MLI BIMAT Mandel
December 19th, 2011
"What has the Social Justice Protest Achieved?"
Moshe Krif:
The social struggle we organized for many years
has come from a place of identity.
If you are coming from a place of identity,
if you are working out the problems in Hatzor HaGlilit
if you are working within this context
and add to it the issue of the social struggle of Mizrachi Jews,
people don't want to hear it.
Regardless of what you might have said about the banks,
about money and power in Israel,
about the structure of Israeli society,
the way capital moves from political parties to family members
to the large business groups and corporations,
as soon as you ask to look at it from a Mizrachi perspective,
from the perspective that incorporates the identity component
you become powerless. You are no longer universal.
Your identity stands in conflict to your universality.
I would like to say tonight, that not only does your identity,
or this Mizrachi claim, not negate your universality,
but rather, this struggle  embodies the secret to the future of Israeli society.
When I sat with Babayof and Buzaglo
at the intersections during the housing protest,
the Yasam (Special Patrol Unit)
was not forgiving,
there was no media coverage, and nobody gave us flowers.
This was something different.
I considered the saying that it doesn't matter what you say,
it only matters who you say it to, and I think this is true on many levels.
That is why, in my opinion,
the social protest expressed the voice of a broad public
which has come to the forefront of social awareness,
but at the same time, I don't think it really unsettled the prime minister
There was a large segment of the public
that was absent from that space,
a public for whom we must consider how we maintain the paradigms.
Anyone interested in dealing
with the structure of the Israeli public
and the vision of the future of Israel
must understand this.
This was not a struggle for Pri HaGalil in Hatzor HaGlilit.
These were not the forces I had encountered,
and here I am referring to the battle
between the social protesters and the wealthy,
and the enormous cost involved in deconstructing the current systems
from land rights to corporate law.
This was a protest with the right intentions
and I believe that I support it in that.
However, the protest lacked the necessary clarity,
and that can be dangerous.
This necessary clarity,
which I will expand on further later on,
is closely associated to the groups which were absent from the protest.
In the past, the media would consistently praise the same individuals,
and choose as men and women of the year
the wealthy, the tycoons, and celebrate them.
Now, the media is much more critical of these individuals.
We have now moved on to the next stage,
and the question remains--what is the next step?
The next stage of the process
will be bound by the question of identity,
by the question of where we want to take our current society
which is falling apart.
We need to evolve from a group of individuals,
to construct a new narrative.
It is time we moved from the  structure of a sectored society
to the process of building a new Israeli society.
In order to attain this we must create a common identity,
as opposed to the rifts which currently divide us.
"The Villa in the Jungle" --Ehud Barak's ultimate text--
compares Israel to a villa situated in a crazy environment,
in which we bar the windows and hunker down in our fortress.
It is time we departed from that narrative,
and start talking about tents instead.
Tents like the tent of the children of Abraham.
I believe, especially after this past summer,
especially after the protests in the public space,
we can no longer adhere to the concept of an isolated fortress.
We must abandon this existence as a "Villa in the Jungle"
and begin to understand our burgeoning space.
In other words, in this current space
we cannot build a stable, common identity
on the foundations of a dissolving society.
The economic questions that were raised today,
and which were raised over the past summer
directly pertain to the survival of Israeli society
and its ability to face challenges, even national challenges.
The "Villa in the Jungle," with the bars on the windows
The idea of fortifying ourselves against erratic surroundings,
is built on a fractured society,
both socially and economically.
That is why I would like you to shift from the model of a villa in the jungle
to the model of tents,  to the Tent of the Children of Abraham.
The alternate space in which Israeli society should build itself,
on a basis that is first and foremost
focused on the social justice.
The claim for social justice
is a claim that stands at the center of our future survival,
while understanding that we can no longer continue
on the path we've been on.
