“Some of us even got arrested for hitting cops, which I thought only happened to right-wingers and Haredim!”
Tel Aviv, July 24 – A demonstrator who spent much of yesterday morning as part of a crowd that impeded passage on the main artery running through Tel Aviv recalled that he had failed in his effort to convey to many of the occupants of vehicles thus affected that their lack of forward movement owed anything to his and his comrades’ actions, because congestion on that road is always like that.
Ohr Shamir, 35, spoke to reporters this morning, recounting his experiences Sunday during the latest round of protests against Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s campaign to restrict the powers that the Supreme Court has arrogated to itself for more than two decades.
“There were literally thousands of us on the Ayalon, holding signs,” he related. “Traffic was at a standstill for more than two hours. We chanted. We sang. We waved our flags and banners. We blasted music. We blew vuvuzelas. Everything we could do to make our presence and our dissatisfaction known, we did. Yet nothing I could say or do would convince the drivers or passengers I talked to that we were disrupting their trips. they all just assumed things were normal, that this highway is basically a parking lot twenty-four-seven.”
“Obviously it’s frustrating,” acknowledged the marketing consultant. “The whole point of blocking the busiest road in the country is to maximize the impact of our direct action. We want as many people as possible to feel the pain so they understand the importance of this issue and that we will not simply let a would-be dictator emasculate the judiciary so he and his far-right allies can cement their backward, barbaric control over this country.”
“They barely noticed,” he spat.
The phenomenon occurred elsewhere in the country, as well. Jerusalem protester Shani Gordon spent four hours under the hot sun, helping to block traffic along Rabin Boulevard, near the Supreme Court, the Knesset, and the Prime Minister’s Office, only to discover that local drivers reacted to the snarled traffic with the same shrugs, sighs, and shakes of the head that feature in any automotive trip along that artery during daylight hours.
“That was… not what I thought would happen,” she conceded. “I genuinely thought people would notice, care, and change their attitudes – certainly I thought the disruption would prompt Bibi and his cronies to stop the madness because of all the chaos. Some of us even got arrested for hitting cops, which I thought only happened to right-wingers and Haredim!”
“But nothing.”
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