Social unrest Israel « Thread Started on Jun 24, 2012, 1:18pm »
Police violence against Tel Aviv protesters should raise the alarm with Israel's authorities
If the prospect of a renewed summer social protest needed a little spark to get angry Israelis back on the street, the police's arrest of 12 demonstrators provided just that.
Police arrest protest leader Daphni Leef in Tel Aviv, June 22, 2012. Photo by Alon Ron
Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch should not be allowed to forget these pictures, nor should Police Commissioner Yohanan Danino or Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai (a retired brigadier general): Five police special unit officers maybe six drag protest leader Daphne Leef out of a group of demonstrators on Rothschild Blvd in Tel Aviv and onto the opposite sidewalk.
Leef, in a blue shirt, is thrown to the ground. A few meters away, municipal inspectors and Huldai's "Green Patrol" help the police push back the protesters. Every few minutes Leef tries to raise her hands and protect herself from the shoves and kicks, to no avail.
In the background, the crowd repeatedly shouts one word: Democracy. This horrific sight lasted for many minutes, until Leef was forcefully taken to a nearby police vehicle. No one should ever ignore or repress these pictures.
If the prospect of a renewed summer social protest needed a little spark to get angry, raging Israelis back on the street, the police's special unit officers and Huldai's municipal inspectors generously provided just that; the disproportional use of force against Leef one woman vs. five-six officers, and later against other protesters tainted the events on Rotchild. The brutality from above was not only direct, it was public and unabashed.
Daphni Leef is arrested on Rothschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv and a scuffle erupts.
Such is the price to be paid by the leaders of the social protests, a direct continuation of the police's decision to interview" activists over the past few weeks, in a bid to "better prepare" for potential summer demonstrations. Of the "gentle but firm" clichι the police likes to use, only the latter was left: a firmness not to enable protests almost any protests (the "almost" refers to certain rallies organized by certain political factions). This is not 'zero tolerance; it is a chilling, frightening minus.
After the arrests on Friday, police claimed that the 12 protesters arrested "cursed, spat and threw objects at the offices." Are calls such as "Officer, who are you protecting?" or "Money, power and police" are now forbidden by law? And what does "throwing objects" mean?
Perhaps in one of two cases, in the scorching heat and confrontational air, a protester may have sprayed water at a group of police officers and protesters. But there were other sights brining to mind last summer's protests of demonstrators handing police flowers. Perhaps these sights eluded the police's cameras, alongside other images such as a municipal inspector cheering after penetrating a group of protesters and snatching a tent that they were holding up the air, or two officers dismantling a tent that was placed on the roof of a car.
The 300 activists who remained on the boulevard after the arrests decided on a swift response to counter the silencing of their voices: A protest march on Saturday evening, directed not least at mayor Huldai.
There are more protests planned in the near future, but even the movement's leaders know that the events of last year cannot repeat themselves. They don't need to, either, as they will manifest themselves according to today's reality. The protest is still here, because very little if at all has changed since last summer.
P.S.- Comment Pieter: "Maybe the officers treated Daphni Leef like they treat Palestinians on the Westbank on a daily basis?"
Re: Social unrest Israel « Reply #1 on Jun 24, 2012, 2:27pm »
Scores arrested after Israel protests
Police say 85 detained after they vandalised banks to protest "police brutality' in Tel Aviv.
Last Modified: 24 Jun 2012 11:43
Activists have accused police of using brutal means to quell the social protests [AFP]
Eighty-five protesters have been arrested after clashing with officers and vandalising banks in the capital Tel Aviv, Israeli police say.
The Israeli demonstrators blocked roads and smashed bank windows in central Tel Aviv early on Sunday, following two days of social reform protests.
Demonstrations on Saturday which ran into the early hours of Sunday morning, were in protest to the detention of 12 activists a day earlier during social reform protests. They were also angered by reports that one of the arrested activists, Dafni Leef, had been injured during her arrest.
Leef, an activist leader, has since been released on bail but she said that police officers bruised and humiliated her after her detention on Friday.
Hundreds of people took to the streets late on Saturday and some blocked main roads and scuffled with police. Police also said that protesters broke the windows of five banks.
Local media reported that in one case, activists charged inside a bank and set up a tent, the symbol of protests against rising living costs that spread across the country last summer.
'Illegal' protest
"We are talking here about an illegal protest ... It started yesterday with illegal protests and continued today with illegal protests with the intention of confronting policemen," said Aharon Exol, the police commander of Tel Aviv district.
"We will not allow this, every possible red line was crossed here, we will not allow this protest to become violent."
"[The police] simply aren't giving permits," Stav Shaffir, one of the protest organisers, told local newspaper Haaretz.
Stav Shaffir, one of the social protest organisers in Tel Aviv
"In the last two months we've come to understand what was going on: They are playing with us, blocking our attempts, and making us wait for excessively long periods of time. This has been going on over and over again for many months, he said.
Micky Rosenfeld, a police spokesman, said the arrests were made to prevent looting.
He estimated there were 1,500 people taking part in the protests. But media reports gave a figure about four times higher.
A grassroots protest movement that began last July as a cluster of student tent-squatters demanding lower living costs in Tel Aviv spread into a nation-wide mobilisation of Israel's middle class.
Those rallies have been some of the largest in Israel's history and led the country's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu to form a panel led by economist Manuel Trajtenberg which has recommended raising welfare spending and lowering defence expenditure.
Re: Social unrest Israel « Reply #2 on Jun 24, 2012, 4:36pm »
Pieter
Most incidents of social unrest is by actions of those grieved by what ever injustices has been brought upon them, and this is very respected.
What we do have here, as brought forward, is two identified professional leaders in mob demonstrations that must be brought under control by Federal means of units of both police and federal.
This is what we must by what ever means as available, to bring about resolution and protection to the common good in both physical and property protection.
These two ladies by their history and currant activities, are promoting their own careers at the pain of those they will bring to their means, their agenda in propaganda and half truths.
Shaffir, Stav: DOB 17 May 1985 Birth place: Netanya, Israel Social Activist
These are the people of their kind, we identify and track of activities.
For within the confines of their activities, they are so innocent in not understanding of the out side elements waiting in the wings to advance what these people have created in available man power of destruction. To then infiltrate and create for them selves to further in destruction of property and lives.
These two ladies are not educated in these means of social destruction. For in their innocents as child like, they are pones of those of training in the means of promotion of anti-Government activities to destabilize and over come what ever government is in placed.
Re: Social unrest Israel « Reply #3 on Jun 26, 2012, 6:23am »
Karl,
You got a point there from the Machiavellistic point of view of the authorities, of the rule of law, police crowd control and etc. Israel is a tense society with a great pluriformity and tension from within the jewish population. This is not Israeli jews against Palestinian arabs, this are jews against jews.
And that is a complicated issue. There is a Kulturkampf (cultural struggle or even "war") between the very powerful Right (Rightwing, conservative, Nationalist, Kapitalist and Zionist religious) and the Left (Social-democrats, socialists, social liberals, ecologists, Feminists, Peaceniks, Marxist, Communists and Arab Israeli's), and between the secular and the (Ultra-Orthodox). Like in Russia or in Southern-America the gap between poor and rich Israeli's is huge. There is a priviliged class of rich Industrial Israeli families and businesspeople who control the Israeli economy, and there is a large group of poor people.
The social unrest has deeper causes. The Israeli economy was one of the strong economies in the Middle east, but the crisis in the West also hits Israeli, because a lot of it's high tech products and agricultural products go to Europe, the USA and elsewhere.
The social unrest comes from an impoverished underclass and a middle class which has difficulties with the growing costs of life, food, rent and etc.
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