced as wanting to return to the 1950s.
Therefore the young demonstrators would do well
to remember May 1968 in Europe. Beyond the
obvious differences, there is a common
denominator: a protest that does not find
immediate political expression is destined to disintegrate.
New forces that were not involved in politics
until now could play a key role. They could
break the neoliberal consensus and to be the
motivating force behind the creation of a broad
opposition front that brings together all those
who recognize the need to address the chronic
ills of Israeli society - and not just deal with the milk cartels.
A front of that kind would have place for all
those who shy away from the neoconservative
"economy of compassion" which is the basis of
the impure alliance between the government, the
Histadrut labor federation and the people with big money.
Indeed a protest against the obstructed social
horizon of the middle class is not out of touch
with numerous other problems. In order to create
a society that is more egalitarian and just a
change is needed in the political balance of
power. The protesters will be able to achieve
substantive results only by linking up with all
the forces that are opposed to the present
government, but not to the settlers who are its
pillars of support. It will not be enough to
demonstrate and march, especially since the
marchers will tire a long time before the
politicians and before the Yesha Council of settlements.
Therefore, after their preliminary success, they
will have to begin the process of dull political
work and building up a force that can compete in
the next elections. The tent dwellers may be
able to provide part of the leadership and to
refresh the lines. The hope that was born in the
Rothschild tent city must not be allowed to
expire in the argument over VAT accounts. Unless
an ideological and moral force arises that can
be an alternative to the destructiveness of
neo-liberalism, the life expectancy of this
welcome protest will be as long as the length of the Israeli summer.
*************************************
* Published 09:49 05.08.11
* Latest update 09:49 05.08.11
Memo to the marchers
The answer is that the atmosphere on Planet
Netanyahu is slowly suffocating us.
By Bernard Avishai
Are our economic problems a result of the
absence of peace? If we continue with the
peculiar version of âZionismâ that Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu represents, are
things bound to get worse? Yes. Hell, yes. But
before we connect the dots, a word of caution:
Israelâs high degree of inequality is not, by
itself, proof of economic injustice so much as
of how globalized the Israeli economy is. Our
growth is driven by high-technology exports in
software, value-added components, advanced
medical devices and other âsolutions.â So we
are bound to have a social profile more like
Silicon Valley than a manufacturing city like
Wolfsburg, Germany. I could work a lifetime
teaching at a business school and not amass the
fortune of one former student, who just sold his
start-up to Getty Images for over $20 million. Bless him.
The real question is whether those of us who do
not have a shot at a fancy technology jackpot
have growing incomes and an improving quality of
life. Does what we earn and pay taxes on leave
us with enough for essential things like higher
education, medical care, cars and fuel â and, yes, housing? If not, why not?
The answer is that the atmosphere on Planet
Netanyahu is slowly suffocating us:
The settlement project was, and is,
insufferably expensive. Upwards of $20 billion
have been spent on settlements and
infrastructure in occupied territory, and that
doesnât include the costs of securing them.
Meanwhile, traffic on the coastal plain long ago
graduated from heavy to infuriating; mass
transit projects in major metropolitan areas are constantly postponed.
The industries that liberated Palestinians
will focus on, and draw regional investment to,
are precisely those that lower-income Israelis
are bound to benefit from: tourism,
construction, retail, food processing. Israel
and Palestine are one business ecosystem. Israel
could generate another $8 billion in GDP just
from doubling its number of tourists from 3 to 6
million a year. (Florence gets 12 million.)
One-sixth of the government budget goes to
defense, and that fraction is creeping up to
incorporate new weapons systems. Social services
are inevitably trimmed. Moreover, the ratio of
national debt to GDP is stuck at around 75-80
percent, not unmanageable as long as interest
rates remain low and growth rates remain high,
say, 4-5 percent a year. But if Israel were to
enter periods of lower growth â as would be
inescapable with greater political isolation,
that is, with Israeli start-ups facing new
obstacles to building relationships with
European corporations â it would be impossible
to outpace the social tensions we now see or the
discontent in the Israeli-Arab community.
Educational infrastructure is in serious
decline. Critical preschool is crushingly
expensive for young couples. High-school
classrooms average 30-40 students. University
budgets have been slashed. Yet the Netanyahu
government is focusing on the âZionismâ
content of the curriculum, not on development of
critical thinking in a science-driven economy.
The health-care system is in crisis, yet
Israeli medical training is world-class. Medical
tourism, especially from neighboring Arab
countries and the Gulf, could rejuvenate the Israeli medical realm overnight.
Participation in the Israeli workforce is
among the lowest of OECD countries, about 56
percent as compared, say, with 68 percent in
Japan, which is among the highest. This is
largely because of the long-standing policy of
the Likud and Company â a policy Yossi Sarid,
when he was education minister, tried to change
â to keep ultra-Orthodox yeshivas on the dole.
The major driver of high land prices is the
Israel Lands Administration, a throwback to the
old Zionist Jewish National Fund â(whose lands
still constitute about a fifth of the ILAâs
holdingsâ), managing roughly 90 percent of
Israelâs land for âthe Jewish people.â
Privatization and auctioning of land is
necessary to bring the cost of housing down. But
this would mean that Arab towns would be able to
buy much more land for their own development,
which is anathema to the Israeli right.
Ginning up the cost of flats themselves,
especially in Tel Avivâs and Jerusalemâs
core, are absentee owners: Wealthy Diaspora Jews
who â excited by the rightâs pandering, and
encouraged to think of Israel as a kind of
metaphysical theme park â drive out younger buyers and renters.
Incessant war tension, among other things, has
degraded the quality of life. A million Israeli
Jews live abroad today, disproportionately
well-educated people who could be founding companies at home.
Last, though not at all least, is
Netanyahuâs freewheeling approach to market
regulation â so much like that of American
Republicans, and masked by ultra-nationalist
distractions. This means concentration of
ownership in Israel: The wealthiest 16 families
own 20 percent of the top 500 companies.
Conglomerates take super-profits from, in
effect, monopolies in banking, telecom, food
retailing, media and so forth. But they are also
over-leveraged, and highly invested in real
estate. Let the air out of the housing market
â by releasing a great deal more ILA land, for
example â and some will find themselves under
water, kicking off a recession. Until we break
them up, we must live with their need for higher
national growth rates than can be achieved with a continuing occupation.
Without peace, in short, the âstart-up
nationâ is bound to run down. And the marches
prove that the young of Tel Aviv â with global
experiences and cosmopolitan instincts â do
not live in a bubble. It is Netanyahu and the
right, settlers and the Orthodox and Russian
Putinists, who live in a bubble. God willing,
the streets of Tel Aviv will burst it even before the streets of Ramallah do.
Bernard Avishai is the author, most recently, of
âThe Hebrew Republic.â He writes for
numerous magazines, including Harperâs and The
New York Times Magazine. He teaches business at
the Hebrew University and blogs at TPM Cafe and Bernard Avishai Dot Com.
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