Thousands expected to attend, on Saturday night, nationwide events marking the first anniversary of last summer’s social justice protest movement; marches expected in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa and Beer-Sheva. Hadash and Communist Party of Israel activists will participate in all the demonstrations.
In Tel-Aviv the march organized by Daphni Leef, the woman who launched the social protest, and by several social and political groups will begin at 8 P.M. at Habima Square and culminate an hour later in a rally at the government complex on Kaplan Street. Marches will also take place in Jerusalem (9 P.M. at Gan Hasus, ending up at the Knesset), Haifa (7:30 P.M. near the Bahai Gardens on Ben-Gurion Boulevard, ending at Meyerhoff Square) and Be’er Sheva (9 P.M. at the teacher’s center on Rager Street, ending at the Victory Garden). Thousands of people have confirmed plans to attend the various events via Facebook.
Leef, in a press statement issued Thursday, said that “The media talk a lot about egos and clashing interests, and the discussion has been diverted from the distress of Israeli society. At rallies, the stage has turned into a source of friction, because everyone needs to make his voice heard. Therefore, this Saturday night, there will be no central stage, but five small stages along Kaplan Street, which will provide an equal platform to all the struggles and all the various organizations, in an effort to raise the discourse again.” The statement also included a long list of social organizations that have pledged to send representatives to the event she has organized. Also in the eve of social protests’ first anniversary, the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of Israel (CPI) published a statement: “One year to the social protest – The struggle continues!”
According to the CPI: “The government of the political and social right lead by Netanyahu is combining the trampling of worker rights with its insistence on expanding the settlements in the occupied territories, initiating continuous military provocations, and its refusal of peace for land. In this way the government is running the risk of embroiling the people in Israel in yet another unnecessary war. Anyone who maintains that it’s possible to struggle against this rightist government only on the ‘social plain’, without fighting for democracy and against the occupation, is guilty of the very same mistake as those who believe that the social protest can be ‘apolitical.'”
The CPI emphasizes once again that an Israeli-Palestinian peace is an absolutely necessary condition for advancing the cause of social justice; such a peace includes: evacuation of all Israeli settlements and withdrawal from all the territories conquered in June 1967; establishment of a Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem, alongside Israel; and solution to the refugee problem in accord with UN decisions. “Experience shows that there are close ties between the struggle for a just peace and a popular campaign for social justice,” the CPI said.
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