Anyone examining this summer's social justice protests the way one reviews a performance could potentially describe the phenomenon with the words "the rise and fall." To describe the events this way would be to ignore the general feeling among hundreds of thousands of protesters that their demands have not been addressed by the current government. The outpouring of frustration that characterized the protests was not translated into any substantial reforms; instead it was stymied by some halfhearted hugs within the existing system. What's worse: The few reforms that did result from the protests are unlikely to be implemented. Confining the protest movement to headlines about the number of people who participated in them or the type of entertainment at the events would be missing what is actually happening. Small circles of protesters are still active under the media's radar. Youth in Tel Aviv and Beersheba, having become disillusioned with the power of mass protests, are examining more effective routes and are moving in two important directions. One is the establishment of a non-affiliated Peace Now-style movement that would use the current momentum of public support to spearhead a better organized protest. The other is rallying the public to return to political activism in order to change the political system from within. Fledgeling action is taking place: Parties are being closely watched and the public has been urged to register to vote within the different parties. One could view the protest movement as an effort to remedy this generation's absence from the political arena an absence that began with the 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the subsequent loss of the Labor movement in elections and continued through the damaging direct election reform that disintegrated party blocs and completely changed voting patterns. The social-democratic platform, essential in any parliamentary democracy, has all but disappeared. In Rabin's government the left-wing Labor-Meretz bloc held 56 Knesset seats, while the last elections shrunk this bloc down to one-fifth of that. The idea of social justice has little representation in the current Knesset, and the few MKs who do feel strongly about it are too weak to make anything happen. The spokespeople of the protest movement this summer were very careful to avoid politics altogether out of a fear of alienating supporters, but the movement was in fact the start of a political process not one orchestrated by conspiring spin agents, but rather one that sprung spontaneously from the street. Many are returning to the basic idea that oversight is not enough and people need to be properly represented in the Knesset; that registering to vote through the parties is not enough action within the parties is required to effect change. Perhaps this is the dawn of a consciousness shift: the return of our best and brightest from the voyage to unsoiled individualism back to the dirty public arena, without which we cannot exist. The desire to mold the government and the state requires more than just the inner sanctum of protest activists, it requires an entire public to change its voting habits the young people who have been avoiding their civic duty or voting for negligible parties out of spite will have to change their ways. The next generation of voters will have to switch tracks: no more ironic votes by youngsters for the pensioners' party, no more voting for the legalization of marijuana or other fragments of parties. Instead of thinking "How can I express myself" knowing that a vote for the "Me, Myself and I" party is a wasted vote, we must vote for the "We" party, even if it is deeply flawed and requires serious rehabilitation. Politicians in this country will soon discover that the summer's protest movement has not died down, rather it will now be following them like a shadow, watching the government's every move. And on election day, hundreds of thousands of new voters will rush to the polls in order to win. To re-create a worthy governing party, or at the very least a worthy opposition party. It is best to start counting those hundreds of thousands today. The writer is the director of Save Israeli Democracy, a movement that aims to repair and strengthen Israel's parliamentary democracy.
Get the Israel Hayom newsletter sent to your mailbox!
Like our newsletter? 'Like' our Facebook page!
