The Yair Lapid Revolution

January 31, 2015

Yair Lapid. Yesh Atid/יש עתיד (in Hebrew).

If you have had a little peek into Israeli politics in the last couple of years, the name “Yair Lapid” and the political party by the name “Yesh Atid” will certainly ring a bell to you.

Yair Lapid is the name of a quite known and liked journalist in Israel turned into a politician in 2012, established a new political party with himself as head of the party, took part in the elections of year 2013 with quite positive results for his party (won 19 seats – making it the second largest party – in the last elections), was Minister of Finance in Bibi (Benyamin Netanyahu)’s government until quite recently when fired shortly after it was announced that elections would take place in March 2015.

Yesh Atid in Hebrew means “there is a future.” Apparently it was originally meant only to be called “Atid” meaning “future” in Hebrew.

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Some time ago, I went to a café in Tel Aviv with my daughter on a weekend. After having asked the waitress for the bill, my cellphone rang. It was Bibi. He was firing me. Over the phone. After a heated discussion, I hung up. The waitress came back with the bill, and I told her: “At lo ta’amini mah karah li ha’rega (“You won’t believe what happened to me just now”). I was fired.” I was the Minister of Finance prior to paying the bill and now fired when having to pay it. This waitress was the first person to know of my circumstances.

The whole audience laughed and giggled, including Mr. Lapid himself. This was one of the first anecdotes he told the audience at an open-discussion event held by Yesh Atid in Tel Aviv on January 19 (last week).

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If I could vote, which I can’t due to some circumstances, which I won’t go into here, then I wouldn’t vote for Yesh Atid. I, however, find it to be an interesting party, and this whole Yesh Atid-Yair Lapid phenomenon was something that I wanted to witness live, as it has been a game-changer here in Israel to a certain degree.

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Yair Lapid (as a politician) and his party came to the forefront during and following the demonstrations that took place in the summer of 2011 triggered by the “tent-protest” on Rothshild boulevard and led by a young Israeli woman called Daphna Leef. Having lived in Israel for five years at the time I felt that I had become accustomed to the social and political circumstances of the country and knew what to expect.

I had always- and still am at times- been/am surprised at the lack of social protest, demonstrations and persistent manifestations (in French) as all those I have known of in France. I have often told people that a French citizen would go out into the streets to claim a 0.00001% raise to her/his salary or would go on strike, while behaving in a polite manner (excusez-moi, s’il-vous-plait, de rien Madame, je vous en pris etc.) on a daily basis, while Israeli society is filled with dissatisfaction, stress, anger, anxiety expressed in the streets, in the sometimes low quality of customer service, on the road – yes the road especially(!), while very few dare to express this dissatisfaction, where it matters.

I am saying that I am surprised by this, but I am not really. I think that I am more frustrated, angry and sad about it than surprised, because I know what part of the reason for this is, and it is people’s fear of instability. We do not want to come close to instability in this country that experiences a consistent sense of insecurity or sometimes makes itself believe that it should feel like this 24/7.

So when the protests took place a lot of different things happened. Rothshild boulevard, as you can see in the picture above, turned into an exhibition of tents of all sorts. Rothshild boulevard (in Hebrew “Sderot Rothshild/שדרות רוטשילד”) is known for being a quite expensive part of Tel Aviv, not that Tel Aviv in itself isn’t an expensive city to live in – that’s also exactly what Daphna Leef wanted to bring to light (high rent prices etc.), but the many colourful tents and the posters condemning the status quo made a fine contrast to what Rothshild boulevard represents.

The Tel Aviv Summer 2011 protest(s), as I would like to call it/them, was, as I mentioned above, triggered by a protest against high rent prices and all that that entails (lack of regulations etc.) led by Daphna Leef, an Israeli citizen who, as so many other young Israelis from the periferia/פריפריה (“periphery” in Hebrew – referring to practically anything outside of Tel Aviv and co.) had moved to Tel Aviv in order to either work or study. Her rent was simply too high and too unfair, so she boldly and courageously moved to a tent in the middle of the Tel Aviv along with others.

I would like to move away from the protests, which, as you can see, I could go on about for hours, but this is about Mr. Lapid, so let’s stick to the subject – I will try.

During that summer of 2011 I felt that I was witness to an important part of Israeli history. It felt, as if something had been awakened from what could feel as the quite complacent attitude of Israeli society – with this I mean some form of: “Ain ma la’asot. Ze ma she yesh/אין מה לעשות. זה מה שיש.” (“There is nothing to do. That is there is” in Hebrew) attitude.

