Shany Littman

From Haaretz Weekend Supplement (Hebrew), January 5, 2013

2645. That’s the number of votes the Daam Party received in the previous elections. But since the outbreak of social unrest, the socialist Daam party has become a hot trend in Tel Aviv. Party leader Asma Agbarieh-Zahalka explains why poverty is no less an evil than the Occupation, why she wouldn’t have sailed on the Marmara, and why there is still hope in the Middle East.

Asma Agbarieh-Zahalka is ecstatic. For the first time she sees clearly that the way to the Knesset in Jerusalem is shorter than ever. She is convinced that this time the Daam Workers Party, which she chairs, will cross the threshold, despite the fact that tens of thousands of votes stand between success and the 2645 votes received by the party in the 2009 elections. In an interview I conducted with her before the last elections four years ago, she seemed more introverted, more serious, working diligently yet without hope. But something has changed in four years, something that even she never envisioned would happen so quickly, although she had been waiting impatiently.

This change has filled her sails with a wind that she herself defines as “wild”. Today it’s hard to actually stop the flow of her words and enthusiasm, regardless of agreement or disagreement with her positions. It is impossible not to be impressed by her conviction. “In 2009,” she says, “we talked about social justice. It was our vision, but it wasn’t relevant to the public’s consciousness at the time, and this was also reflected at the polls. Yet the protest of Summer 2011 brought a change. As long as people here were not really suffering, they were not looking for solutions. But when the shock waves started in Europe and the Arab world, they arrived in Israel too. A lot of people got courage to speak out; each one’s private problem became a collective issue of social justice.

“When social ills became a political question, Daam became relevant, and for the first time we were there as a political party because we knew this was the place to build strength. Fundamental social, economic and political change requires a movement that wants it. As long as there was no movement, Daam was a fish out of water. But now it’s harvest time. In the summer of 2011 we narrowed the gap between reality and the prevailing political consciousness.”

You didn’t expect this?

“I didn’t know it would happen so fast. It’s very exciting. I’m glad to be part of it. I’m part of this and happy that I made the right investment in social justice. The role of the party that wants to lead this is to look ahead. I have a vision and it wasn’t clear to people—to talk about Jews and Arabs, about socialism, social justice. They thought I was dreaming, that all Arabs hate Jews and all Jews hate Arabs. And I know that’s not true. At a certain point, because reality is crushing you, because it empties your pockets and kills your children, you start to think. When Muhammad Boazizi set fire to himself, the flame burnt down all the barriers and walls after 40 years of deadly silence in the Arab world.

“40 years of Gaddafi, 40 years of the Assad family. For too many decades people were silent. Arabic poetry and literature deal with how this people amounts to zero. Nizar Qabbani has a poem that says, ‘We created the zero and remained zeros.’ We grew up on disappointment, on ‘Naksa’ [the ‘setback’ of the 1967 War], on defeat, on impotence. And suddenly a resurrected people demands to live. They do not want to die in violent resistance. They do not want to go to paradise. A new historical era has opened. It was natural that it would open on Rothschild as well.”

The Marmara was a mistake

There were moments when it seemed like things were going to turn into a catastrophe. On the one hand, Agbarieh-Zahalka describes feelings of elation as she walked through a crowd of demonstrators who marched in unison for a social cause. On the other hand, there were moments when bitter reality slapped her in the face. In June 2012 at Tel Aviv Museum Square, during a demonstration commemorating the first anniversary of the social protest, the rally organizers refused to allow Wafah Tayara, No. 4 on the Daam list, to mount the stage to speak, although this had been agreed upon in advance. Agbarieh-Zahalka experienced the refusal as a racist act that came from a completely unexpected place. Her outcry appears in a video clip circulated on the internet; it is a kind of spontaneous speech delivered not on stage but among the demonstrators. She recalls, “On the one hand, we have created a new group of people here, the people of the protest. That’s where I felt most at home. I felt I was in Tahrir Square. But when Wafah was prevented from speaking at the demonstration, I felt it was the end. All the time we’d been saying that Jews and Arabs could work together, and now she wasn’t allowed to speak. Then, when the video clip was shown, we were flooded with views and comments. Many people came as a result of the clip. It was the first time people had heard of us. That was the day that Daam was born in the eyes of the public, precisely because of the rejection.”

