Approximately 30,000 protesters marched in Tel Aviv last night, with social justice activists blocking central streets and chants of "Mubarak. Assad. Netanyahu" filling the air.
Tel Aviv police arrested 42 activists, which is an extremely rare number, "if not unprecedented,". The protests are part of a larger movement that began as opposition to rising housing prices, and indeed is still centered around that issue, but has spread to other social justice and progressive causes.
These protests are being described as "the greatest challenge PM Netanyahu faces on the home front," and show that the progressive left in Israel has awoken.
Change in Israel may be coming. These protests, which began as explicit anger at the rising rental prices in cities across the country, have been fueled by the response of Netanyahu's government, which initially, with hostile rhetoric, dismissed them as being part of a large, leftwing movement being funded by outfits such as the New Israel Fund. The initial rhetoric, which claimed that the protests were not about anything other than the "Zionist Left's" political agenda, only served to increase protesters' anger and resolve.
These reactions from Netanyahu and other government officials have served to broaden the protests, which have now moved from rent prices to a host of social justice issues: women's rights, union rights and education reform, among other things, with general chants of "revolution" heard on the streets last night.
For more on the unrest in Israel, go here to the source of the article: www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/639318/israel_erupts_in_protest,_tens_of_thousands_chant_%22revolution%22/
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