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MLI BIMAT Mandel Bimat Mandel December 19th 2011
"What has the Social Justice Protest Achieved?"
Rachel Azaria:
I think that the summer protest was Israeli society's attempt
to redefine what Israeli society is.
If Israel was founded as a refuge state for every Jew in the world,
especially in light of the atrocities they had faced,
that is one role of the state.
But it was also an attempt to build a model state.
I think we can be a model state.
I think the protests were an attempt
to go back and reassess who and what we are as a society.
Two main achievements of the summer protest,
it is yet early to really tell,
but I believe that the two main accomplishments
discernible in Israeli society today is firstly
the feeling that we can speak about solidarity again.
Solidarity means that we are not a large group of individuals,
we are not a collection of self-interested groups.
There is a sense of an Israeli mainstream,
and of a solidarity amongst the sectors.
Secondly, another very important acheivement of the summer protests, in my opinion
is that its finally possible to talk about values.
I would like to consider what is often considered to be
the definitive accomplishment of the protest:
the Trajtenberg report.
Something that bothered me,
was that now that the Israeli public got up off the couch
to march in the streets and protest
-- what would happen if there would be no results to show for it?
If the protest did not bring about a concrete change
that the public could feel.
This concern came from a place which one might call "educational"
from a relationship with the public,
in which if that were to happen,
the public would learn
that there is no point in taking to the streets.
That everything we hear about
in the behind-the-scenes narrative on Channel 2 News
--that no one cares and we can't change anything
Pay attention--every news story
is based on this idea.
They would learn that it's true: no one cares and we can't change anything.
For this reason I was very supportive of talking to Trajtenberg,
in trying to change what could in fact be changed,
in order to teach the public that it is worth their while to take to the streets
The more I think about it,
the more I understand the true greatness of the protest.
The greatnest of the protest, that didn't say
that the settlers get too much,
it never entered the discourse.
It didn't claim that security gets too much,
that the settlers get too much,
that the Haredi community gets too much.
The protest did not go there at all.
The reason it did not make these claims part of the issue
is precisely because this was an identity struggle
It is because we are going through a process of trying
to redefine Israeli solidarity.