Hundreds of thousands of Israelis march for financial reform
Protestors camp in tents in an affluent part of Tel Aviv as a sign of protests of the high cost of living experienced by the Israeli middle class.
Nearly a quarter of a million Israelis marched down along the streets of the country in what is now considered to be one of the largest social outcries in Israeli’s history.
Hundreds of thousands of Israelis marching on the streets of Tel Aviv and tens of thousands more in cities throughout the country, carrying slogans and demanding for social justice and for the government to address the mounting cost of living for the country’s middle class who claim that they have been left out despite the country’s growing economy.
“The middle class in Israel find it hard to live here,” Noga Klinger, one of the thousands of protestors, told reporters. “It’s hard to raise children here. It’s very hard to find suitable apartments. We cannot suffer anymore. We have to come to the streets and protest.”
One protestor accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of giving tax money “to the tycoons and to the rich people.”
“Nothing comes back to us,” she said. “Everybody who works, even [those] with a degree from [a] university, doesn’t have enough money to survive. We are all the time surviving instead of living.”
The demonstrations are the latest development in a string of protest movements that began on July 14 when a group of activists set up tents in an affluent neighborhood located right in the center of Tel Aviv as a sign of protest against the ever increasing rental costs, which has jumped by more than 40 percent since 2007.
While the announcement made by Netanyahu to present a plan to ease the financial burden on Israeli’s citizens may prove to be a sign that the government is paying attention, political analyst David Horovitz say that protestors are missing the important part which is a call for electoral reform in the country.
“A lot of the ills of Israel and a lot of inequalities of Israel are a consequence of a very problematic political system,” he explained. “It is comprised purely of proportional representation by parties who are at the mercy of other parties with special interests.”
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Posted by Maria Clinton
on Aug 7 2011. Filed under Featured, Politics.
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