Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Why The Dati Leumi Public Isn't Part Of The Protests. Part 2

Three weeks ago I posted on why the Dati-Leumi public isn't joining the big protests for affordable housing, which has by now evolved into a demand for "Social justice". The protests have by now been ongoing for almost five weeks, and as of yet the DT public continues as a whole to be prominently absent from these protests. This is true despite some leading rabbies from the DT community having publicly called for the public to join the protests, and even to be central speakers at some of the large demonstrations. The question I posed on my previous post, still remains somewhat of a mystery - why isn't the religious Zionist public taking part? I would argue that all of my previous explanations still remain valid. Some of them have even strengthened - namely there is plenty of evidence that the protests are being funded by left-wing organizations and secondly the tone of the protests has already gone "anti-settlement".  However in conversations with some of my friends, I've heard some other theories that are noteworthy:

  • The Dati-Leumi public no longer believes in protests - this theory would have you believe that due to the failure of the mass demonstrations in opposition to the disengagement plan,  the DL public simply no longer believes in demonstrations as a useful means of protest. 
  • The Dati-Leumi public is just annoyed that someone stole "their" protests. In other words as a public the Religious Zionists have built up a conception that they are the only ones who really deal with social injustice. Finding another public (and the hated Tel-Aviv yuppie one at that) that is leading what they feel is "their" cause has led to the Dati -Leumi public looking for any excuse to criticize and not participate with the protests. 

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