Israel’s popular revolt started with an outcry about the price of cottage cheese and now envelops the entire Jewish state
By MOSHE GIT
A bicycle rider bends his head in preparation for the travails of the upcoming journey, while persistently pushing down on the pedals beneath him. This feature of bicycle riding has been used to portray a person who bows his head cunningly and submissively to his superior, while callously stepping on the people subordinate to him.
During the last few weeks, Israel has been embroiled in a continuous barrage of protests from virtually all segments of the Israeli public. It started out as a consumer revolt against the escalating price of cottage cheese, a popular food staple in Israel. Someone online conceived of a cheese boycott. This caught fire and after about a couple of weeks the dairies, which were inundated with stockpiles of unsold cottage cheese, caved in and lowered the price of their product.
Inspired by the success of the cottage cheese rebellion, other segments of Israeli society that felt deprived (and this is just about everybody) took to the streets. People are now protesting the skyrocketing price of housing, both buying and renting, which renders this basic item beyond reach for the great majority of Israelis.
Doctors are protesting their low wages, and the acute shortage of nurses, and of hospital beds, which are being moved into hospital corridors. Medical residents protest being overworked to the point where they can’t find time to sleep or to visit a restroom. Mothers with toddlers take to the streets protesting current daycare costs, and the list of protest groups goes on and on.
Virtually the entire country seems to be protesting.
And that is the Achilles heel of the protests. The basic complaint of every protester is of not getting his or her fair share. A dominant cry of the protesters is: Ha’am Doresh Tzedek Chevrati (The People Demand Social Justice). But for any act of exploitation, in the wings stands an exploiter, the one who benefits from the act. Since virtually the entire nation is protesting, the exploiters, by default, must be among them.
A person who feels he is being exploited might be, without noticing it, the exploiter of his co-protester. He is a bicycle rider: while the load over his head causes his head to bend, at the same time his legs bend the head of his fellow protester.
The landlord who charges high rent may rant about his wife’s bed being put in the corridor of the hospital. Dairy farmers launched their own protest group when it was rumored that the government was considering opening the dairy market to foreign competition as a way of lowering the prices of other dairy products beside the price of cottage cheese.
An industrious journalist uncovered a newspaper piece from 1972: Ehud Olmert — then 27 years old, later to become Israel’s prime minister (and now being tried for abusing the system financially) — and his wife were describing their struggle to pay for basic housing and daily expenses.
One may not, by decree, remove the Israelis from their bicycles. For this reason I don’t believe a solution is forthcoming or even possible. The wave of protests will soon subside and become history. Protesters will not brave the rain (the rainy season starts in October).
Interestingly, the only protest that strangely became entirely muffled is the erstwhile, very vocal campaign to “Bring Gilad Shalit Home.” A sure way for the Netanyahu government to immediately stem the wave of protests is to do an Entebbe-like raid and return Gilad to his parents. The country would be in ecstasy and the protests would likely disappear in no time.
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Moshe Git lives in Minnetonka.
(American Jewish World, 8.5.11)
