Organizers can claim huge success in Saturday's protest events, in which 100,000 Israelis took to the streets to demand social and economic justice. There is a reason for this high turnout: Government spokesmen have long fed the middle class positive statistics about a robust and successful Israeli economy -- no unemployment; jobs all around; exports on the rise; mountains of dollar bills about to be distributed. It is against this backdrop that the middle class is now demanding its share of the pie, served, says a subjective gut feeling, with a side dish of justice. Strategically speaking, the people taking to the streets represent one third of the Israeli public. These citizens have accepted the yoke that comes with military or national service and the tax burden that has funded the ultra-Orthodox and Arabs over the past 60 years. Those two sectors, while still impoverished, constantly try to lay their hands on the public coffers. In the immediate sense, there is a feeling that the tycoons have managed to acquire the entire public's wealth while failing to fully pay back the money lent to them. In addition, they bear much of the responsibility for the rise in the cost of living, although the government's indirect taxation also played a role. Tycoons are now a media role model. A Jewish mother no longer dreams that her son will become a physician. She now wants her son to become a businessman, and not just any businessman but a deep-pocketed tycoon. There are also those with ties to parties or political advocacy groups who are riding this wave of protest for their own profit. They are seeking to cash in on it to gain popularity. All along, media outlets have effectively been providing free political programming or promotion for this campaign. While the game is fair, the public must not be blind to this fact. The opposition has every right to seek both the downfall of the government and early elections. There is nothing wrong with the Knesset weighing the possibility of postponing its traditional summer recess, although this could, symbolically, undermine the solid footing of the government. While protesters fill the city squares, government members have been cramming into offices and airing internal differences of opinion. The need to accept the just demands of the protesters clashes with the fear that the flourishing economy will crash, and that within a year or two it will fall into the red, unemployment will grow and we will all long for the problems we have now. The question is whether the government has someone who can speak with the protesters. In this respect, Ofer Eini, head of the Histadrut Labor Federation, can serve as a reasonable negotiator, although he is personally responsible for delays in some of the reforms, which were presented before the protests began but have not yet been implemented. The next question is whether the protest leaders understand that there are priorities, and that it is impossible to have all their demands met. In the absence of a spirit of compromise and level-headedness, things may deteriorate to dangerous levels, and while neither side wants this to happen, it may occur anyway.
