Israel under coronavirus: Economic straits revive social protests
In the spirit of the wave of social justice demonstrations in 2011, Israelis in desperate economic situations due to the coronavirus outbreak are taking to the streets of Tel Aviv.
The social protests that rocked Israel in the summer of 2011 were one of the worst nightmares that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had in all his years in office. Now it looks like the protests are back and possibly bigger than ever.
The earlier protests began with a single tent set up on Rothschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv after the country managed to get through the global economic crisis that began in 2008 with minimal damage. Nevertheless, the protesters, mostly from the middle class, were unwilling to accept the preferential treatment that they believed a small group of “tycoons” had received from the government. They were angry that these individuals had grown rich through privatization and upset at the government’s failure to rein in the monopolies they had created, which had made Israel one of the most expensive countries to live in.
