Woodstock on Rothschild Boulevard

(Ed. note: While we are all in favor of dealing with the core issues of the housing affordability protests in Israel; i.e., release of state-owned lands, unfreezing of construction in Yesha and Jerusalem to let the capital markets work and lower prices; the attempted hijacking of the movement by the Left and its freeloading "social justice" brigade does not bode well. Below, Professor Plaut tells it like it is.)

By Steven Plaut

Would it not be nice if people simply said what they mean? All those tent protesters whining about “piggish capitalism” and yearning for “Scandinavian socialism” when what they really want is free handouts, rent controls with the housing in consequential shortage being granted to them, and a comfortable standard of living without having to work too hard. And then, when Israeli leftists denounce the “occupation,” insist that the “occupation” is the root of all evil, demand an end to the “occupation,” what do they REALLY mean? What they all really mean when they demand an end to the “occupation” is the duplication of Gaza to the West Bank. Once they end the “occupation,” events like those near Eilat last week will be daily events in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

Remember when the slogan that summed up the American elections and the collapse of the Republican Party at the end of the Bush administration was, “It’s the economy, stupid.”

Well, I wish I could take credit for this quip, but I think the best comment so far on the Woodstock on the Yarkon tent protests in Tel Aviv is in the column by Uri Elitzur in Makor Rishon this weekend. He describes how he would sum up the tentster protests if he were writing a memo to Manuel Trachtenberg, the head of the committee on “social change” appointed by Netanyahu to try to buy off the tentsters. Trachtenberg is a professor of economics, with specialization in the economics of technology. Elitzur sums up the tent protests with the quip, “It’s the stupid people, economist!”

There is one other item in this weekend’s Makor Rishon which I wish I had written. Actually it is written by Rabbi Haim Navon. He is mocking the tentster protesters and their demands. He suggests that in the next round of protests they issue a series of demands related to the hot summers in Israel. According to Navon, these should include:

1. A law that limits how hot it can get in Israel in August.

2. In order to make productive use of solar energy Israel needs to destroy all settlements in the West Bank at once and replace them with large solar panels.

3. Israel will officially cut July and August down to 15 days each and insert a new month in between them – the month of chill and solidarity.

4. All factories in the Israeli periphery that emit pollution will be converted into igloo manufacturers.

5. Tens of thousands of igloos will be distributed for free to Israelis living in hardship, especially to Negev Bedouin squatters living illegally on lands that do not belong to them.

6. Since greenhouse gases are causing global warming, all Israeli power plants will be shut down in August, making it a cooler month.

7. Being realists, the protesters understand that Israel would still need a source of power and so they are proposing that it be generated by conscripting tens of thousands of unemployed Israelis and assigning them to peddling stationary bike exercise machines attached to a generator to generate electricity, while earning high wages.

8. Every Israeli citizen will receive an organic air conditioner unit that generates its own energy with compost and love.

9. The government will be asked to provide subsidized air tickets for young Israelis wishing to go to cooler countries in August.

10. And the most important way to make August cooler is to get rid of Bibi and his government.