Senior citizens and students protested Wednesday in front of the Kiryat HaMemshala governmental building in Tel Aviv.  The protesters cried out against neo-liberal economic policies under the burden of which one of five are below the poverty line. There are already 250,000 elderly below the poverty line and now tens of thousands of seniors are about to join them.

Gideon Ben-Israel, 91, chairman of the pensioners union and one of the organizers of the protest, said that the protest was aimed specifically at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Finance Minister Yair Lapid. “How can it be that people like oligarchs (Nochi) Dankner and (Yitzhak) Tshuva pay the same price for milk and bread as I do?” asked, adding that the protesters have come to express their opposition to the canceling of the property tax discount for senior citizens, the raising of drug prices, taxing burial plots, raising the VAT and various policies that worsen the conditions of elderly citizens’ eligibility for financial and nursing assistance.