A friend recently gave me a copy of a photo of my first act of civil
disobedience. It was taken sometime in the mid- to late- 1970s. I’m not sure of
the exact date, but the location is clear: Outside the Aeroflot offices in
London’s Piccadilly. I was part of a group who stopped rush-hour traffic one
evening in an effort to draw attention to the plight of Soviet Jewry. It was one
of many demonstrations and rallies I attended on behalf of the refuseniks who
wanted to emigrate to Israel but were not permitted to leave by the Soviet
authorities (or to practice a Jewish lifestyle while they remained in the
Communist state).
During this period, I learned several important
lessons, not only about democracy but about life in general.
In
particular, I recall a friendly policeman who made helpful suggestions about
where to stand outside the Soviet embassy one Sunday afternoon.
He seemed
slightly different from his colleagues, perhaps with a posh accent in a
class-conscious society, and we started chatting as we waited for the vigil to
start. He told me that while studying economics at university he had realized
that job security was going to be hard to find in the future and the best way to
ensure employment in the long run was to join something like the police, armed
forces or civil service.
When my friends began to plan ever more daring
acts of civil disobedience, I pointed out that the British police were not our
enemy and we should not turn them into our foes.
It was the Soviet regime
we should be fighting, not friendly British bobbies.
As a group we had a
few selfimposed rules (or maybe they were imposed by the society in which we
lived): The first was “no violence” and the second that if we were removed from
a certain spot by a police officer we should not resist and not try to return.
It was “civil protest” with equal emphasis on both words.
When I reached
the age of 18, I implemented my own right to freely move from England to Israel
and my attention turned to other issues, although when I lived in a nearby
neighborhood, I would often get a kick out of seeing Natan Sharansky taking a
stroll on a Shabbat afternoon (usually, Jerusalemstyle, in the middle of the
almost traffic-free side streets).
The recollections of violence-free
rallies past came flooding back last weekend as the so-called social justice
activists clashed with police in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
I also felt
mixed emotions on seeing Russian President Vladimir Putin feted in Israel – on
the one hand, happy that there is contact at this level between the two
countries; on the other, acutely aware that his record on human rights
(including his treatment of journalists) is distinctly rooted in his Soviet
past. Similarly, Russia’s support for the Iranian and Syrian regimes bodes no
better for world peace than its Cold War policies of old.
I even thought
of that pleasant, prophetic British policeman and hope he has worked his way up
through the ranks to a decently paid and satisfying high-ranking job.
In
all fairness, several of the demonstrators facing the Israel Police last week
were carrying signs with the rhyming slogan: “Adoni hashoter, ata shaveh yoter”
(“Policeman, sir; you’re worth more”). I feel sorry for the police officers,
ironically forbidden by law from protesting their own poor conditions and
salaries. The economy being what it is, they don’t even have job
security.
The face-off started with a modest demo on June 22, attracting
a small crowd whiling away a Friday afternoon in Tel Aviv in what was meant to
be a feel-good, back-inaction rendezvous for Daphni Leef – star of last summer’s
protests – and the friends she mobilized mainly through
Facebook.
However, things quickly got out of hand, as they so often do
when police meet protesters who don’t have the necessary permits.
It was
Leef’s arrest, and the footage of her being roughly handled by police, which
directly led to the much larger, and uglier, Saturday night
demonstration.
Friday’s strongest image was of Leef’s bandaged arm and
her friends’ bruises. Saturday produced pictures of shattered bank windows and
the blocked Ayalon Freeway. If police had been edgy at the start of the weekend,
they felt they were pushed over the edge when faced with an unusually violent
demo, in Israeli terms. I hope things haven’t deteriorated by the time you read
these lines.
The issues have now stopped being the concerns of the middle
class unable to keep up with the cost of living and focus on police brutality,
democracy, and squatters’ rights.
By June 25, the demonstrators were
disrupting a Tel Aviv City Council meeting, which had to be abandoned in a move
that proves that protesting freedom of speech by shouting somebody else down
doesn’t always work. Some artists announced they would boycott the city’s White
Night culture fest.
What these protests have to do with the price of
cottage cheese (the extraordinarily Israeli impetus for last year’s initial
protests) beats me. This is more angry mob than social action. The leaders seem
to have had a crash course in provocative protests, with the emphasis on the
“crash.”
I was not surprised to read a report by the Post’s Ben Hartman
on June 22 about the meeting between international social protest activists and
their Israeli counterparts.
Matt Renner, an Occupy Wall Street activist
and development and communications director for independent news organization
Truthout, told Hartman that like Israel’s J14 social justice movement, OWS
passed the stage of nationwide encampments, in favor of smaller meetings and
workshops to discuss how to keep the protest progressing and bring about
societal change.
Asked what he thought he could learn from the Israeli
movement, Renner said, “If you can get 500,000 people on the street in a country
of seven million that’s a great accomplishment, and that means your message and
how you expressed yourself worked – so I’m here to learn from that.”
But,
of course, you’re not going to get half a million people on the street if they
think the protest leaders are exploiting them as much as “the
system.”
The violence – on both sides of the barricades – is disturbing.
Municipal authorities and police cannot deny protest permits without good cause;
and the demonstrators cannot disturb public order by pretending to answer to
some higher unnamed authority.
Tel Aviv prides itself on its tolerance,
pluralism and cultural nightlife. It was sad to see these sacrificed on the
altar of ego. Without revealing how I voted in the last elections, I need not
point out that Daphni Leef’s name or party did not appear on any of the ballot
slips.
Nobody democratically elected her to speak on their
behalf.
There’s nothing civil about anarchy and nothing democratic about
trying to change an elected government through violence.
Police and
protesters alike should keep in mind that popularity and force of numbers are
one thing; sheer force is something else entirely.
That’s possibly the
most important lesson I could learn from studying the art of civil protests –
and the rise and fall of the Soviet Union.
The writer is editor of The
International Jerusalem Post.
liat@jpost.com
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