What scared a departing army general? What will Netanyahu do with the Tent Protest? And what’s so wrong with supporting museums? Raging Rechavia “Rick” Berman gives you the week’s top stories as they ought to be told. A new weekly feature on +972
By Rechavia “Rick” Berman
Welcome ladies and gentlemen to another excursion to the mad Middle East, where nothing – not even wide-spread housing protests – stands in the way of the continued theft of other people’s land. In this week’s installation we take you camping, have a little water fight with the powers that be, and do the creeping annexation jig. So put on your dancing shoes, here we go:
On Saturday night Tel Aviv saw one of its largest protests in years. At least 30,000 people (I was there, I say around 50K) marched from the edge of Rothschild Boulevard to the Tel Aviv Museum Plaza to protest the insane housing prices. After the protest march, a few rowdy anarchist types stuck around and blocked one of the major intersections along the march’s route, resulting in a few dozen arrested, and most released this morning. The protesters played it smart and left a tent full of candy and chocolate outside Tel Aviv PD HQ, with signs “sorry for last night” and “We’ll continue to fight for you too”.
The interesting thing to watch was the newspaper coverage. Yediot and Haaretz were both pro-protesters, Maariv was more or less balanced, and Israel HaYom, the free newspaper founded by gambling billionaire Sheldon Adelson for the explicit purpose of promoting and defending PM Bibi Netanyahu, is simply trying, for nigh on two weeks now, to pretend that the protest isn’t happening, or isn’t as big a deal as it is. The paper devoted 5 full pages to the massacre in Norway—failing to mention the killer’s pro-Israeli rhetoric—and less than a page to the uprising of the serfs here at home.
Bibi himself, regressing into his Munchausen’s disease, claimed this morning to have “foreseen the housing crisis years in advance”, and blamed it on the fact that the state controls 90% of the land and poses procedural impediments to construction of new housing. Of course, he promised a reform in Israel’s Land Authority, then let it melt away. Part of it was supposed to be included in a new Planning Committees Law, but Netanyahu refused to include affordable housing in it. So that’s how hard ole Bibi is pushing for this reform, the need for which he foresaw.
The tent encampment protest has spread in the past week from Tel Aviv all over the country. Even my sleepy semi-rural hometown of Pardes Hannah has one. The question is whether the energy will be sustained and channeled productively, or will it dissipate. The energy last night at the march (which I attended) was weird – but not necessarily in a bad way. Some have defined it as “not angry, just resolute”. We shall see.
In a related incident, protesters stormed the meeting of the Knesset’s Finance Committee (held at Kfar HaMacabbiah in Ramat Gan, rather than in Jerusalem) and threw water at the participants, in protest of the fact that the housing crisis was not on the committee’s agenda. Shoulda used something stronger than water, says I, but nobody ever listens to me. Armenia 1999, anyone? (Kidding. Violence, particularly indiscriminate violence, is very rarely the answer, if ever. However, the thought is savagely satisfying).
Another protest gaining steam is that of the MD interns, who are subject to insane hours and extremely pathetic pay (their base pay is around $1,500 a month). Their attempt to have themselves admitted as patients so as to get around a court order forbidding them from walking off the job was foiled, but they are still striking (the entire MD community has been on a court-modified strike for weeks now). After a couple of days of dithering, the housing protesters got wise and embraced the young docs.
Turning to the place where all the money lacking for affordable housing and decent wages for MD’s is poured down the drain, Israel’s stupid government is now renouncing the policy of ambiguity which has thus far sustained its occupation. The government passed a resolution tying government support for museums in “Judea and Samaria” with that of museums in Israel proper. Give this government enough time and they’ll give us all a one-state solution…
Meanwhile the Israel Occupation Force has been pursuing a policy of land theft using an Ottoman law, saying that any private land that isn’t being cultivated can be seized by the state – but they’re doing it only for the benefit of settlements for the master race. Apparently they are heeding the call of far-right MK Aryeh Eldad to “end the Muslim occupation of the Land of Israel.”
Approaching landing, this is how the IOF recruits deal with non-violent protests. It’s not really the fault of the recruits, but that of the state that brainwashes them and throws them into impossible situations.
Finally, the departing head of the Personnel Department of the IOF, General Avi Zamir, sounded the alarm at his farewell ceremony about the religious radicalization of the armed forces. Of course it is too late for that, as reports from “Operation Cast Lead”, in which soldiers were given sermons by rabbis exhorting them to “holy war” before battle, amply prove.
That’ll do it for this week. The Weekly Holyland Update is not responsible for any illusions, sympathies or misconceptions that may have been misplaced on our tours. Please collect your senses and check your comments where appropriate. Thank you for flying the crazy skies.
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Rick’s book, “Jewcy Story”, a popular history of the 2nd Temple Era, can be bought for Amazon Kindle, for cell phone or for PC here.