430,000 Turn Out in Israeli Protests

It wasn’t the “March of the Million” that organizers had hoped for, but the turnout Saturday night of some 430,000 in social protests across Israel meant it was the biggest demonstration in Israeli history.

Speaking to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, organizer Itzik Shmuli told the hundreds of thousands on Tel Aviv’s Kikar Hamedina, “Mr. Prime Minister, the new Israelis have a dream and it is simple: to weave the story of our lives into Israel. We expect you to let us live in this country. The new Israelis will not give up. They demand change and will not stop until real solutions come.”

Nahum Barnea from the daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth summarizes last night’s anger well:  “This protest wave is about values just as much as it is about economics. Young men and women, members of the middle class, saw the direction taken by Israeli society in the past number of years and became fed up with what they saw. On the one hand, they are buckling under the yoke of the high cost of living, under the difficulty to be able to lead the lifestyle they had expected. On the other hand, they saw the hedonism, the smugness, the flow of their tax funds to parasitical sectors, the distorted set of priorities, which prefers building settlements over mending society, and the way in which the people closest to power got rich quick. Their Israel was gradually pushed to the sidelines, was gradually diminished, and another Israel usurped it.”

The protests that started July 14 now enter a new stage of talks and negotiation. There are calls to take down the tent cities that sprung up almost two months ago, others want to keep them and even reinforce them as winter comes.

The protests have grown in scope over the past three weeks, and so too has the anger.

There is a deep-seated frustration with the government that they aren’t holding up their end of the deal on a range of social issues.

“There is much more anger now. At first, we were angry about a moderate situation, and now they’ve shown us that they aren’t going to let it be solved,” said Roee Neuman, organizer of Tel Aviv’s tent city.