Is Israel facing a middle-class revolt?
It is unlikely that Israel’s bourgeoisie will foot the bill in perpetuity for those who hold them in contempt.
The protests against the new Israeli government’s proposed judicial reforms have become relatively subdued in the wake of last week’s horrific terror attacks in Jerusalem. Nonetheless, the protests are likely to remain massive, and other forms of protest are emerging, with at least one major business concern pulling out of the Israeli market and high-tech workers declaring their intention to upend the “Startup Nation” if the reforms are enacted.
I will put aside the issue of the reforms themselves for the moment, except to note that a power-grab by the judiciary is no excuse for a power-grab by the legislature, and simply give my own impression of the emerging protest movement, which may or may not retain its momentum.
Two weeks ago, I attended a demonstration held at Habima Square in Tel Aviv, a short walk from my apartment, and found it less than inspiring. Though the crowd was large, it was low on energy, and the chants called for by the speakers were sparse and without enthusiasm. Certainly, I felt none of the propulsive force that marked the 2011 social justice protests that briefly galvanized the nation.
I have been told that the protests were far more energetic at other locations, but there is a general sense that, while attendance is massive, the protesters are, to a certain extent, howling into the void. The opposition lost the last round of elections, though not as decisively as the far-right has attempted to claim, and does not have the votes to stop the proposed reforms. A revolt by the business sector could prove effective, given Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s market fundamentalism, but so far, that sector’s efforts have been piecemeal and seemingly uncoordinated. Some polls indicate that a small majority of Israelis oppose the reforms, but they have not turned out in massive numbers in cities and towns other than the famously liberal Tel Aviv.
Nonetheless, there is the possibility that the protests, should they expand their list of grievances beyond the specific issue of judicial reform, could be the beginning of something that has been long in coming but remains latent and protean: A revolt by the Israeli middle class.
In most countries, the middle class—the bourgeoisie, if one wishes to be properly Marxist about it—or at least its upper strata is the dominating class. Israel, perhaps alone among the world’s relatively prosperous democracies, is an exception. While the middle class wields not inconsiderable political and economic power, it does not dominate. Instead, power is diffused among various strata of society: The lower and working classes, the religious sector, the settlement lobby, the Arab community, and not a few others.
What is striking about Israel’s class system, however, is that, unlike in most other developed countries, the middle class constitutes something like a proletariat. That is to say, it is an exploited class.
The reason for this is the prominent role played by certain political and religious factions of Israeli society, which are ideologically rather than economically-based classes. By and large, it is the Israeli middle class that foots the bill for them, rather than vice-versa. In the latest government, coalition agreements have been forged—and almost entirely based—on massive funding for two ideological factions: The settlement movement and the Haredi community. Billions of shekels are set to flow into these communities to maintain and secure existing settlements and construct new ones, and to maintain the Haredim’s system of yeshivas and other religious institutions that maintain thousands of the willfully unemployed in something like a sustainable lifestyle.
The money for all of this comes almost exclusively from Israel’s secular and/or religiously moderate middle class. In other words, the onerous taxes the middle class pays—often up to half of one’s income—bankroll communities that, in a bizarre case of biting the hand that feeds, largely view the middle class with contempt if not outright hatred. It is not a coincidence that one of the first declarations of intent against the new government was Avigdor Lieberman’s call for the middle class to simply stop paying their taxes. Starve the beast and things will change.
Clearly, Israel’s current class system is unsustainable. At some point, the demands of the burgeoning religious and national-religious sectors will make this nationwide Ponzi Scheme too top-heavy to survive. They will run out of other people’s money, and we simply do not know what will happen when Peter can no longer pay Paul.
Why, one might ask, has this system gotten this far in the first place? Why has a middle-class tax revolt or some other form of civil disobedience failed to occur?
The reason is most probably that the Israeli middle class is a middle class. By and large, it adheres to the same bourgeoise mores as any other middle class. It is materialist, hardworking, relentlessly moderate, and above all incapable of the messianic fanaticism that drives its opponents. One of the defining qualities of the late capitalist bourgeoisie is that it is terrified of going too far and thus endangering its own privileges. The bourgeoisie may have driven revolutions in the past, but today, the idea of a middle-class revolt is almost comical.
If anything, the Israeli middle class is a victim of its own success. It has succeeded in engineering Israel’s economic miracle in the form of the high-tech industry and enjoys a relatively high standard of living. It is prosperous and content, at least economically. What this has led to is a certain measure of decadence and enervation. Middle-class Israelis find it difficult to contemplate even the possibility of upending the existing order. No one knows, after all, where a revolution might lead, and if the middle class fears anything, it is instability and extremism. This in effect castrates them, because their opponents do not fear extremism, which gives them wildly disproportionate power in the political arena.
Nonetheless, it seems unlikely that the Israeli middle class will continue to foot the bill in perpetuity. Simple street protests, however, will not be enough. Perhaps a tax revolt or high-tech strikes will prove more effective. Creative and previously unconsidered options may emerge as well. But for the moment, Israel’s bourgeois revolution remains a distant if perhaps inevitable prospect.
Fascinating piece. If nothing substantive changes, when do economists believe the country will really start to feel the pinch of the current system?