On March 27, an aircraft technician named David went on Erel Segal's show on Radio 103. "I am an inferior man," he poured out his heart. "My note is worth nothing."
David expressed what many felt when pilots from No. 69 Squadron declared that they would not report for training to protest the legal reform. We felt they broke the rules. They steal our elections. We understood that the right has no ability to govern when groups with advantage and privilege hold the State of Israel hostage. We realized that we were de facto second-class citizens.
Some people don't realize this or maybe do themselves. One of them is Yoaz Hendel, who wondered in the "Friday Cabinet" (05.05) "Who is really a second-class citizen here?" and even added with a chuckle: "Nir Barkat, Simcha Rothman, Bezalel Smotrich and Galit Distal Atabrian are second-class citizens. An Israeli invention: a second-class millionaire."
So let's begin, perhaps, by refuting the fake on which Handel's column, which attributes the campaign to the Likud, is based. Well, I am the thinker, initiator and creative of the "Second Class Citizen" campaign. Neither Netanyahu nor the Likud. And I didn't get a dime on it from anyone. People like David inspired the slogan and design, and from there it developed into a campaign that grew from below. And it went viral because it wasn't just a feeling, but a stamp of reality that struck the entire right.
There is no ethnic or class claim in the campaign as Handel mistakenly believed, even though in the Israeli reality there is a great correlation between political choice and socioeconomic status and ethnicity. It is clear that there are billionaire rightists and poor leftists, there are Ashkenazi rightists and Mizrahi leftists. But the campaign is directed, for example, at the phenomenon in which the justices of the High Court of Justice, who almost choose each other, annul Knesset laws, and the last word is theirs in every debate and political, moral and moral process, with maximum authority and without responsibility. Therefore, the majority, which cannot implement its values through the government it elects, is a second-class citizen.
When we get the impression that the rights of infiltrators and prisoners are being protected that Gush Katif evacuees and demonstrators against the disengagement could only dream of, we feel like second-class citizens. When there is unacceptable and incessant interference by the attorney generals in the administration of the state, and the prohibition of implementing the policies of the elected government, we are second-class citizens. When a man like Ami Eshed becomes a hero of demonstrators on the one hand, while demonstrators on the other, rightists and ultra-Orthodox, suffer police violence and arrests – we understand that we are second-class citizens.
What Handel misses is that the "second-class citizen" campaign is equally aimed at right-wing rule. The public, which went out to vote democratically and reached 64 seats, demands that the government implement its choice. It was a call to our elected officials – it's time for the right to return democracy to its original meaning: majority rule. Until the reform passes, when the Supreme Court returns to its original size after Barak's judicial revolution, and when officials and the entire civil service hear and implement government policy, we will remain second-class citizens.
"Second class citizen" is not a feeling, it is a situation that we need to correct through reform. And that, daring, you didn't understand.
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