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Photo: Oren Aharoni
Maccabi fans celebrate in Rabin Square
Photo: Oren Aharoni

The double standards of Tel Aviv authorities

How can the city indulge an impromptu mass street celebration of a sporting win but crack down on a similar public display with a social agenda?

It was a rock concert, New Year's Eve and Israeli Independence Day all rolled into one. It was one big party a couple of weeks ago as the crowds spontaneously converged on Rabin Square following Maccabi Tel Aviv's victory. Patriotism mixed with the team winning along with local urban pride made for one hell of a celebration. There was dancing in the fountain, flags flying and singing galore.

 

 

The police were low key and there was no trouble. When the festive crowd stopped traffic, it was all fun and games.

 

Which made me think back to the Saturday night of June 23, 2012 - when there was quite a different kind of gathering at Rabin Square. Like the merriment of Maccabi's victory, the demonstration held following the extremely violent arrest of social protest leader Daphni Leef the previous afternoon, was uncoordinated with the police.

 

Deemed an "illegal gathering", scores were arrested and only at the judge's very strong suggestion, after to-ing and fro-ing from court, did the offending parties have charges of "illegally congregating" dropped.

 

Unlike Maccabi Tel Aviv winning the European Championship, for which the Tel Aviv municipality seems to have aided and abetted an illegal gathering by laying on fireworks and lighting up City Hall in Maccabi Tel Aviv team colors, on June 23, 2012 members of the public found themselves arrested and beaten up by members of the law enforcement community.

 

Border Police (Magav) and Special Forces (Yasam) were nowhere to be seen at the Maccabi celebrations. I can assume that no Maccabi Tel Aviv fans (including those blocking traffic or cycling Tel Aviv municipality property through the fountain in Rabin Square) will be facing charges of illegally congregating, or be forced in and out of court in the coming two years.

 

Celebrating Maccabi winning a basketball competition is an innocuous event to stage in the public sphere. It has no political agenda. It's not protesting the housing shortage, government corruption, the growing economic divide in our beloved country or the actions of the police or the policies of Tel Aviv municipality.

 

So the police and Tel Aviv municipality let it roll.

 

Clearly, it would have been absurd to have declared the spontaneous and unauthorized Maccabi-fest at Rabin Square an illegal gathering.

 

As it is when the public exercises its democratic right to demonstrate political, social and economic issues.

 

Somehow, when there is a political agenda, the authorities are all over it.

 

It's just that this "discernment" doesn't smell so good.

 


פרסום ראשון: 06.08.14, 15:24
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