My new column on the economic protests sweeping Israel is now up at The American Prospect:
“Even Adam Smith is turning over in his grave,” reads a handwritten sign pinned to one of the small, square tents. Next to the sign, sewn to the tent, is a piece of cloth with the address printed on it: “51 Tent Boulevard.”
‘Welfare State Now! Tent Boulevard in Tel Aviv (Gershom Gorenberg)
On maps of Tel Aviv, the street is listed as Rothschild Boulevard, but over the past two weeks, the new name has become more appropriate. On the wide, tree-shaded center island, hundreds of nearly identical tents have been pitched in neat rows: a city of protest against the robber-baron economic policies of Israel’s current and recent governments, particularly a drastic housing shortage that is hurting not only the poor but the daughters and sons of the country’s middle class.
At the north end of the boulevard, facing Israel’s Habima national theater, a cloth awning hangs over the tables that serve as the protest headquarters, with an Israeli flag standing on either side—as if the ranks of gray tents were about to march northward, toward the wealthy end of the city and the flush suburbs beyond. Under the awning, a thin 29-year-old man with a three-day beard tells me that he gave up plans to get married for lack of cash. “They stole our dreams,” he says. “A person is built of dreams.” A large hand-painted sign nearby renames the intersection “Habima-Tahrir Square.”
Israel’s summer economic revolt is the sequel to the Arab Spring, both overdue and unexpected. The protest against housing prices began when 25-year-old Tel Aviv video editor Daphni Leef, forced to move out of her apartment when the building was sold, found she couldn’t afford to rent anywhere else in the city. Leef set up a Facebook page announcing her plan to move into a tent on Rothschild Boulevard. When she did so on July 14, hundreds of other people joined her. Smaller tent communities have gone up in other cities. Tens of thousands of people joined an angry march in Tel Aviv last Saturday night. In Jerusalem and elsewhere, protesters have blocked major streets.
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his pet finance minister, Yuval Steinitz, held a panicked press conference to announce a plan to build affordable housing for sale and rental. Protest leaders rejected it as short on details and funding and too narrowly focused on young couples and students. The next day, Ofer Eini, the leader of the national labor federation, went on the air to throw union support behind the protests and to demand a meeting with Netanyahu by tomorrow night. A new Facebook campaign is promoting a national general strike for Monday. So far, Netanyahu’s response to the crisis has had one benefit: convincing more people that that the prime minister gives ground under pressure and that it’s worth joining the revolt. …
Read the rest at the American Prospect; comment there or return to SoJo.
Agreed, Tel Aviv shouldn’t become one of those cities for just the very rich and the very poor. But if all these young people want to buy an affordable apartment in Tel Aviv, they’re kidding themselves. Even if you reserve some middle-income housing, there won’t be enough for everybody.
I’m more concerned about what’s happening in that other city, Jerusalem. From what I’ve heard, it’s no place for a secular couple who want to raise a family. The religious control the city and shift the resources to the religious residents. Anyway, that’s what I heard from a secular couple who left Jerusalem for Modiin in order to raise a family.
Sounds reminiscent of this side of the Atlantic, where 90% of American wealth is concentrated in 1% of it’s citizens, and the loss of wealth after the housing bubble burst is disproportionately affecting minorities and and the middle class.
And yet despite the wealth transfer and the jobless recovery we’re still being asked to preserve the tax breaks of “job creators”. Republican fiscal policy has devolved into
“give a $20 tax break to your millionaire neighbor and hope he’ll maybe hire you for $5 to mow his lawn.”