At the beginning of February, the Israel Democracy Institute published data that illuminates the image of the participants of the protests against the reform: 46% define themselves as left, 18% center.
26% of them are over 65 years old.
20% Ashkenazim, 10% Mizrahim, 11% from the Commonwealth of Nations, 15% of mixed origin.
And in summary: the demonstrators are Ashkenazi, secular, leftist, and not young like they used to be.
This is a generation of veterans, parents and grandparents.
The speakers of the opponents are also people in their prime, who played prominent roles in all state and social systems.
Not only the best of our sons, but the best of our parents.
At the family level, the role of the parent is to take care of the physical well-being of his children, but also for their mental well-being.
The parent is the umbrella that shields them from the rains of the world, he is the one who waits for them to grow up until he tells them what really happened in the Holocaust, the one who knows what dangers await them in the world and how to protect themselves from them, and he is the one who enters their room when they wake up from a nightmare and takes care of the monsters under the bed.
Surely he doesn't invent monsters on his own behalf to scare them even more.
And when the children grow up and become familiar with the real world, and perhaps are frightened by some kind of crisis - security, economic, or political tension due to legislative amendments - one can expect the parents' generation to look at them with the compassionate calm of those with experience and say to them: "Yes, it's really unpleasant, but on Yom Kippur 1973 was much worse.
In the life of every country there are less good times, but do not despair, my dear young people, they are getting better.
prepare something for you to eat?" The role of the older generations is not to raise false hopes or soothe fears, but to bring them into proportion. And above all - they should be more relaxed than the generation of boys, who have not yet acquired a personal familiarity with history. But when it comes to legal reform - most of the brains And most of the speakers are middle-aged people and pensioners who have known many challenges in life, and they are the ones who have taken on the role of the frightened child.
Grandfathers contract blackness from blackness and call Mary Civilians, take children with them to demonstrations for whom both "democracy" and "dictatorship" are merely long words, and present to them the spectacle of a frightened father and mother, shouting in the streets, some of them may be talking about immigration, some of them may be recommending not to serve in the "L, some of them may be encouraging their adult children to leave the country. And they stand up loudly in front of sympathetic cameras and try their best to infect the general public with their anxieties. But how will they calm and strengthen their children, without an experienced and compassionate father that they themselves listen to?
President Herzog, a leftist who knows the camp well, tried to assume the role of the parents, expressing the fear of the protesting camp, but the child parents rejected his words with disgust and continued their own.
Herzog's sin was that he recognized that there is room for corrections in the justice system, and the opponents of the reform are not ready to hear that the monster under the bed is a gecko, so we can decide together how to handle it.
The last father of the left camp was Yitzhak Rabin, who, according to the collective nightmare narrative of the left, was murdered by the entire right camp in order to enthrone Netanyahu, his political rival, under him.
Since then, the left has not been able to appoint a leader.
Shimon Peres lost the elections, but as compensation he was crowned a super-statesman of the left at his Saturday at the President's residence.
Ariel Sharon was brought in from the right, followed by Naftali Bennett.
Ehud Barak did manage to win the elections, but he did not live up to the expectations of holding the helm of power for an extended period.
In one of his incarnations, he even left the Labor Party to join the Netanyahu government.
Today he is one of the conductors of the orchestra of fear and rage and behaves like the one from the joke that he went to the Air Force because he was not accepted for a pilot's course. Despite his age and experience, he does not function as a responsible adult, but as an adolescent seeking justice. And with him also Ehud Olmert, Moshe (Bogi) Ya'alon, officers Retired senior officials, senior farm officials - stand in the street and cry out their heavenly souls. What child would feel secure in the presence of such a parent?
The left has no one to unite around.
Yair Lapid is not a weighty figure, because if he was one - he would direct the protest into a political move.
Or just directing it.
Instead he repeats the passwords from the signs.
It should not be surprising that the seniors of the Kuo camp, in desperation, stepped up in their intergenerational role, and all that is left for them is to try to get rid of the political father figure of the right-wing camp.
But this is no longer a new thing.
Many things can be said about the Israeli right, and thank God - they do, but the right is very stable when it comes to its leaders.
Not that they are without flaws - thank God, they have plenty - but at any given moment the right-wing knows who represents it in the Knesset and acts on its behalf, who to come to with complaints, and who not to vote for in the next elections.
Mazab Jabotinsky, Derech Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir, Sharon and Netanyahu - this is a short and clear list.
And on the left?
In the Knesset, their leaders change from election to election, parties arise and disappear, and they also have no idea who is leading the protest, who is allowed to negotiate on the details of the reform, and who is authorized to compromise, and on what exactly, except for stopping the legislation as a prerequisite for negotiations.
The fact that the protest has no official leadership perhaps helps to brand it as a grassroots uprising, but it makes it very difficult to understand what exactly the skeleton of this ship consists of, and which shore it wants to reach.
Protests cost money, and a lot, but the big donors refuse to stand up openly, to say how much money they donated, and above all - apart from the demand to stop the legislation, they don't put a counter offer on the table.
Even if they have taken on financial and organizational responsibility, they do it behind the scenes, and do not stand at the head of the camp.
It is not certain that the camp will accept them, since he is running from demonstration to demonstration, signing petitions and comparing Israel to Hungary.
Despite their age and experience, they are children at the moment, and father gives money, but does not lend a hand to get them across the road they are blocking.
were we wrong
We will fix it!
If you found an error in the article, we would appreciate it if you shared it with us