I have found very little about this in the news...even BBC is letting me down this time. But Daily Kos has had some coverage of large scale protests in Israel. The total number of protesters across all cities amounts to 460,000, 300,000 of them in Tel Aviv. That amounts to 5% of the total population of Israel, Jews and Arabs, taking to the streets in protest of failed right wing policies. The Israeli police have stated that it is the largest protest in Israeli history.

And it all started with one woman.

Info and photos are from Daily Kos. Thanks to The Troubadour for this coverage.

Here is the first day of protest in Tel Aviv, with one person in early July:

Here is the protest on August 6th with 350,000 (funny how I didn't hear about it at the time...not in American media...not on BBC...):

And here is Tel Aviv today at the beginning of September:

To quote The Troubadour on Daily Kos:

At their core, these protests have been about a fairer distribution of wealth in Israel. They have been about economic reforms that give all Israelis access to affordable education, health care, and fair wages. But the movement has morphed and broadened over time, with a cacophony of voices adding their demands, from Arabs calling for fairer democratic treatment to leftists demanding an end to the occupation to political activists demanding a less militaristic society.

The movement has inspired Tahrir-style tent encampments to pop up in nearly every municipality in the country. It has brought dairy farmers into the streets. Working parents into the streets. Pensioners into the streets. Israeli-Palestinians and Israeli-Jews into the streets, together. It has inspired citizens to dance in the streets, to encircle Netanyahu's residence, to camp in front of the Knesset.

Pictures of Muslims and Jews together, signs in Arabic, signs in Hebrew, and bilingual signs all side by side:

Netanyahu is in trouble. The nation is vocally and in a sustained manner rejecting his right wing extremism. Will it bring real change? We shall have to see. Protests have to translate to successes in the ballot box and I have noticed that does not always follow. But it is a huge step and a huge deal and Netanyahu must be shitting rock hard matzoh balls as he watches the streets taken over not once, but repeatedly, specifically protesting his policies. This is a, perhaps somewhat belated, revival of the original leftist spirit that Israel was founded with: the old Kibbutzniks and Labor-Zionists...even my mother as a kid belonged to a leftist Zionist organization, Hashomer Hatzair, with this kind of spirit.

The American media and BBC may not be picking up on this, but to be sure the Israeli media is. From Ha'aretz:

[For too long] corporate and bureaucratic functionaries [have been] rewarded for bleeding and bilking and misleading and milking and ultimately discarding the customers and clients they were meant to be serving...the burdens of everyday life have for so long persuaded people that they could do nothing about them.

This is the structure that says: never question, never apologize, never take responsibility. This is the structure that created Israel's ills. This is the structure that fosters occupation, segregation, discrimination, humiliation, and, at the same time, saps the will and the means to do anything about it.

The Middle East is going through a transformation. It has swept Egypt and Libya already. In other places it is still in flux...including Israel. It will not be unique to the Middle East, it has just taken hold there more. Britain and Greece and Spain have had similar protests. PEOPLE ARE SICK OF TRICKLE DOWN, RIGHT WING LIES. They want more equitable societies with more transparency and democracy, and stronger social programs. They do NOT WANT right wing trickle down failures anymore.

That's an oversimplification...but there is some truth to it. In Egypt and Libya it isn't trickle down crap that led to revolution, but it was inequalities and lack of transparency and democracy. People all over the world want the rich to pay their fair share, want to know their vote counts, and want to know their society is an equitable one. That is the shared motivations across the world, from Milwaukee to Cairo to Tel Aviv to Tripoli to London to Madrid and beyond.

The outcome EVERYWHERE remains up in the air. Many places will find it hard to translate this activism into genuine change. Other places may find other extremist groups, like Islamicists or neo-Nazis or Teabagger types, may take advantage of the situation and hijack the movement. Other places may genuinely see real progressive change. Let's hope a hundred years from now people will look back at this time proudly and with a sense that THIS is when things changed for the better.