In the months since the justice minister announced his legal plans, there has been a struggle in Israel over the main way in which the public influences the political agenda: voting at the ballot box in the face of mass demonstrations.
We tend to forget that alongside the ballot box and protest signs, there is a third way, and that is civic activism through civil society organizations that promote policies and worldviews. From ideological organizations such as Animals Now, through public lobby organizations such as the Million Lobby, to research institutes such as the Israel Democracy Institute or the Kohelet Forum, civil society organizations are among the biggest generators of Israeli politics.
The criticality of civil society organizations, especially organizations funded in one way or another by donations from community members, is particularly evident in questions that can be defined as "everyday policy." These are questions such as how much tax we will pay on fuel, how easily we will make transactions above a certain amount, what model our public transportation will be run in, and what salary increase will be given to young teachers. These are issues that determine our present and our future and that of our children, and over which the public has almost no direct influence.
This policy is almost hidden from the media and political discourse, especially when these everyday questions hardly affect our voting patterns or take us to the streets. Therefore, many politicians are not incentivized to deal with these issues seriously.
When everyday policy makes headlines—when there are food price increases, for example—politicians are required to react quickly, often drifting by populist discourse or influenced by resource-rich, focused interest groups. In these cases, in the absence of civil society organizations, the public interest is hardly represented in the decision-making process.
Worse, it is often law-sponsored monopoly lobbying organizations that influence the agenda and motivate politicians.
For example, agricultural councils such as the chicken coop council and the dairy council are present in almost every discussion related to agricultural reform, which is so critical to easing the cost of living in Israel. In practice, they represent narrow interests and oppose almost any change that would benefit the ordinary Israeli citizen, such as increasing competition.
A famous case is the Dairy Council's opposition to lowering the customs duty on butter, even though the Israeli citizen enters a period of austerity and shortage almost every year during the High Holidays (remember when you were forbidden to buy more than one package of butter, and even that package was not in the grocery store?).
The lowering of tariffs and the introduction of competition into the industry solved the shortage, lowered the prices of some products and brought about greater variety. Without a living and kicking civil society, such a step probably would not have happened.
The reasonable citizen goes to vote, the citizen goes to the demonstrations, but it doesn't end here. The citizen who wants to influence Israeli politics in the long term can and should participate in the communities created by civil society organizations, and take care of his day-to-day interests. After all, we don't vote or protest milk prices, wage agreements with teachers' unions or regulations. But we can influence all of this through the third arena – civic activism, in which most citizens do not take a sufficiently active part.
Until the digital revolution, corporations, committees, state-sponsored monopolies, and other well-organized bodies had a clear relative advantage in their ability to represent and promote their interests vis-à-vis the media and decision makers. Today, when we can all express ourselves freely and when activist communities are formed every day, we must engage in an active civil society that ensures that politicians do not forget about our daily lives, promote policies that are in the public interest, and ensure a thriving democratic society.
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