Eretz Acheret

The following exposition is a sincere invitation to the national-religious population to reinstate itself as an active partner in creating a new center of the Israeli public (secular and religious alike), which began to solidify into a quiet and extremely important movement on the streets of Israel in the Summer of 2011, in parallel to the social-economic protest of that same summer.

The writings on and arguments concerning the social protest of the summer of 2011 fill tens of thousands of pages, most of which attempt to understand the “phenomenon,” its proportions, its cultural and class character, and more. The truth is that the “protest” is not a one-dimensional phenomenon that can be defined in a particular way; even the fact of its existence eludes description. What, therefore, can be accurately stated? It seems that one can rightfully say that a new Israeli public is coming into being.

The origins of the protest in the summer of 2011 were in the feeling of being fed up with the decline of the Israeli middle class, and the continuation was in a positive movement, greater, broader than the counter-protest, seeking to find a new channel for the religious and secular faithful in the Israeli population who are unwilling to submit to the idea that an Israeliness that is ethical, united, and worthy of the vision of Zionism and the prophets of Israel is no longer possible. No less. This population cannot be quantified, since it is first of all a consciousness of individuals seeking partners; it is difficult to profile it precisely since it traverses sectors and socio-economic classes; its voice is muffled because it has no say in the Israeli media, which is looking for the “here and now”; it has various and diverse appearances in the Israeli population, and it should be viewed as a movement of many who share a desire and who are waiting to join a population with which it can move forward.

Anyone who thinks of the protest as an attempt of the left to bring down the political right (true, there were some of these) or as a protest of the “righteously entitled” (true, this also motivated people at the beginning of the protest) is missing the point.

Members of the religious public, despite the revulsion that the protest aroused in many of you: You will be committing a great wrong against yourselves and the beautiful values that are the underpinnings of your community, if you excuse yourselves with generalisations and simplifications about the protest, since in so doing, you are likely to lose real partners that you refrained from finding a generation ago.

The connection between us is not simple. It demands much courage and great faith from all of us. But it has the power to transmit an important message to generations ahead: we have not yet given up on a single society – a society that has core shared values coexisting with different life approaches.

What might this new population bring about? It could have the power to bring the Israeli public back into agreement regarding deep principles that at the same time have a certain human simplicity, strongly rooted in our past but that do not cling to what we wanted to be – that instead move us forward towards the society that we are. The goal of the new public could be generally defined as the will to shape and define a new ethical center for Israeli society – a center from which the possibility for a better Israeli society will spring forth, a center that strengthens society’s good foundations of justice, humaneness, human equality, solidarity, freedom, advancement of technology, concern for promoting those who lag behind, and creating life systems that encourage the desire to be a human being in the fullest sense.

The connection between us is not simple. It demands much courage and great faith from all of us. But it has the power to transmit an important message to generations ahead: we have not yet given up on a single society – a society that has core shared values coexisting with different life approaches.

There is much that separates today between secular and religious. The process that brought us to this point is too long to discuss here in depth. We have known hard times and many crises of faith. We silently allowed a handful of extremists to run the discourse for us, above our heads. We agreed to come together within a narrow interest, to act and speak through it, without truly attempting to connect, expand, and get close. And above all, we let the debate over the boundaries of the Land of Israel dominate every encounter between us, and in its name we established parallel political worlds that do not come together -for joint discussion about the image of the shared society in which we want to raise our children. The truth must be acknowledged: we let too much happen. The time has come for repair.

Until today, we were prepared to pay a very heavy price – our society – in exchange for a “purity of the camp,” terrified of being caught identifying with right or left wing positions (which became a code lacking content and context appropriate to a complex reality) on political questions but not exclusively, all to the end of not appearing within our own camp as admitting our failure. Today the question arises: what price are we willing to pay in order to restore and establish a partnership for together shaping an Israeli society that is worthy of future generations?

Meanwhile, an unbearable reality is taking shape in the State of Israel. Behind the clouds of economic commentaries and theories is a harsh reality whose results cannot be disputed: a poor child is a poor child (and in Israel today, there are 837,000 of them – 35.3% of Israel’s children). The rise in the number of poor workers (some 50% of the poor are working poor) points to a dangerous process of the decline of labor conditions and salaries in our society. The loss of value of our pensions and the absolutely unacceptable gaps between a small group of the very rich and the overwhelming majority of the people point to a reality of an unequivocally immoral living situation. Since the significance of these gaps, which we are maybe sick of hearing about, is harsh for anyone who loves people: it means people who cannot obtain proper health care (one third of the people in Israel are forced to forgo medications because they lack the funds), education that cannot extricate people from the cycle of poverty, a lack of suitable response to aging in dignity, today and in the future, and at the bottom line – economic insecurity. And this, we are surely “entitled” to change. The problems arising from these data cannot be solved by individual choice of a more modest lifestyle; they are systemic, overall; something basic in the administration of society has gone wrong – the covenant between us and the state; we expect our sons and daughters to devote their lives to protecting our country, but we do not know how to ensure that they will be able to raise their children here with security. We are on the brink of the dissolution of our civil society, and we can no longer stand idly on the sidelines.

Wake up and Get Connected

Perhaps we had to reach this point in orderto understand what price we were prepared to pay in exchange for the necessary partnership between us. The pragmatic-Zionist population in Israel, which is prepared to deal with difficult questions in order to reach the best possible answers, is longing for a serious linking of arms.

We, the people of the protest from the Jerusalem area, call upon you, religious men and women comrades, to wake up and get connected. We are not motivated by a narrow interest, but rather by the power of values and hope. Today we are waging an ongoing struggle over the ethical image of our shared society, and as part of this struggle, we are today engaged in battle over the economic method that is running our society. This is a battle between worldviews that define Israeliness: between the “strong survivor” and “all people of Israel are obligated to one another.”

As a population known for its love and great devotion to the Land of Israel and the people of Israel, we want you with us. We are calling on the national-religious population to join with a believing partner population and to be numbered among those leaders spearheading the new Israeli center that is coming to life here. There are many difficulties yet before us, but it is our strong belief that we can prevail.

Happy are the believers in their innocence / they assemble, broken of their humanness / in the shade of wings they are covered / from uncaring abandonment. / Perhaps the last prayersayers in our universe.

Avraham Halfi