Tel Aviv: Protest leaders call for 'national strike'

At press conference, Daphne Leef announces renewed protests, to be followed by day of across-the-board strikes.

By JPOST.COM STAFF
North Tel Aviv tent protest 311 (photo credit: Ben Hartman)
North Tel Aviv tent protest 311
(photo credit: Ben Hartman)
Protest leader Daphne Leef called for a renewal of protests and a "national strike" during a press conference in Tel Aviv's Rabin Square Tuesday morning.
Leef, who became an emblem of the huge demonstrations and tent cities around Israel over the past summer, called for the strike to include "all citizens across the country, pupils, students and workers." She said that for "one day," the strike would be "an act of protest against the difficult social situation in the State of Israel and the government's outrageous disregard for the protest wave."
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"There is no Left and Right," Leef said, in an attempt to reinforce the tent movement's broad support base. "There is only moral and immoral."
In a mocking rebuke to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Leef said, "You returned Gilad Schalit to his home, but the first word you said was 'I.' You are not the point here, the point is the seven million citizens in Israel."
In her message to Netanyahu, Leef referred to the Occupy Wall Street protests in the "the United States you love so much," as proof of the legitimacy of continuing protests.
She denounced the Tel Aviv municipality for evacuating the remaining tent protesters in early October.