Agbarieh-Zahalka was born in Jaffa 39 years ago, the scion on her father’s side of a large family from Umm al-Fahm. During adolescence her religious faith grew and she joined the Islamic Movement. In 1995, while she was studying at Tel Aviv University’s Faculty of Humanities, the Daam party offered her a job as editor of the Arabic newspaper, “Al-Sabar.” When she got to meet the party activists, she was surprised to hear Jews speaking fluent Arabic; gradually she underwent a change, joining the party and eventually becoming its leader. In 2006 she was the only woman who headed a party for the Knesset. In 2009, she was joined in this respect by Tzipi Livni; in 2013, she stands beside Livni, Shelly Yachimovich and Zahava Galon, four women leading political parties. For Asma, however, this fact does not create solidarity or identification, just as she rejects any attempt to find similarities between herself and Hanin Zoabi, Balad MK.

“The Arab party Balad is nationalistic and bourgeois; it’s not a political party that espouses social justice. I do not compete with Hanin Zoabi. Hers is not the public I seek. I appeal to the 50% of the Arab population that is tired by the political options the Arab parties offer. Arab parties advocate a nationalist discourse, dealing only with the national question, neglecting the socioeconomic questions and the hardships suffered by the Arab public. Gaza and Tel Aviv amount to one issue. The political has to go along with the social. There is 50% poverty in the Arab street; 80% of women in the Arab sector don’t work. That is a catastrophe. Is this a people that can think about freeing Palestine? This is a people that must first free itself. And the point is not expressed by anyone.

“No political party does real work in the field, organizing the public and fighting against contracted jobs. I go to Knesset committee meetings and don’t see any Arab representatives there, even when the issues dealt with are of great concern to the Arab public, such as on-the-job safety. What is this concern for the Nakba [the Palestinian catastrophe of 1948] all day long? They forget that today in every house there is a Nakba. When a woman doesn’t have work; that’s a Nakba. A young man who works through a contractor and doesn’t get his rights is a Nakba. And without denying the importance of the Nakba, what about today’s Nakba? You have to change the reality of today; you can’t change past history.”

The fact that you and Zoabi are Arab women going against the current doesn’t seem to you like a thing that can bring your agendas closer together?

“It’s not enough to be a woman. Shelly Yachimovich is a woman too. So is Tzipi Livni. Being a woman is good, but it’s not enough. It is also not enough to be an Arab. Bashar al-Assad is an Arab too. I want to turn cultural diversity into a force, and Zoabi makes it into a wall separating people. I do not want people to vote for me because I am an Arab. That’s not the ticket I want. The question is, ‘what kind of Arab are you?’ I stand for class identity. I think that class identity is much more correct in places like Israel, which are saturated with different sectors and with an ingathering of exiles, including Arabs. What could connect and advance people, I think, is the daring to get out of sectarianism, to get out of the ghetto. And Zoabi is stuck in the ghetto, isolated and differentiating.

“Today, the issue that connects everyone is the issue of socioeconomic justice. It is the natural right of all people whoever they are. We are equal; together we can build a third way; the third way that the Arab Spring offered. Do not give in to the United States and Israel’s decrees against the Palestinians, but do not succumb either to the verbiage of the nationalist, fundamentalist opposition of which Zoabi is a part. I cannot call for death. The way of violent resistance, which Hamas walked in and which Hezbollah walks in, we see what that has led to today—to the massacre of the Syrian people. I can’t be part of it. I’ve never been a part of it, and for this reason I wasn’t relevant to the Arab public, because of this unpopular position. An Arab has to be democratic, to give people freedom of speech and the chance to work with dignity; if you do not do this, the fact that you’re an Arab doesn’t interest me.”

What do you think about Zoabi’s boarding the Marmara?