A lot of people, especially those who had previously not been politically active, very quickly identified with the protest and took out to the streets, especially every Saturday evening/late afternoon after Shabat ended, when the more significant demonstrations would take place. I recall the conversations with people prior to a Saturday in this summer: “Do you have plans for Saturday? No? Okay, so let’s go to the protest.” It felt, as if there was some form of common frustration at how things were run in the Knesset, and how things were in Israel. It felt as if something had been let loose, and I truly think that Bibi was frightened and felt threatened to some degree. Suddenly Israelis remembered that the government is hired by the people and not the other way around.

Posters of all sizes and shapes, of all colours were held in all the protests. The housing problem quickly let out frustrations about everything from political corruption to a need to increase salaries. There really was a form of awakening, and the protest did in fact spread to other cities and towns all over Israel.

BUT something that I noticed in every of those demonstrations that I took part in, and in all the discussions that I had regarding the protest, was that there was some form of general reluctance to turn the protests into a political movement, and more precisely a left-wing movement. You will see, how this plays in with Yair Lapid shortly – promise!

Many times I saw posters affiliated with left-wing parties, such as Hadash and Meretz being pulled down, because “we don’t want to make this political!” I have to explain what is meant by “political.” Since this country faces a lot of challenges and issues, which are non-existent in many Western European countries, by this I mean the many Conflicts (Palestinians, Syria-relations etc.) So when asking demonstrators not to wave the flag of a political party, it mostly referred to not having these leftist parties take ownership of the demands for social justice, which was the big slogan of the protests (“ha’am doresh tzedek chevarti/העם דורש צדק חברתי” = “the people demand social justice” was the slogan you would hear all over the protest), and to make the lefties leaders of the protest in order to back other demands relating to the Conflict (talks/too many sacrifices and compromises with the Palestinians etc.).

This frustrated me slightly. Before I go on, you have to know that being a “leftie” in Israel is frequently considered one of the worst labels one can bear, a curse word. With this, I sensed that most Israelis did not want to admit that demands for regulations, higher salaries and demands for the Israeli state to get closer to a welfare state than a survival of the fittest one (medinat revahah/מדינת רווחה = welfare state)are politics that have more to do with socialism and left-wing politics than those of the right, and this applies to politics in the whole world (correct me if I am wrong). And with this I saw that this Israeli society, which finally was heading to the streets sought to find short-cut solutions to deep-rooted issues, which could- and cannot be solved from one day to another and certainly not with shortcuts. It showed a willingness for things to change, yet a cowardly attitude that was scared of the “leftist threat,” of taking responsibility for its country future and for not being scared of its own government, and also, very importantly, a lack of admitting that the Conflict is interrelated with a lot of these so-called social issues here. The two things go together; there is no shortcut.

Besides that, I would often say- and still say today that although I was 100% for the protests, all the protests that I took part in felt like festivals. I was, again, surprised at the innocence and the complacency of the whole movement in comparison to the, at times, aggressive and boiling nature of this society that I had known for five years (at the time).

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So right in the middle of this new thing – ha’mecha’ah/המחאה (“the demonstration” in Hebrew), Yair Lapid, a known journalist at the time, began to take a stand and identified with those “ordinary” Israelis, who previously had been apolitical, and who now wished to take part in something that would voice their frustrations yet without being “political,” namely who would enable them to identify with some form of “middle-Israel,” being a part of the Center, no right, no left.

As you may imagine a lot of politicians and famous personalities publicly identified themselves with the “mecha’ah,” not only Yair. I think that a lot of this identification-with was indeed genuine among most of those personalities, Yair’s case included. That may very well – and perhaps it indeed – was what made him want to join the political milieu and to make a change.

The protests of 2011 little by little dried out, partly because it became too cold, and sometimes too rainy, to live in tents outside, and also because the momentum had died: How long can such protests last? What keeps them going?

What was left for the Israelis were some reforms made here and there, promises made by Bibi and other politicians to calm the powerful tensions that the protests had incited. More people began to speak out. More had realized that they were more dissapointed and frustrated than they perhaps had allowed themselves to sense previously.

And in addition to this, some of the main activists of the protest joined the Knesset’s ranks, when the tents withdrew from Rothshild. In fact two of those that had “accompanied” Daphna Leef in leading the protests, Stav Shaffir and Itzik Shmuli, joined the Avoda/עבודה Party (the Israeli “Labor Party”) shortly after the protests ended, and both of them became very active politicians, especially Stav Shaffir, who recently made a very powerful and rather daring speech using the right’s constant obsession with their unique and sole right to define what Zionism and nationalism are against themselves: 

I wanted to include the above paragraph just to give you a taste of some of the outcomes of the protests, and how the protest changed some of the “game’s” rules. And as with Stav Shaffir and Itzik Shmuli, Yair Lapid came to the forefront, and with his attitude, behavior and his many speeches criticizing the government and its politicians at the time, mostly Bibi, he began to be scrutinized by the society, whose environment he claimed he wanted to improve.

