Social Justice?

By MARC GOLDBERG
I marched with just about everyone else to Kikar h''Medina for the so-called "million man march" and was near enough to the front of the crowd to hear people I had never heard of make fun of the Prime Minister.
It occurred to me while I was standing there listening to this assortment of self important individuals that no 2 people standing in the square were there for the same reason. The abject failure of Daphne Leef and co became clear even before they declared themselves the victors in this contest with the government and essentially dismantled the movement that had inspired the nation.
The failure of the ''leadership'' of this social movement (leadership probably being too strong a word) is twofold.
By not consolidating with a political party they utterly missed the opportunity to effect real change amongst policy makers who felt no real need to run for cover and were barely challenged by opposition in Knesset. Netanyahu was able to get off easy by announcing the creation of yet another committee that has made proposals to him that he will simply ignore. The other abject failure of the social protest movement and this is really the big one, is that they utterly failed to define what they wanted. Seriously, you can shout "The people want social justice" all you like but without defining precisely the changes you want to see you argue for absolutely nothing.
I am not a fan of my government but I can''t blame them for not making changes that no one actually asked for!
Even worse, towards the end the movement deteriorated to criticising Bibi for having several properties. Well I don''t have any property much less proper-ties but I certainly want some, as many as possible to be perfectly honest and if the leaders of this movement are attacking the Prime Minister for having 3 clearly they are against my ambitions of owning, well, as many as possible.
Fudging the issue by refusing to call for anything more specific than Social Justice smacks of fear. Leef et al should have more faith than that, people here do want change, we want it big time but we can hardly be expected to go along with a protest movement that is lead by people who either don''t know what they want or are too afraid to say it. 
Early on in the movement a 6 point maifesto was released that made me realise that I was dealing with lightweights. Really does anyone actually want to live in a Socialist pseudo utopia any more? Demands such as 100% employment and an end to privatisation...I mean seriously!
So now we have another demo but I really feel like the moment has passed and the point was missed. Bringing people out on the streets wasn''t the objective, making real change in this country was the objective. The success of the movement in motivating people to come out and demonstrate was truly dramatic, but it''s success should not be judged by the amount of people who came out for it but on the change that it affected.
It is too early to tell just how much the movement has shaken things up, it certainly caused a stir but I don''t get the sense that anything is really going to come of this, in no small measure due to the failures of the very people who started it.