Using the illusion of a united Jerusalem, the Israeli Right was able, for a time, to conceal from the world the victims of that illusion: the 310,000 East Jerusalemites who are condemned to poverty and displacement.
The struggle of the African asylum seekers in Israel to be recognized as refugees and to be treated as human beings has been in the headlines regularly during the last few weeks. This follows their declaration, on Jan. 5, 2014, of a mass campaign including a strike to demand that the government cease abusing them. On the first day of the campaign, some 25,000 (half of all asylum seekers in Israel) gathered in Tel Aviv’s central Rabin Square in an unprecedented demonstration, showing the government that this is indeed a real human issue. Later, the asylum seekers demonstrated in front of foreign embassies and the UN representative in Israel, declaring that they would continue their struggle until the cancelation of the law that enables unlimited detention, violation of the right to work, and the current policy of not investigating asylum claims.
The public suicide attempt in the demonstration marking one year since the start of Israel's social protest is a watershed for the movement. No longer does the protest express the frustrations of the Tel Aviv “sushi-eaters.” Now it expresses the extreme hardships of the masses, trodden underfoot by the state, driven to their last crust. And behind them are hundreds of thousands who stand on the brink, fearing a fate like that of Moshe Silman.
After the demonstrations of last summer and also well before, the offices of the Workers Advice Center (WAC-Maan) have been open 365 days a year for meetings with workers from throughout the country. These workers face a harsh and frustrating reality, a reality known in the dialect of Netanyahu and his associates as “Israel’s flexible and dynamic labor market”
The following speech was written for Tel Aviv’s most recent social justice protest this past Saturday. While the speech was ultimately not read aloud, it has been translated for +972 with permission from the author, Wafa Tiara.
As in the social workers’ strike a year ago, Eini fails in his responsibilities as a workers’ leader, exploiting his links with the political elite to dictate a settlement that suits the Treasury. It will be remembered that the social-workers union rejected the settlement devised in March 2011 by Eini and the Treasury. Eini didn’t accept the position of the social workers. Instead, he helped to refer the matter to an industrial tribunal, where, under severe pressure, and in a bid to avoid restarting the negotiations from scratch without the backing of the Histadrut, the social-workers union was forced to back down.
By torching the mosque in the Arab Village of Tuba-Zangariyeh in the North on the night of Oct. 2, the racists of the extreme right expressed their hatred for Israel's Arab citizens. In everyday reality, the village of Tuba-Zangariyeh suffers from severe discrimination in infrastructure and employment at the hands of Israel's various governments. Thousands are employed in factories and farms in the region as manpower contractor laborers, without peripheral benefits. The Tzahar Industrial Park, located next to the town, pays land taxes to nearby Jewish towns (Safed, Hazor and Rosh Pina) but Tuba-Zangariyeh doesn't receive any of the revenues. It's not the rightwing phalanxes who harm the town's residents – it's the policies of Israel's governments that make life hell for them.
Over the past two weeks Israel has been going through a social intifada. Anything and everything is up for discussion. Started in Tel Aviv by a group of young Israelis, it engulfed the whole country on Saturday July 30, when 150,000 demonstrators in dozens of cities took to the streets. The demonstrators are calling for change toward a welfare state.
[:en] Over the past two weeks Israel has been going through a social intifada. Anything and everything is up for discussion. Started in Tel
Sunday March 20 marked an important event in the history of trade unionism in Israel. The leadership assembly of the Social Workers’ Union (SWU), which organizes some 10,000 public sector social workers, rejected the Histadrut’s offer to sign a collective agreement. Instead, a majority of 14 to 11 decided to continue the strike which has been going on for 16 days already. The leadership assembly, which lasted nine hours, was called by the union’s Secretary-General Itzhak Perry and Histadrut Chairman Ofer Eini after they had reached a draft agreement which would have improved wages to a certain extent. However, according to many social workers, including some in the union’s leadership, the agreement was full of holes and opposition to the agreement soon became militant. In the five days leading to the assembly, thousands of social workers demonstrated daily in front of the Histadrut building against the agreement.
