How symbolic is it that on Saturday night a new state was born on the Tel Aviv street named Hey BIyar [the Hebrew date for Israel's Independence Day]? Hundreds of thousands of Israelis left their homes and filled the streets in a demonstration the likes of which Israel has never seen before. They woke up this morning to a new country, one that is better and more ethical. There are few moments in life when a person can actually feel that he or she is part of history in the making. It happened during that 1995 protest, when former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was murdered, as well as for those who participated in the 400,000-strong demonstration against the first war in Lebanon. It happened again on Saturday night, when the seeds that were planted weeks ago in the form of tents along Rothschild Boulevard sprouted into a real revolution. What happened on Saturday night at Kikar Hamedina in Tel Aviv, and throughout the rest of Israel, can be summed up in just two words -- we won. We have won because we are no longer the same apathetic population complaining as we sit in front of our television sets, herded like sheep to the tycoons' slaughterhouses while our elected officials have forgotten that they were sent to the Knesset to represent us. We won because our elected officials can no longer profiteer from their mandate, or sell our country to tycoons in the name of a free market economy, while leaving behind the hundreds of thousands who work hard yet are unable to afford a reasonable quality of life. We won because suddenly we are united again, and this, after all, is what they are worried about. What worked for them in the past, separating and dividing us, pitting one camp against the other, allowed them to completely control us. Suddenly, it isnt working so well. At Saturday's rallies there were people from the Right and the Left, religious and secular, who for a moment put their political differences aside and looked beyond the efforts to smear the protest movement's leaders. They moved beyond the controversies, proving that they are no longer buying the slogans and the spin. Together, we have strength that cannot be ignored. We won because we changed the public agenda and have already achieved a number of tangible successes. Suddenly, we are awake. We are aware of what is happening and we are talking about equality, competition and solidarity. We won because we returned the sparkle to our eyes and the pride to our hearts. We won because we have put pressure on the Dankners and the Strausses. Suddenly they are lowering their prices, not because they chose to earn less, but rather because they understand that their days of gluttony have passed. We will not allow them to continue. We won because suddenly our representatives are thinking about us and how to mitigate our high cost of living. They are examining the greater truths of privatization, neo-liberalism and free market, which are collapsing in the face of a nation's legitimate demand for social justice. We won, but the path to real change is a long one. Even if we dismantle the tents on Rothschild today, every person who was present at the rally on Saturday night knows that change is possible, and that is the greatest result. It will be impossible to close the eyes that have opened over the course of the past two months.
