A bird, a plane? No, a bitter security staffer!

Holy pension funds, Batman!

Unable to reveal their true identities, and evidently feeling a certain affinity for superheroes, members of a top secret Israeli security unit this weekend hired actors to play Iron Man, Superman, Spiderman and Batman, stand outside the Defense Ministry complex in Tel Aviv, and urge Defense Minister Ehud Barak to honor agreements with them on pay and working conditions.

“We’re not comic book characters,” read one of the placards, held, somewhat ironically, by “Superman.” Alongside him, “Batman’s” placard proclaimed: “Ehud Barak, you don’t run away from agreements.”

A lawyer for the protesting workers said they were bound by a confidentiality agreement that required them to keep secret any information that might lead to their being identified, and thus had to resort to hiring actors to advance their claims. He said the ministry was taking advantage of the secrecy in which these people worked to abuse their financial rights, and cited a change in law which had recently affected their pension funds.

The lawyer, Ofer Bartal, told the Hebrew newsite YNet that the workers concerned were “responsible for one of the most sensitive and classified projects in the State of Israel, and answer directly to the defense minister.”

Friday’s superhero protest was the second time in three months that Israelis objecting to economic conditions have donned masked, capes and fancy underpants. In March, demonstrators complaining about socio-economic inequalities staged a “superheroes against supervillains” protest in the Azrieli Mall, a short walk away from Friday’s protest, to complain about over-concentration of wealth among Israeli tycoons and inadequate allocation of resources to impoverished Israelis.