Social Unrest

With just one weekend left to spend in Jerusalem, I thought it would be nice to talk about the first weekend I spent on Agron St. Shabbat was just ending when the barricades started coming out. The stage had been set up already, but the police were only just showing up. In late August, the entire country of Israel was coming off of a summer of social strife. What began as a few friends camping out on a street in a nicer part of Tel Aviv turned into a summer of tent villages, social rallies, and protesters taking to the streets every weekend. The last big one of the year was mere days after we arrived in Israel, and it was taking place right outside my window.

The youth hostel Nativ stays at first semester is located smack dab in the middle of Jerusalem. My room overlooked the busy intersection of King George and Agron; usually the noise just makes it hard to sleep, but that night the noise was the main event. All around the country thousands of people were taking to the streets, attending similar rallies in every major city. The one in Jerusalem just so happened to be taking place a block away from the Prime Minister's house. The protest was going to begin with a walk down the block, so the actual mass of people was waiting about five minutes away near one of the touristy streets in Jerusalem, Ben Yehuda Street. A lot of us were debating going to the protest, but being that we had just gotten to Israel, we weren't 100% sure what we were protesting. As we later learned, neither were a lot of the Israelis. It turns out that the tent villages began springing up in response to high living costs in Israel, but as the movement got bigger various causes jumped on the social justice band wagon and eventually even gained some support from different political parties.

Anyway, we decided to take advantage of our balcony/roof that overlooked the intersection and just watch from there, but what's a social justice rally without Burger's Bar? A crowd of us made our way 'up-stream' and carried out burgers just as the rally was beginning. I have never seen that many people in my life; it was completely insane. We finally waded back through the crowd to the front gate of the hostel; everyone in the group got lost in the crowd along the way, but eventually we met back up on the roof. First of all, the burger was incredible, but the atmosphere was something else. It was an incredible dive into Israeli culture as we watched men, women, and children take to the streets to speak out and say, 'something is wrong with our country and we want something to be done about it!' It was a different side to Israel that summer trips and other programs won't usually show you: the 'we have our problems, too' side of Israel.

I hung my Israeli flag off the balcony that night to show my support for the young country, and it stayed there all semester. I spent the night taking photos of the rally on my iPod and watching in awe as thousands of Israelis took to the streets. Relative to it's size, it was as if 18 million Americans met up for the rally!
 
Finally, when the rally ended, we were all concerned that the protesters would make a lot of noise and we'd be woken up throughout the night by idiots with megaphones (which would have sucked considering we had to go to orientation for school the next morning). To our surprise, the protesters filed out quickly, left nearly no mess, and the stage was taken down within half an hour. It may not be completely perfect, but this country sure is efficient.