As tents return to Tel Aviv, protesters hope second time’s the charm

I turned onto Rothschild Boulevard from HaBima Square and thought I had gone back in time. I rubbed my eyes once, twice. No – they were still there, a dozen colorful tents on Rothschild Boulevard, signs denouncing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and people with megaphones yelling about housing prices.

Suddenly I was swept away by the memory of pounding chants of “The nation demands social justice!” and hundreds of thousands of people thronging the streets of Israel demanding affordable housing.

The summer of 2011 was a period of great hope, a moment of possible change, putting aside the geopolitical situation and talking about the economic issues that affect daily life in Israel. And then it fizzled out and was gone, with just a few sad remnants like promises of free day care and Stav Shaffir in the Knesset.

“We were sitting around on a Saturday afternoon a week and a half ago, planning Shay’s 40^th birthday, and he said to us, ‘I don’t have anything to celebrate, I’m 40 and I can’t afford my own apartment,’” said Itamar Pirchi, a 41-year-old activist from Tel Aviv. “So we decided to have a picnic with tents on Rothschild Boulevard.”

“We posted this event on Facebook last Saturday, and that same day we had 600 people respond. We figured it was going to be bigger than we expected.”

Shay Cohen and friends put up their tents at noon on Sunday, Cohen’s actual birthday.

About 500 people came to a protest on Sunday, including social justice activists like “Milky protest” leader Naor Narkiss, Zionist Union and Meretz party officials and activists, Joint (Arab) List MK Dov Khenin and recently evicted residents from the former Givat Amal neighborhood in Tel Aviv. About 15 people slept over in the tents on Sunday night, Pirchi said. 

“This is an opportunity, a point where we can open the same conversation,” Shay Cohen said on Monday afternoon. “There has been a lot of organizing since [2011], the fact that we’re even able to be here camping is a result of the social justice protests,” he said. Pirchi said the municipality allows protesters to stay for 48 hours as long as they are confined to a 10 meter by 10 meter space.

“Now we’re starting something new. We’re going to have conversation circles tonight to decide what we’ll do to continue,” said Cohen. Conversation circles were a staple of the grassroots democratic process that drove the social justice protests. He said that Daphni Leef and Stav Shaffir, two of the most well-known faces from the summer of social justice protests who he knows from 2011, had wished him happy birthday but hadn’t been involved with the current tent protest.

“This symbol doesn’t belong to anyone, they know it’s not their brand,” Cohen said.

“We are trying to raise awareness about Israel’s economic and social problems, the same way they did in 2011, and now people are getting excited because of the elections,” said Pirchi.

“Things changed after the summer of 2011, not necessarily in the ways you think they would, but until 2013 we never had an election where the main subject was the economy and social problems,” Pirchi added.

Other protesters did not share Pirchi’s optimism. “I was involved in the social protests, but the forces are so powerful that nothing changed,” said Tzipi Netsi of Tel Aviv. “People slept here for months and it didn’t help.”

“I came back today because you can’t flee from this problem… but I’m not going to vote, because it won’t help and it seems like such a joke,” she said.

“The current government is in power through manipulation and fear,” said Gavriel Vinegrad, a student at Atid College who was overseeing the music. “Bibi [Benjamin Netanyahu] said it himself, he is trying to make us forget our day to day life because of a hypothetical and imagined fear. Iran isn’t stupid like Bibi wants us to believe, and I don’t think he himself believes that Iran will use the nuclear bomb.”

Housing costs rose some 55 percent between 2008 and the end of 2013, according to a damning report by State Comptroller Yosef Shapira last week that placed the blame for runaway housing costs squarely on government agencies. Rents also rose by approximately 30% during that period.

During the summer of 2011, one of the most inspiring parts of the protests were the probing conversations that transpired between strangers on the street. Rather than just passing by, people got invested. They stopped, they yelled, they got angry, they pointed their fingers in the air and at each other, they got inspired, they made connections, sometimes they opened their mind a bit, and then they went home.

On Monday, it was a scene plucked straight from 2011: dozens of passersby gathered around the Birthday Tent protest, gesticulating wildly and yelling. A motorcycle rider drove by and chanted “Bibi! Bibi! Bibi!” A man in his 60s berated the protesters for being spoiled brats. Colorful Tel Aviv characters under the influence of something wove in between the reporters trying to get on TV, as passionate activists described their frustration trying to make ends meet.

“We’re going to have more conversations tonight, we may try to stay here longer,” said Cohen. “What we’re trying to do is make sure this issue gets back onto the public agenda.”