“I would not have boarded the Marmara. I do not think she’ll board the Marmara again. Beyond the issue of isolation and differentiation and representing yourself as ‘against’ and ‘anti,’ I think that to board the Marmara was to give Hamas power against Abu Mazen. I am not for Abu Mazen and not for Hamas; what I am for is that the Palestinian left should build a third way. Once you support one side against the other, the Palestinian rift deepens. And I do not think it’s in the interest of the Palestinian people to deepen the schism while it stands against Israel and against the Occupation. This strategy was wrong for Palestinians.”

Hanin Zoabi’s response: “I do not want to address these things. They are no different from the things said against me by the right and by the Zionist left. The only significant contribution of Ms. Asma Agbarieh is burning about 3000 votes in each election and it certainly does not help the Arab public and does not benefit the poor in general.”

Reality will win

You say that there is readiness to accept your ideas in relation to class consciousness, but what about racism on both sides? Do you think that today Jews or Arabs are ready to vote for an Arab-Jewish party?

“I probably will not be Prime Minister. Not all of the public will vote for me. As for the public that insists on racism—I’ll wait for them. I will continue to believe, just as I believed that the time of social justice would arrive, that understanding would ripen, so I believe that the time will come when people will outgrow racism. I also believe that some will follow racism to the end, to fascism. I’m not naive. But racism is a form of false consciousness in which you think you have privileges as a Jew in Israel, but actually you don’t. Today this country is a state of the rich, not a Jewish state. To whoever understands this and experiences it in his their pockets, in his their refrigerator, in the cost of living, in the their ability to make ends meet, to whoever has experienced it in everyday life, I suggest that they stop blaming his the situation on the Arab, but rather blame the policy that is made in their name as a Jew, and that they should simply change the diskette.

“I know that the whole country will not vote Daam. It also presents a challenge to the Jewish public to vote for an Arab woman, although we are an Arab-Jewish party, not just Arab, and it is a challenge to Arab society to vote for a party headed by a woman. Every day we have discussion groups all over the country. I’ve met with Russians and Mizrahis. In all these meetings I’ve found that our message is received like water on dry ground. People can’t get enough. It’s a golden opportunity, and I’m going with it to the Arab street, which has not budged, which did not take part in the protests. I tell them, look at how the Jewish community accepts us. Look how they accept an Arab woman who tells them to their face how to deal with the Occupation, with racism and the economics of privatization. They are shocked, because Arabs have long since stopped talking with Jews and Jews with Arabs.”

You really think you can make them think otherwise?

“It’s not me that will succeed. Reality will.”

At least wouldn’t it be better to change the name to something that didn’t sound like an Arab political party?

“Balad is Hebrew – the National Democratic Alliance. Hadash is a word in Hebrew. Did it help anyone? Most of their voters are Arabs. Daam started out in the Arab sector with the position that the Occupation must end. That was in the years when we did not experience the power of privatization and globalization. Two decades have passed since then and the reality in Israel has changed dramatically. Daam found that it also meets the needs of a growing segment of the Jewish public. We changed from a party on the nationalist side of the political map to a party on the socialist, class side. We have not changed the name and I think it is right because the Arab name is a type of connection, a link; it is a uniting factor. It connects with leftist movements in Arab countries, and it also reminds Israelis that there are Arabs who face a political issue and that there is an existential problem. The name is like a litmus test to the Jewish people who come and say, ‘I want to connect with the Arabs, to leave the ghetto, to connect with the Palestinians.’ The word is an acronym for the original name in Arabic, which means support and solidarity. Originally the name was ‘Organization for Democratic Action.’ The name is a challenge we do not want to conceal. We live in the Middle East.”

It seems that you have no separation between politics and your personal life.

Agbarieh-Zahalka laughs. “Yes, someone pays a price, my son Adam and my spouse Musa. But there’s nothing I can do about it. At the age of 22, I decided that I would not live well while people around me were sinking. I could have, but I chose not to. One cannot survive without the people around one. So I am drawn to this matter. My child will not grow up in a society that exploits its workers and destroys the people within it. That’s not why I brought him into the world. I accept the fact that I brought him into a world where I would prepare a normal environment for him to live in. I’m not doing it for me, but for him.

