TEL AVIV: On Friday, Daphni Leef, one of the leaders of last summer's social justice movement, was arrested by Israeli Police in Tel Aviv. Leef, along with hundreds of demonstrators, attempted to set up tents on Rothschild Boulevard in downtown Tel Aviv. 11 others were also arrested. Last July, Leef sparked a series of massive demonstrations after she set up a tent in downtown Tel Aviv to protest the high cost of living. Tent cities sprouted in the city centers of every major city in Israel. Each Saturday for eight weeks, hundreds of thousands of protesters assembled across Israel. Tel Aviv, which had the largest demonstrations, was the movement's gravity point. Yet large encampments were set up in Jerusalem, Haifa, and Akko, among others. The demonstrations gave birth to a vast array of demands, including cheaper housing, regulated food prices, cheaper education and healthcare, and lower taxes. The movement peaked on September 3, 2011, when almost half a million filled the streets of Tel Aviv and marched to Kikar Hamedina, an upper class neighborhood in the northern part of the city. Though she and other protest leaders maintained throughout the two months of demonstrations that the struggle was strictly social, many right-wing organizations claimed that the movement had specific left-wing political aspirations which they were trying to cloak in the rhetoric of social justice. Leef became the target of several personal attacks in the media. On national television, a reporter questioned her aggressively because she had not completed her mandatory service in the Israeli Defense Force. After the arrest of Leef and others on Friday, the police issued a statement saying that the demonstrations were illegal because they had not acquired the proper permits from the city. Onlookers said that the police employed excessive violence to detain Leef and others, who were not resisting arrest. Within hours, a video of the arrests alighted throughout Facebook and Israeli media. The movement's message appeals to a large swath of the country, but not everyone feels represented. “Arab conditions are not the same here. Due to class differences, our problems are much different than the Jewish population," Abu Toameh, a left-wing student activist, told Bikyamasr.com. “We have trouble expanding our villages or buying commercial land. The price of apartments in Tel Aviv, which has an extremely low Arab population, doesn't address our immediate concerns." Jad Jamal, a Palestinian member of Israel's communist party, Hadash, disagreed. “There are many contradicting ideologies demonstrating together in the social justice protests. They all agree about the problem—the cost of living—but not about the means," he started. “The Islamists say we should not participate alongside Zionists. But I think this is an important opportunity to forge ties. I look to people like Marx and Slavoj Zizek—the struggle itself is what's important. This is a chance to force people to listen to the Arab perspective." Many feel that the right-wing Netanyahu government betrayed its promises to make social and economic reforms and clamp down on corruption. With the arrival of summer, the leaders of the social justice movement hope to rally the population and reignite demonstrations.
