74 Days to Go

Uncharacteristically Passive Israelis

By Sherwin Pomerantz

While there seems to be some wavering on the part of the Palestinian Arab leadership vis-à-vis the UN vote on statehood for Palestine, the countdown continues. It would seem that both the fact that the flotilla effort this year has imploded with the help of some of our friends and the seeming “drying up of” support payments from the Arab world to the Palestinian Authority have had a depressing effect on the movement for statehood. Nevertheless, efforts to derail the initiative remain in place so we continue to be watchful of events in the region.

What is surprising, however, is the passivity of the Israeli public on issues relating to the international challenges that face us over the next months as we approach September and, what is sometimes scarier, what happens “the day after.” I’ll leave that part of the subject to another blog but today, let’s take a look at the passivity issue.

One could easily list a dozen or more items about which the Israeli public should be rightfully agitated and upset. From this writer’s perspective they include, but are not limited to, (a) the lack of a coherent and realistic statement by our government on what our vision is for the future, (b) the lack of action regarding the embarrassment who serves as our Minister of Foreign Affairs, (c) the absence of backup systems when critical aspects of national survival fail us [e.g. May’s contamination of our jet fuel supplies…the reason not yet determined], (d) the failure of Jerusalem’s light rail line to be operational after eight years of construction [Dubai built theirs in 18 months, and it was mostly elevated to boot], (e) the unwillingness of our government to do what needs to be done to bring Gilad Schalit home and (f) the continued introduction and eventual passage of clearly racist laws by our Knesset.

Here in one of the most vocal, most demonstrative societies in the world there are almost no mass demonstrations on any of these issues. Yes, there are occasional protests on the issue of Gilad Schalit but, even those, are not the kinds of things we used to see here in the past. Even the recent demonstrations mounted against the arrest of some rabbis who refused a police order to appear and were subsequently arrested, did not bring out the numbers we used to see in the past.

Sadly, and maybe this tells us something, the only problem that energized our populace sufficiently to actually demonstrate and make something happen was the run-up in prices of cottage cheese. Via a massive Facebook campaign the buying public was actually successful in getting the producers and retailers of cottage cheese to roll back their mercenary price increases of the last year. But in no other sphere have we seen anything like the hundreds of thousands who demonstrated in Tel Aviv in 1982 after the Sabra & Shatilla massacres, or even the anti-Oslo demonstrations of the early 90s.

Have we gone soft? Has Israeli society become so inured to the futility of raising its voice that it has gone completely silent? I don’t think so. Rather I think what has happened is that the Prime Minister, whose seemingly only objective is to keep himself in power and his coalition in place (even though I am sure he tells himself that he is doing the best job possible for the country), has cobbled together a coalition of interests each of which is getting their needs met. Given that, why should they encourage any demonstrations that might upset that apple cart and potentially destroy the coalition? So on the one hand you have a population that, in spite of what is going on all around us is generally living a good life with a healthy economy, the lowest unemployment in many years and general quiet on the security front with a coalition that clearly does not want to rock the boat. And we wonder why there are no demonstrations? It’s obvious.

George Washington once said “The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women suffer to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments.” Those words, uttered over 200 years ago ring true yet today. We owe it to ourselves to protest such burdens before they work to unravel what has been successfully built here in the last 63 years.