One of Yair’s biggest “wow” moments vis-a-vis Israeli society was his special focus on every Israeli’s obligation to serve in the army or rather for every orthodox Jew/Haredi (חרדי) to serve in the army. If you don’t already know, every Israeli citizen is supposed to serve in the army after high school for either three years (men/boys) or two years (women/girls) with some exceptions, such as those who are mentally or physically unfit for the army and those who would rather do “national service” (שירות לאומ) for ideological reasons for example (not wanting to fight, against occupation, against militarism etc.). Since the existence of Israel as a state, the Haredis have been exempted for this due to an agreement David Ben Gurion made with the Haredis back in 1948.

Even before moving to Israel or my decision to move to this place I recall my father’s dissatisfaction and bitterness vis-a-vis the Orthodox Jews in Israel, because he himself had to serve in the army for three of his youngest years, because his father served in 1948 and because he lost one of his cousins in the Yom Kippur War (1973). In one of my many visits to Israel as a child, I recall one moment, where my father was approached by a Haredi Jew in the streets of Tel Aviv asking him, if he would like to pray with him with the tefillin (you can frequently bump into booths set up by Orthodox Jews with prayer books and tefillin allowing any passerby to take a moment and to pray with assistance from the “experts). My father very harshly said something that sounded like this: “Go to the army! Do your duty!”

When I moved to Israel I perceived this bitterness towards the Orthodox Jewish community from most of Israel’s secular society and especially from those secular citizens not wishing to become too political during the summer of 2011. By kind of daringly pointing out this unfair distribution of commitments and rights within Israeli society, Mr. Lapid became a figure for these people. He won their hearts, because only a few had dared to break this theme, which had become a form of taboo, and this theme was not too “political” either (vis-a-vis the conflict) but rather had to do with something that the secular parties from the right and the left could agree on to some degree.

Here is a video showing one of Lapid’s interactions- and criticism of the Orthodox community in Israel, this time when he had become Minister of Finance:

However, I would say that Yair Lapid’s biggest moment was this speech that he gave at the last elections, where the famous question “Efo ha kessef?/איפה הכסף?” (“Where is the money?”) was posed (I couldn’t find a video with English subtitles, so here is a small clip of the speech and perhaps I will find a translated version at a later stage): Here he asked a lot of the questions that had been on the tip of the tongues of those Israelis referred to above. Where did/does the money go? Why was/is so much money going into the building of settlements, when money was/is missing in many of the peripheries of Israel? Why were/are salaries so low, when the richest of this land were/are getting richer? And so on.

When Lapid’s party Yesh Atid became a reality, and when he took on the elections that took place two years ago with full force, the focus of this party and its platform was to answer to the social and economic demands that had been brought up since the summer of 2011, not the “political” inquiries pertaining to the conflict, the Palestinians and Israel’s future vis-a-vis peace negotiations, the settlements etc. And those concerns were not and are really not the concerns of those who voted/vote for Yesh Atid. Remember? We wish to be “apolitical.” However, since every significant party, and with this I mean every political party with an actual chance to get a significant number of seats in the Knesset, need to address the “war and peace” issue, Yesh Atid did/does support a two-state solution and negotiations, but obviously not at any price(!)

Now, it’s possible for all of you to retrieve so much information and analyses of Yair Lapid and Yesh Atid online. You can read what Yesh Atid preaches on their own official website here. You can read a more neutral version of the party here. So I won’t describe everything that Yesh Atid is about. I honestly also don’t have that much time on my hands

But I do wish to share some of my impressions from the open discussion on January 19, which I referred to in the beginning.

All in all I can admit that I was impressed by a lot of what was said by Yair Lapid. I, again, wouldn’t vote for his party, if I could, but I was happy to hear him talking about trying to change a lot of the status quos that have existed in Israel for as long as I remember and for as long as I think a lot of Israelis remember. In his monologue and in his answers to the audience’s questions, he did show a general wish to turn the political system upside down.

In fact, the Yesh Atid leader pointed out the fact that his own office as well as all the other Yesh Atid offices had the following famous image of Ben Gurion hanging on the wall:

The reason for his choice of placing such an “alternative” piece of art or inspiration in Yesh Atid’s offices was because he himself is not afraid to “go around freely,” “to take responsibility” and “to do things differently” unlike most of Israel’s present-day politicians.

Again, I was relatively impressed with Lapid’s insistence on calling out corruption on many levels, and it did feel as if Yair Lapid was answering the “prayers” of a lot of these desperate Israelis sitting in the audience. However, a few times, when he discussed anything “political” (remember what I referred to as “political” above), I had some “ooh” and “eh” moments and a concerned look.

