Israelis no longer silent

Op-ed: Protest wave marks end of herd mentality and intellectual blockade imposed on Israelis

Reuters | Published: 08.15.11, 11:08

In order to accurately describe the manner in which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his supporters reacted to the “tent protest,” there is no escaping the words used by Bibi himself in the past: They are s-c-a-r-e-d.

But what exactly are they scared of? The prevalent answer is that they are scared of the decline in the polls, of their waning popularity and of the next election results.

However, it appears that what we see here is fear, and a sense of failure, that is deeper; indeed, this is the other side of the great achievement that the current protest already secured: The breaking of the intellectual blockade imposed on Israel’s citizens in the past decade.

The current wave of protest is important and delightful not only because of its contribution to the issues at hand, such as affordable housing and the collapse of Israel’s middle class. The tent protest is first and foremost the great Israeli comeback of protest in and of itself.

Hence, the protest’s success will not be measured only by the extent to which its concrete (and not fully clear) demands in the area of housing will be met.

To be honest, it is possible that the protest’s most important objective is already being achieved at this time. After years of subscribing to a herd mentality and longtime silence of the lambs, where Israelis have become accustomed to thinking and behaving in the uniform manner of a soldier on the job, and after this

collective anesthesia expended to active moves such as silencing and the hunting of objectors in the past two years, our citizens are now emerging out of the bunker.

The Tel Aviv version of Hyde Park taking place right now is a counter-response to years of messages dictated from above and to repression. After a decade where we saw one cohesive voice, you are now welcome to cacophony. After years of forced agreement it is pleasant to resist. After a long term of silencing and anesthesia, people want to scream with their hands.