“There’s no political career here. Of course I am a mother who hugs her child. I do not feed him Marxism. I play with him in the playground. We even ate at McDonald’s. Right now it does not happen a lot, because of the elections, but Musa makes up for it. I see him three hours a day at best, and I tell him that Mom is going to talk to people who care about giving toys to all the children. He said he wants some too, and I promised him he would get them.”

– Translated from the Hebrew by Barbara Rosenstein

The post A new left arrives in Israel first appeared on Da'am Party: One state - Green Economy.

One might think that these elections are meaningless. The results are ostensibly known in advance, like a repeat broadcast of a soccer match. There’s a feeling of defeatism in the air, and people relate to the rightwing as they might to the weather: one can talk about it, but it can’t be changed. It’s hard to believe that just a year and half ago, summer 2011, citizens occupied the streets, new ideas blossomed, politicians appeared despicable and defeated, and Tel Aviv’s youth burst out of their indifference and made their opinions known, without giving a damn for the opinions of the “adults” who had disappointed them so.

But appearances can be deceptive. Something new has been created in these elections, something vigorous, dynamic, youthful and energetic which bears the spirit of that summer of protest: Daam’s election campaign. This campaign began even then, during the social protests, in the Red Bloc that marched in the mass demonstrations. It was then that all those leading this wonderful campaign for change first met. It was a spontaneous coming together of slogans and people, Jews and Arabs, blue collar workers and white collar workers, who yelled a jumble of slogans in Hebrew and Arabic and thus stood out from the marching masses.

“The people demand social justice” – this slogan connected the protesters in Israel with the millions in Egypt and around the world, because they were sick of the destructive capitalism that had taken over their societies. The enthusiasm of Tel Aviv’s youth stemmed from their understanding that they were making history, that walls of separation were crumbling, that we were joining the rest of the world. The youth of Cairo were similar to the youth of Madrid, and in Tel Aviv the Zionist decree that “the people shall dwell alone” was shattered. Cairo built up faith in change, and Tel Aviv brought back hope.

A year passed, and when Dafni Leef tried to reignite the miracle of revolt, she came up against a well-prepared establishment ready to silence and buy off any murmur of protest. The press was no longer supportive and her comrades in arms looked less like young rebels and more like slick politicians. It seemed that all hope was lost, that the Tel Aviv Spring was no more than a prelude to a cold winter.

But the Red Bloc refused to roll up its flags. Just as in Egypt it was impossible to bring back Mubarak, the youth had come to understand their power, and the idea of dictatorship had been defeated, so too in Tel Aviv: the protest raised new awareness and new paths, and opened the way to a political sphere that had not yet formed into a new social force.

The elections as accelerator

Thus the current run-up to elections is accelerating an unavoidable process. Those who met during that hot revolutionary summer and marched spontaneously together found themselves facing a new challenge: how to express their desires, how to cope with the same corrupt system against which they had rebelled. In this way they discovered the enormous potential of the ideas behind the Red Bloc. Disappointment in the existing parties, both among Jews and Arabs, created a rare opportunity to think towards something new. The nationalist-isolationist slogans in the Arab street were revealed as hollow, unable to lift the Arab population out of its chronic poverty. On the Jewish side, suspicion gave way to association based on a very broad common denominator, expressed in the demand for one justice for all.

Unlike during the protest, this coming together is not taking place in the streets and public squares, but in the virtual space of social networks which also underlay the Arab revolutions and continue to play an important role in the struggle against Assad in Syria. This new sphere enables connections to be made that would have been impossible in the past. The Facebook page of the Daam Workers Party brings Russian, Arabic and Hebrew speakers together and offers a platform upon which Jews and Arabs can communicate. The messages are so clear and simple that they can be passed from language to language with a harmony so sorely lacking in the real world. This is living proof that Jews and Arabs, and workers of all backgrounds, can live and argue together and wage a joint struggle against the common enemy: the regime which abandoned its citizens for the sake of the wealthy.

