Situation remains uncertain

Editorial

The comparisons of the social protests in Israel to the revolutions of the Arab Spring, or even to the summer riots in England, miss the mark. The Arab Spring and the phenomenon of the Israeli protests are related, certainly, but not at all in the way implied by cursory newscast contrasts. Israelis are speaking out – in ways more forceful than their conventionally forceful manner – because they can. They can rally both because they have the democratic right to do so, but also because a brief period of relative calm has permitted Israeli citizens to look inward, rather than have to respond to external forces.

Not to diminish the rockets falling on southern Israel from Gaza at present, nor the impending threat of the United Nations vote on Palestinian membership and fears of a third intifada, but the Arab Spring has given Israelis a few months of breathing space to consider their country’s social and economic infrastructure. Housing prices, cheese prices, diaper prices – the concerns being addressed by the protest movement sweeping Israel are basic, pocketbook issues.

For more than six weeks now, Israelis have been marching, converging and rallying for a wide range of concerns that have been summarized in the most general terms as “social protests.” Last weekend, as the kidnapped Israel Defence Forces soldier Gilad Shalit marked his 25th birthday in captivity, his father, Noam Shalit, contended that “social justice” means bringing all Israeli soldiers home. Others, in Wadi Ara, in northern Israel, interpreted social justice to mean not expanding housing for Charedim.

Though the issues may seem diverse and practical, these demonstrators are really addressing the larger philosophical issue of what sort of society Israel is and wishes to be. The socialist idealism of the 1940s and ’50s was effectively dead by the 1970s. Whatever successes the collectivist idealism of the kibbutz exhibited, the selfish aspects of human nature seems to have trumped it. Then the “new historians” rewrote Israel’s heroic founding narrative, recasting Israel’s warts-and-all history in a more stark manner. And yet, the hope for a comparatively egalitarian society of which Israelis can be proud has not died. Thousands upon thousands of citizens have been demanding a society that more closely reflects the founding vision of a collectivist enterprise than the relatively laissez-faire economy that has developed in the past few decades, which is typified, in their view, by economic disparity.

Notably, the crowds thinned out this week, for whatever combination of reasons. Perhaps they’ve said their piece. Perhaps they are preparing for a more sustained demonstration in the autumn. Or perhaps it is a sign that the small window provided by the Arab Spring for “self-reflection” is coming to a close, as the UN prepares to address the membership of “Palestine.”

Whenever relative calm has reduced Israeli anxieties about their neighbors, internal matters tend to come to the fore. For example, “Who is a Jew?” under Israeli law was an absorbing, divisive issue in the 1990s, when the peace process brought relative stability. Such societal debates, while they get interrupted, resurface from time to time. Though international affairs will likely eclipse domestic issues once again – there are predictions of a “diplomatic tsunami” after the UN vote in September – the underlying concerns of Israelis about the direction of their own society will remain. And this time, it seems, they may not be willing to wait for the next lull in the international scene to continue the conversation.

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