However, if protest organizers were to willfully add geopolitical, human rights issues (such as the settlements and the occupation) to the movement’s official agenda too soon, some, including Israeli journalist Yossi Gurvitz, think it would mean the collapse of the movement’s popular approval in Israel. Why? Left-leaning Israelis have historically lost when it comes to discussions of security.
Noam Sheizaf, in a post on 972 Magazine entitled “The strange American obsession with the return of the Israeli left,” writes scathingly, and quite bluntly:
It’s time to face facts: Rabin’s second government was an historical accident, no more. This was the only time in 35 years that the left won a Knesset majority…Liberalism, in the American sense, never took real hold in Israel.The current social protest is a unique event with tremendous potential, but if it’s a return to the Jewish democracy dreamland that Americans hope for, [they] are up for a major disappointment. There won’t be a “return” – all we can and should hope for is something completely new.On Wednesday, Israeli journalist Dimi Reider was interviewed by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now. Goodman asked, just as many American journalists have asked recently, how these protests fit into the larger issues of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and the settlements.
His answer was twofold. First, he said, there is no connection. Second, this lack of a connection may be strategic on the part of the organizers, who understand that geopolitical issues, such as the settlements and the occupation, would only serve as wedges capable of breaking apart the fragile but unmistakable momentum the protests have gained.
David Harris-Gershon, Tikkun
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