Daam’s Facebook page has succeeded where the protest movement failed. It has managed to link the center to the periphery, intellectuals to industrial workers, teachers to truckers. Their willingness to associate themselves with Daam is not to be taken for granted. The mutual suspicion which divides Jews and Arabs, Ashkenazim and Mizrahim, Russian speakers and Amharic speakers, has always prevented solidarity. But years of work and education, of joint struggle and the establishment of workers committees, whether successful or defeated, created a basic confidence in Daam and in its members who are active on the ground every day.

From virtual strength to electoral strength

Daam’s great challenge is to transform virtual strength to electoral strength. So far, we have managed to shift the protest onto the virtual plane and turn the party platform into texts, graphics and video clips which expose the party’s positions to thousands. We opened an arena for the exchange of views in various languages, and for lively, democratic political debate. A new force is taking shape and bursting into the public sphere, and the continuous joining of new members shows that this force is meeting a need which was created by the changing reality. The rush towards Daam is not merely a trend, but a movement based on growing social awareness, among both Jews and Arabs. As this campaign grows stronger, the creation of a representative force in the Knesset becomes increasingly feasible.

Daam has walked this path for many years. The ideas have remained the same ideas, but reality has changed and enabled these ideas to flourish. Revolutionary ideas thrive in a revolutionary movement, and such a movement is created when the existing system collapses and social consciousness rejects established norms. The basic view that the state belongs to its citizens cracked when the regime “married” capital and public resources were handed over as the dowry. As socioeconomic disparities gaped, revolutionary consciousness began to awaken. Thus workers come together regardless of nation, language or origin, to take back their right to determine their own fate. In the face of war they demand peace, in the face of racism they demand fraternity, in the face of exploitation they demand the right to earn a living in dignity, and in the face of inequality they demand social justice for all.

There is a sense that we face a historic moment. The atmosphere is electric, and the intensity of the election campaign reflects incessant change. The energies released in the summer of 2011 have doubled in strength, and the objective appears closer than ever. We stuck with the principle, we struggled for it for years and earned the confidence of the workers as we acted together against poverty and daily exploitation. We believe there are many thousands who want to preserve and develop the energies released that summer. In this election campaign, we are motivated by a revolutionary fervor which will bring us into the Knesset. We have set ourselves a target, and our public responsibility compels us to continue until this target is achieved. Because as the fascist right grows stronger, Israel is faced with a stark choice: the choice between change or ruin.

– Translated from the Hebrew by Yonatan Preminger

The post Riding the wave to the Knesset: The Daam campaign first appeared on Da'am Party: One state - Green Economy.

On Asher Schechter’s – Rothschild – A Chronicle of Protest (Hebrew), Published by Kav Adom – HaKibbutz HaMeuhad, 2012, 309 p.

In the summer of 2011, Tel Aviv was boiling over. Anyone taking part in the events and demonstrations organized by the Rothschild tent protest movement couldn’t help but feel that a new force was coming into being. The immense energy that exploded on July 14, with the arrival of the first tents, was amplified exponentially by enthusiastic and sympathetic media coverage. The electrifying protest, with its many colorful characters, sparked the flame of the first internal revolt against the Israeli establishment. Under the surface of the protest, however, power struggles and intrigues were taking place.

Asher Schechter’s great achievement is that he manages to take this complex beast apart, thereby giving insight into its various factors. In his book, Rothschild – A Chronicle of Protest (so far in Hebrew only), Schechter puts forth a high-resolution, detailed description of events, one that at times creates the sensation of invading the privacy of the main participants. The danger of such writing, penetrating the intestines of the protest movement, is the loss of the overall picture. One runs the risk of missing the vision, the thought, and the soul in exchange for the large number of photographs depicting scar tissue.

Nevertheless, the book constitutes an important contribution to our understanding of this unique and vital movement, which is doubtless but a forerunner of things to come. Schechter writes with great emotional fervor, out of a profound sympathy with the protest and its leaders. His choice of Daphni Leef as the figure symbolizing the protest, for all her strength and weakness (an in-depth interview with Leef is featured at the end of the book), reflects his deep understanding of and insight into the founders of this movement.

