Israel Palestine Infos
Uri Avnery
September 10, 2011
Daphne and Itzik
IT SOUNDS like the title
of a romantic movie. “Daphne, Itzik and all the Others”.
It starts off with a
friendship between two youngsters, he in his early thirties, she in her mid
twenties. Then they quarrel. He leaves. She remains.
The audience knows
exactly what it wants: it wants the two to reunite, kiss, marry and walk
arm-in-arm into the sunrise, to the accompaniment of a soft melody.
As for the actors, they
are perfect. They both play themselves.
She is an attractive
young woman, wearing a man’s hat for easy recognition. He is the Israeli young
male, vaguely handsome, easily recognizable by his nose.
THE STORY starts with
Daphne Leef, an editor of short films, daughter of a composer, unable to rent an
apartment in Tel Aviv. She is fed up. She announces on Facebook that she is
going to live in a tent on
Some do. Then more. Then
even more. In no time, there are more than a hundred tents on the avenue, one of
the oldest in town, a quiet residential neighborhood. Other tent cities spring
up all around the country. A mass movement has come into being. Last Saturday,
350 thousand people demonstrated in Tel Aviv, 450 thousand throughout the
country. That would be something like 18 million in the
Some time after the whole
thing started, the Israeli National Student Union,
lead by its chairman, Itzik Shmuli, joined the protest. Daphne and Itzik
were seen as the leaders, together with some others, notably Stav Shaffir, also
easily recognizable with her flaming red hair. (Stav means autumn.)
The media loved them.
They embraced them with a fervor never seen before. In a way that was quite
remarkable, since all the media are owned by the very same “tycoons” against
whom the protesters are railing. The explanation may be that the average working
journalist belongs to the same social group as Daphne and the other protesters –
young middle-class men and women who work hard and still do not make enough to
“finish the month”.
Also, the media need the
“rating”: the public wanted to see and hear the protests. No one could afford to
ignore it, not even a tycoon eager for profit.
THREE WEEKS ago, the
first signs of a split started to appear. After first treating the protest with
disdain, Binyamin Netanyahu saw the danger and did what he (and politicians like
him) always do: he appointed a commission to propose “reforms”. He neither
promised to implement its recommendations, nor did he allow the commission to
break the bounds of the two-year state budget already enacted by the Knesset.
For some, this was just a
maneuver to gain time and let the protest movement lose its momentum. Others
pointed to the fact that the commission is headed by an independent, 61 year old
professor in good standing, Manuel Trajtenberg (a German name written in the
Spanish way) who could be expected to do his best within the limits dictated to
him. Netanyahu himself, something between a pious Reaganite and a devout
Thatcherite, promised to change his economic views altogether.
That’s how the split
started. Daphne, Stav and most of the others refused to cooperate with the
commission. Itzik embraced it and met with its members. Daphne was not satisfied
with the limited reform likely to emanate from the commission, Itzik was ready
to accept what was achievable.
Actually, the controversy
was not inevitable. Daphne and her colleagues could do what Zionists have always
done with immense success: at every stage, take what you can get and move on to
get more.
But the split is much
more than a disagreement over tactics. It reflects a basic difference of world
view, strategy and style.
DAPHNE IS
anti-establishment. She is not doing this for slight changes within the existing
system. Though she was born into the heart of the establishment,
Itzik wants to work
within the establishment. He talks about the “New Israeli”, but it is not at all
clear what is new about him.
Just before the huge
demonstration, a terrible fact was disclosed: Daphne had not served in the army.
When it emerged that the reason was her suffering from epilepsy, something even
more terrible was dug out: when she was 17 years old, she had signed a petition
of high school pupils condemning the occupation and refusing to serve in the
occupied territories, or even to serve altogether. (Obviously, these disclosures
must have come from the files of the Shin Bet Security service, or from one of
the neo-fascist “research” centers financed by far-right Jewish billionaires in
the
The fact that the masses
joined the protest in spite of these disclosures shows that the old militaristic
language has lost its luster. Daphne and her followers stand for a different
discourse.
Some believe that it is
basically a gender clash: male versus female. Daphne’s style is soft, inclusive,
affirmative, reaching out to all parts of society. Itzik’s style is much more
exclusive. Daphne and Stav never say “I”, always preferring “we”. Itzik uses “I”
freely. He raised quite a few eyebrows when he said at the demonstration: “You
are all partners in MY struggle…”
The protest movement is
heavily influenced by women. Women founded it, women are its main spokespersons.
Does this change its texture?
(I had an argument about
this with a feminist friend. She insisted that there is no basic difference
between the genders, that the existing difference is created by culture. Boys
and girls are educated to follow different role models from age zero. I believe
that there is a basic biological difference, going back to the primates and
before. Nature intended the female to bear and rear children, while the male had
to fight and hunt for food. But in the end it comes to the same: the modern
human being has the ability to shape him/herself, so we can design our culture
according to our will.)
DAPHNE SEEMS to have no
ego, no political ambitions. Almost everybody believes that Itzik, on the other
hand, has his eyes set on a seat in the Knesset – using his new-found public
stature in order to join the Labor (or any other) Party, if he cannot win the
leadership of the protest movement and turn it into a party in his image.
The latter seems
unlikely. At the huge demonstration, his speech was well received. But it was
undoubtedly Daphne who really touched the heart of the masses. Itzik spoke to
the head, Daphne to the heart.
Something very strange –
or perhaps not so strange – happened to the media on this occasion. All three
major TV stations covered the event live and at length. Itzik’s speech was
carried in its entirety by all three. But in the middle of Daphne’s speech, as
if on orders from above, all three stations cut off her voice and started
broadcasting “comments” by the same tired old gang of government spokesmen,
“analysts” and “experts”.
From then on, almost all
the media overplayed Itzik and underplayed Daphne. The tycoons, it seems, have
taken over again.
FROM THE start, the
leaders of the protest insisted that the movement is not “political”, neither
“left” nor “right”. It is solely concerned with social justice, solidarity and
welfare, not with affairs of state like peace, occupation and such.
How long can this stance
be maintained?
This week, General Eyal
Eisenberg, commander of the home front (one of the four geographical commands of
the army) made a speech in which he forecast a “general war, a total war”
between
Military and political
leaders immediately downplayed this speech, saying that no such danger existed
for the near future. But the implications were clear: the need to expend huge
sums to equip all of
Can one really pretend
that all this does not affect the chances of creating a welfare state? That the
momentum of the protest movement can be maintained and increased under these
darkening clouds?
THE NEXT stage will
arrive with the recommendations of the Trajtenberg commission in a few weeks.
Will they enable Itzik to
celebrate and call the whole thing off? Will they confirm Daphne’s prediction by
offering only crumbs from the table around which the politicians and tycoons are
feasting? Will they extinguish this historic movement or give it new life?
How will this movie go
on? Ah, there we have to wait and see. We wouldn’t disclose the end, would we?
Assuming we knew it.