Israels demonstrations echo the protests of ‘74 - analysis

Night after night dozens, hundreds, and sometimes thousands of people gather around the country in protest.

By HERB KEINON
Israeli police officers scuffle with demonstrators during a protest against Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu outside Prime Minister official residence in Jerusalem on July 14, 2020 (photo credit: YONATAN SINDEL/FLASH90)
Israeli police officers scuffle with demonstrators during a protest against Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu outside Prime Minister official residence in Jerusalem on July 14, 2020
(photo credit: YONATAN SINDEL/FLASH90)
“A country in protest,” is the logo Channel 12 put at the bottom of its reports Tuesday night of demonstrations taking place in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
A country in protest. And that, truly, is what it feels like. Movie theaters might be closed, concert halls may be silenced, synagogues might not be permitted to fill their pews to capacity, restaurants may be limited to a bare minimum of diners – but night after night dozens, hundreds, and sometimes thousands of people gather around the country in protest.
On Tuesday evening in Jerusalem some 2,000 people demonstrated against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in front of his official residence on Balfour Street, in Jerusalem, protesting against a situation where a serving prime minister is managing a crisis of unprecedented proportions while simultaneously on trial for corruption charges.
In Tel Aviv, a few hundred people held a demonstration marking nine-years since the last large wave of protests in the country, known as the social justice protests of the summer of 2011.
And in Beitar Illit, hundreds of haredim (ultra-orthodox) protested the lockdown of their community, demonstrating against what they believe to be a heavy handed government policy against haredi communities struck hard by corona.
And that was just one night.
On Monday evening there were haredi protests that turned violent in Jerusalem against the government’s policies, and on Saturday night some 10,000 people turned out in Tel Aviv to voice pain and frustration at the dire financial straits they, and hundreds of thousands of others, are in. There was violence after that demonstration as well.
There is a tendency to look at 2020’s summer of discontent and compare it with the social justice protests of the summer of 2011. A more apt comparison, however, would be the reservists protests that followed the Yom Kippur War in 1973.
Following that war, and the colossal mistakes that led up to it, the country was gripped by a sense that something was off-kilter, not working as it should. A similar sense exists now, as the second wave of the coronavirus is battering our shores. Now, as then, there is a sense that tragedy could have been prevented had the leaders properly done their jobs.
In February of 1974, Motti Ashkenazi, a recently released reservist captain who served at an outpost on the Suez Canal, witnessed the colossal lack of preparation and had his warnings to his superiors ignored, began a one man protest in front of the prime minister’s office calling for the ouster of then defense minister Moshe Dayan for his responsibility in the Yom Kippur fiasco.
Ashkenazi’s one-man protest spread, and soon other reservists who served during the war, as well as ordinary citizens fed up with the government’s handling of the crisis, joined the protests. The fall of Golda Meir’s government in April 1974, just five months after a war-postponed election in December of 1973, has been attributed in part to this movement and the public atmosphere it created.
And one thing that characterized this protest movement was that it drew from the mainstream. Protests in Israel of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s were generally identified with marginal groups outside of the mainstream trying to change the ingrained status quo. But this protest movement was different. Nobody could argue that it was representing just “angry outsiders.”
And that is also something characteristic of the current wave of protests: the demonstrators cannot be pigeonholed. Jerusalem Police chief Doron Yedid tried to do just that, dismissing the protests in front of the Prime Minister’s residence Tuesday night as a left-wing demonstration, but he was missing the bigger picture.
True, those shouting for Netanyahu to resign in front of his house may be affiliated with left-wing groups and parties who have shouted for his ouster for years, but they are not the only ones whose anger these days is being voiced on the street.
Among those taking to the streets now to protest Netanyahu are not the “usual suspects” who despise him, think he is a threat to democracy and have been protesting against him for years. No, now you have people out of work who might even have voted for Netanyahu, but feel compelled to vent their anger at the current financial situation.
These people are not protesting Netanyahu the man, as are those in front of his house holding up signs reading “Crime Minister.” Rather, they are protesting the policies of the government that he leads which they fear is leading them to financial ruin.
If the anger on the streets today was only coming from the Left and the opposition, that would be one thing and Netanyahu could dismiss it. But it’s not. It’s also coming from people in the middle and the right, secular as well as haredim.
The organizers of the rally in Tel Aviv Saturday night were wise in not inviting politicians; they wanted to keep their protest a-political to attract as wide a base as possible.
Ashkenazi’s protest movement 47 years ago succeeded because it united people who felt that the government failed the country in a time of crisis. The current protests are trying to do the same thing. Netanyahu would dismiss this lightly at his own peril.