In the Afterword, Schechter writes rather pertinently about the protest’s critics, those who reproach it with not being unified, being too right-wing or left-wing, too militant or too “nice.” All of these, he claims, fail to understand the primary message that the protest sought to deliver: the protest is not “a definite set of demands to lower housing prices; it is an idea, a concept, a call to action. From its inception, the protest was a tidal wave rushing towards a target, not knowing what would happen when it reached its destination” (p. 209).

New energy and confusion

The first part of Schechter’s book describes a brave and creative bunch that hasn’t the slightest idea of the kind of momentum it’s destined to acquire. Not one of the ten Tel Aviv youths who, together with Leef, were discussing her proposal to set up a tent on Rothschild boulevard— in protest against an establishment that had sold Israel to the tycoons—had the expertise to lead a movement hundreds of thousands strong.

The public support and more importantly the friendly media coverage were the jet fuel that propelled the protest to the headlines in just a few days. Anyone who has ever taken part in an attempt to organize a public demonstration knows that media “buzz” can make or break such an initiative. In this instance, the “buzz” was more like media frenzy engulfing all media channels, including live TV coverage from the start. Within days, thousands were joining the movement. The first demonstration, expected to assemble only a small number of people, was attended by about 20 thousand. The second saw that number grow to 100 thousand, and the third and largest of them all saw almost 400 thousand people march the streets of Tel Aviv and other cities.

Through Schechter’s vivid and dramatic descriptions, one cannot help but feel the surge of energy that took place throughout these events. And yet, his narrative also describes a state of confusion and lack of direction from the very get-go. The sympathetic media coverage, in his view, was a honey trap (p. 299). The media’s portrayal of the protest as a matter of consensus, and the emphasis it placed on it’s being a new phenomenon that was neither left-wing nor right-wing, made it hard for the movement’s leadership to project a revolutionary path to match the spirit of the street. From his description of the discussions among the leaders, it is clear that these were talented and earnest people who stumbled into a situation that made it impossible for them to lead, because they lacked political vision, experience and inner resources.

At this stage of the game, tents were being set up all over the country, and the protest movement was clearly becoming the center of Israeli political life. This was a perfect natural environment for a wide coalition among various social organizations which joined the charismatic Rothschild “gang” in the attempt to share their spotlight. The two strongest and most significant factions in this coalition were the Student Union, under the leadership of Itzik Shmuli, and “Dror Israel” [“Israeli Freedom”], headed by Pesach Haupster. The book does not contain a description of the role played by Dror Isael – a movement that affiliated with the Israeli Labor Party. On the other hand, the dispute with Shmuli is given much weight, offering insight into the dynamic that came to typify the movement.

While the movement was undergoing this growth in scope and reach, after two weeks of intense activity, Daphni Leef found herself on the brink of utter exhaustion. Sleepless nights, constant demands from the media, unrelenting pressure from various factions and activists to take the stage during protests – all these led Daphni and her depleted colleagues to “willingly relinquish” themselves into the hands of more experienced activists who had joined the Rothschild leadership forum, assembling every evening at the Café Swing. These were three left-wing activists who had already gained a certain status in Tel Aviv after running for city council in 2008 as part of a campaign called “Ir LeKulanu” (“A City for All of Us”). Thus it came to pass that Sharon Shahaf, Alon Lee Green, and Noam Hopshtater became responsible for delineating the path that the protest would take from late July 2011 onwards.

The “Ir LeKulanu” group makes a retreat

The differences between the Rothschild “gang” and Shmuli were apparent from the beginning. The dispute reached its climax in anticipation of the largest and most significant demonstration that would take place in Tel Aviv on August 6. Shmuli insisted that this was not the protest of radical left-wingers and anarchists from Tel Aviv. This was the struggle of the salt of the earth, and therefore the demonstration had to end with the singing of Israel’s anthem, HaTikva. Daphni Leef, Stav Shafrir, and their colleagues opposed the suggestion. Shafrir argued that the anthem tells 20% of the Israeli citizens – the Arab population – that they are not welcome here.

