Dissent in Israel is a Dirty Word

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Israel is celebrated, even by it’s enemies, as the only true liberal democracy in the Middle East…write Raffe Gold.

Raffe Gold

As neighboring Arab states shot and killed their own citizens who were demanding basic human rights, we in Israel took comfort that our government could be held accountable for its actions and that the most important voice in all the land, the voice of the people, would always be heard. The Jewish State stays true to that to this day but, just recently, the people’s voice is being increasingly muffled and those who claim to represent the will of the people appear to be doing anything but.

The summer of 2011 was like no other time in Israel. Whether the people had enough with putting up with high prices or it was just too damn hot outside we saw the streets come alive with protests. Israelis of all shapes and sizes, of all religious creeds and of all economic and demographic composition shouted in frustration at the injustices that they were facing.

Basic foods were selling for exorbitant prices, families had to debate whether or not they would pay rent or eat meals and the middle class decided not to bear the burden of the Haredim any longer. As they watched their sons and daughters dutifully draft into the IDF after school, their anger at the state-supported ultra-religious who appeared to do nothing to support the country, boiled over.

The old joke that ‘if you wanted to make a million dollars in Israel it’s best to come with two million’ felt less like a joke and more like a depressing reality. Those who had had enough began to populate the streets in their tents and their hammocks. Soon Israel had her own Depression-era Hoovervilles….a Bibiville if you will. The protests quickly spread from Tel Aviv to Beer Sheva, to Haifa and Jerusalem. The country was finally reacting to the multitude of problems that had plagued her for years. Then. It was over. Still Israelis felt proud of themselves and that things could actually begin to change.

Fast forward one year. Attempts to renew the vigor of the social protests were crushed this past weekend. Some of the original tent activists began to populate Rothschild Boulevard once more but their non-violent protests were smashed by the police. A protest organized legally in Beer Sheva was relegated to a street filled with half-constructed buildings where no one could hear the social message being touted by these activists. One of the activists, a friend of mine, was threatened with a beating for simply walking out of line. This is not the democratic Israel that enables the voices of the Israeli people to be heard. A democratic country is one that can take both compliments and criticisms.

Yet it is almost not surprising considering the way that politicians treat the elected offices that they hold. Minister for the Interior Eli Yishai has been cracking down on African refugees with considerable zeal. Already under a significant amount of public scrutiny for his multitude of failures over the 2010 Carmel Fires, amongst other fiascos of his office, the upcoming government report into the fires is thought to state that Yishai failed his ministerial responsibility in overseeing operational readiness of the fire department. The only reason that the report does not recommend Yishai be ousted from cabinet is because it is not within the powers of the State Comptroller.

Yet let us not stop at Yishai. Yisrael Beiteinu MK Anastassia Michaeli said last week that ‘most gay people suffer sexual trauma at young age and commit suicide at 40’. This truly inaccurate and confronting statement reeks not just of ignorance but a strange and antiquated attitude towards Israel’s gay community. The fact that it was uttered by an elected official in the government shows that there needs to be a serious amount of education at the Knesset. Israel cannot be accused by the international community of ‘pinkwashing’, highlighting Israel’s liberal position on gay rights in an attempt to deflect from its treatment of Palestinians, yet still have such bigoted hate speech from its parliamentarians.

We in Israel, and in the Diaspora Jewish community, like to compare Israel to her immediate neighbors when talking about civil rights. We look at the repression in Egypt, the shelling of Homs in Syria and the gender apartheid in Saudi Arabia in order to show that despite living in an area where human rights are debased by government and religion, Israel is able to uphold the most sacred of values. This is true. But let us stop comparing ourselves to those around us and let us now compare ourselves to the intrinsically Jewish values that shaped our culture. Let us take the values that saw Jews marching step-by-step with Dr Martin Luther King, Jews as the intellectual and moral leaders of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, and the ethics that were championed by Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis. Let us truly apply the words ‘Never Again’ that we say so often.

Raffe Gold is a recent immigrant to Israel from Australia. He can be contacted at twitter.com/raffeg