When talking about the conflict and everything that entails, while trying to be a good “centrist,” Yair referred to how the left-wing parties always had seen the peace talks with the Palestinians as being a piece of cake and had always been willing to negotiate everything away. While, on the other hand, the right-wing parties had never perceived a possibility to sit down and talk with Palestinians, because “there is no partner” and “we have to have everything!”

These are very simple stereotypes or definitions of how the right-wing and the left-wing relate to the conflict and to peace talks, but they were definitions, which I am sure that most people in the audience, excluding myself of course :), could relate to- and felt comfortable with. Also here Yair Lapid was putting words to what have been the thoughts and fears of a very big number of Israelis.

In one part of his speech, Yair Lapid pointed out the government’s transferring of a significant amount of money to the settlements instead of channeling these much-needed shekels to towns and cities in the South, especially with the impact of the last war in Gaza on the Southern cities, and to the North, which also has suffered financially due to the tensions on the border (Hizb’allah/Hezbollah and fighting on the Syrian border). Saying this assured me, to a certain extent, that Yesh Atid is a centrist party indeed and not a right-wing party in disguise.

However, following his statement about the settlements and the budgets Lapid just hadto point out that he is not a left-wing politician: Ariel and all of Jerusalem in his eyes represent Israel. So in other words, division of Jerusalem is not possible in negotiations with the Palestinians and there can be no going back to the Green Line or anything close to it. I wonder, if he truly meant this, or if it, again, is a way to appease the audience. Anyhow, from what I understood from his speech, Yair supported talks with Israel’s neighboring states instead of going directly to the Palestinians; in other words giving up on talks with the Palestinians (at least for now) and to connect with- and talk to the Arab neighboring states, who have common interests with Israel, such as counteracting radical Islam. I wonder, which countries he referred to, and how exactly his party would go about this(?)

When Yair finished his speech, and he welcomed questions posed by members of the audience, some of the questions and answers left a bigger impression on me than others:

Someone in the audience asked, whether he and his party would be willing to cooperate with- and to be part of a government led by the Labor Party. To this he answered that he would not exclude this possibility and especially with a party such as the Labor Party, as they had helped to build the state of Israel.

To another audience member’s question of whether he supported or opposed marriage between homosexuals, he confirmed that he supported them. This relieved me, as I sometimes have felt that so-called “centrist” politicians have tried to avoid answering this question and instead have uttered something in the like of: “Marrying the person that you love is a personal issue, and therefore I will not get into this.”

Lastly, a question was posed to Yair Lapid from a Palestinian member of the audience, or an Arab-Israeli member, as the Israelis prefer to call the Palestinians living within the Green Line. This inquiry left an impression on me, and I think it also surprised most of the members of the audience, because Yesh Atid is not really a party meant to serve the Palestinian/Arab-Israeli “minority” for the obvious reasons (wink wink), and earlier a question had been posed to Yair Lapid by someone else from the audience, which went something like this: “As you may know, the ones who vote the most are the Orthodox/Haredim, the extreme right and the Arabs. How many do you expect would vote for Yesh Atid considering the low percentage of votes among “ordinary Israelis?” I know for a fact that the Palestinian minority within the Green Line have a low voting percentage, which Yair Lapid could confirm, and which probably “appeased” this specific audience member.

So here came a Palestinian woman, the “enemy” or rather “competitor” vis-a-vis the audience member referred to above. The Palestinian woman confessed that she had voted- and would vote for Yesh Atid, yet she wanted to know, in which ways Yesh Atid would answer to the needs of the Palestinian minority in Israel. While most of the audience was in shock, I think Yair Lapid was flattered in this moment and felt that his party now slightly looked multi-cultural and Palestinian-tolerant, and by trying to appease the inquiry, he started out by saying that he could identify with Palestinians who felt as a minority (I wonder in which sense?). Then he recounted the apparently numerous achievements within this “theme” he, as a Minister of Finance, had contributed to making a reality, such as opening clubs for Palestinian women in peripheral areas to empower them.

Furthermore, he also pointed out that he, as a Minister, and his party had adamantly opposed the proposal for the controversial and much discussed nation-state law, which would have had awful consequences for Palestinians within the Green Line, even worse than their present conditions and status. Lapid pointed out that Bibi was furious at Yesh Atid’s and Lapid’s opposition to this proposal.

So, I would like to leave it as is, to include some videos with Yair Lapid below for you to watch, if this Yair Lapid revolution should have caught your eye- and attention, and to conclude this post with the following: Even though I consider myself to be more to the left than what I believe Yesh Atid stands for, and even though I claim that Yesh Atid will not solve everything that is to be mended here but only the top of the iceberg, I tell a lot of people around me that if Yesh Atid is what will make Israelis more revolutionary and rebellious, then let them vote for them. I’d rather have them vote for this party than to parties from the right or not vote at all.