IMRA - Summer social protest movement diverted attention from the approaching Palestinian state tsunami

Dr. Aaron Lerner
IMRA
Weekly Commentary
28 September '11

The very last thing that the foreigners who bankrolled the social protest movement here in Israel this summer anticipated was that it would somehow help Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

The purpose of the exercise was, after all, to raise such a groundswell of protest that the government would somehow fall. This with the anticipated additional benefit that the public would “connect the dots” that “social-justice” could not possibly be achieved as long as the “occupation” and “settlements” continued to exist.

But that’s not the way the summer of protest played out.

Instead of bringing the Netanyahu coalition government down, the social protest movement actually helped Binyamin Netanyahu:

The Israeli media pulled all the stops to support the social protest movement – this at the expense of the impending “Palestine State Tsunami” that would have otherwise been the focus of the entire summer.

And no doubt much of the same foreign money that covered the tab for the social protest movement would have financed a summer of protests,conferences and various other media events designed to tell the world the story that the Israeli “street” actually welcomes the UN declaration of a Palestinian state.

A story that might have confused friends of Israel abroad as it was exploited by others to justify a hardline against the official Israeli position.

This phenomenon may be repeating itself again, with the Trajtenberg Committee recommendations the focus of media attention rather than the Palestinian story.

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