The argument was finally settled by Sharon Shahaf, who took command over the Rothschild group. “You think you’re more left-wing than me just because you cry over these things?” she told Shafrir. “We want to make it official, it’s us again the government, and no one can say that we represent some esoteric group of extremists if we sing HaTikva at the end.” This discussion was just a small part of the debate which included questions like: What should the slogans be? Should we call to bring down the government? Who are the singers we want to bring? In the end the more central Zionist line of Shmuli prevailed, and the open-minded, democratic tendencies of the Rothchild gang were pushed aside.

With hindsight, one of the leftist “guides” – Alon Lee Green – expressed regret over the line taken in this demonstration. “We made our biggest mistake during this demonstration, whereas the street was far ahead of us in many respects. The protest signs on the street were far more radical than us. This was the most powerful moment of the entire protest and we needed to take advantage of it to say as loudly and clearly as we could: ‘Down with Prime Minister Bibi.’ The role of leadership is to be avant-garde, to lead the troops, not to follow a step behind – and in this case we were a step behind because we were afraid of people calling us left-wing” (p. 98).

However, this late insight does not change the fact that at that critical moment, Green’s group pulled the protest backwards. A year later, at the June 2, 2012 demonstration, it was once again Green’s coalition – this time with Haupster and “Dror Israel” – that pulled an Arab speaker off the stage for fear of being labeled left-wing. In light of all this, it is no wonder that today Stav Shafrir finds herself in the “Avoda” (“Labor”) party besides Shmuli, while the rest of her friends are scattered all over the political map. We cannot discount the possibility that under a different leadership we could have found the Rothschild gang still leading the protest outside the establishment and against it.

The Trachtenberg Committee breaks up the protest

The establishment of the Trachtenberg Committee is described in the book, and rightly so, as a critical test of the protest movement, and the Trachtenberg report receives a lot of weight. Schechter recognizes the establishment of the committee as what it was – a powerful political manipulation engineered by Netanyahu as a means of dissipating the force and influence of the protest. The fact that Itzik Shmuli chose to appear before the committee and cooperate with it, while the Rothschild group boycotted it, proves that Netanyahu’s manipulation succeeded in splitting the protest.

The Trachtenberg report, published in late September 2011, was an attempt to bribe the middle class and separate it from the poor. Professor Trachtenberg’s wiliness, in combination with the protest movement’s political weakness and the conservative nature of some of its leaders, finally led to its retreat and dissolution. The tents were the first to go – a development both expected and inevitable. Shortly after, the Rothschild gang broke up, and the important movement that it had mounted evaporated.

The missing Arab side

Among the factors most detrimental to the protest and its potential is the fact that the Arab population remained completely passive, even after the volcano on Rothschild. This absence of Arab activists from the protest that was supposed to be “everyone’s” prevented the formation of a new Jewish-Arab collaboration. Such an alliance could have allowed the Rothschild gang and the dynamic, non-institutional factions of the protest to develop their democratic agenda. The presence of authentic, on-the-ground activists from the Arab towns and villages would have made it very hard for right-wing and other agents to spread their racist propaganda, and the conservative influence of Shmuli and Dror Israel could have been successfully neutralized.

This fantasy of a radical Jewish-Arab social movement is missing from the book. Like the Rothschild gang, Schechter too is a product of the new Tel Aviv: very radical, revolutionary in many senses, but not attributing enough weight to the Arab side of the equation. Accordingly, his interviews with Arab activists take up a very marginal place in the book.

In the tradition of the revolutionary movement, the term “1905” serves as a codename for the attempt at a democratic revolution in Russia, which despite its failure was seen in hindsight as the dress rehearsal for the 1917 revolution, which brought down the Tzarist regime. In this respect, Rothschild was our 1905. It may not have been a real revolution, but this was an unprecedented effort by a popular movement that showed us what things would look like when the revolution did finally occur. Mainly, it showed us that there could be a revolution here, in Israel. Schechter helps us understand what happened and why. He purports to give us answers to the question – why did the protest disappear? He see himself, justly, as a chronicler of the different forces within the movement. When, in the future, more young people like Daphni Leef and her fellow activists decide to pick up the ball where it was left and run with it, Schechter’s book can serve as a fine foundation for learning the lessons of this first crack at revolution.

The post Rothschild in the footsteps of the 1905 revolution first appeared on Da'am Party: One state - Green Economy.