Arab Spring in Tel Aviv

The Tunisian fruit-vendor Mohamed Bouazizi is credited with inspiring the Arab Spring with his self-immolation a year and a half ago. His desperate act soon resulted in copy-cat incidents in Egypt, Algeria, and Morrocco. Here's a typical sympathetic account in reportage of the time, in this case from Huffington Post:


...these incidents reflect the growing despair among much of the Arab public which has no real means of expressing its dissatisfaction. They are deeply symbolic means of protest in a region that has little or no tolerance for dissent.


Much of that rings true of Israel as well. Moshe Silman has succumbed to the injuries sustained when he set himself ablaze a week ago, and his example has led at least half a dozen imitators already.

What the Israeli press tends to soft-pedal as "social protest" is another manifestation of the "we're mad as hell" revolt that informs both Arab Spring and the Occupy movement. The despair of the masses is bubbling over everywhere since nowhere do the 99% find a meaningful way of expressing their dissatisfaction with the elites who run their countries.

Netanyahu was quick to brush off the Silman case as a "personal tragedy." As such it of course has nothing to do with the policies that he and his cronies have been steering through the Knesset for the last generation. Every socio-economic indicator shows that the quality of life for average Jewish Israeli's has been deteriorating. There is more poverty, more unemployment, more homelessness and hopelessness. For the protesters in the streets these are not statistics; they are the facts of life.

The 1% has never fared better, and the gap between rich and poor in Israel is growing faster than in any other Western country.

So I was looking forward to hearing Netanyahu address some of these issues when he appeared on Fox News the other day. No such luck. He wants to talk about "existential threats" and how Iran is months away from a bomb.

This is of course the only message the American public wants to hear.