Countryside Climate Activist Bitter He Must Travel Hours To Disrupt Traffic Of Any Consequence

“Tel Aviv, even Jerusalem, that’s where the social action action is.”

Dimona, July 12 – A resident of this development town in the Negev lamented the fact that his activities to promote awareness of, and urge the adoption of mitigation measures for, environmental issues, require him to take a bus or drive for long periods to reach parts of the country where blocking roads in protest to inconvenience as many people as possible garners any notice from the media.

Shai Cohen, 26, expressed frustration Tuesday over the effort and expense he must put forth to accomplish the same results that his allies and colleagues in the Israeli environmentalism movement to achieve, specifically in terms of snarling up traffic for many kilometers on the country’s main arteries at the busiest times of day to demonstrate the importance and urgency of his cause.

“My friends is Greenpeace and other, related organizations can walk, bike, or take public transportation to protests,” he observed. “But I can’t afford to live in, or even near, Tel Aviv, at least not places I feel comfortable. That’s where the environmental action is, because that’s where people feel the impact of our actions most, and we can get enough people’s attention. It doesn’t have the same effect, consciousness-raising-wise, when you’re the only activist around to block Highway 25 out at the main junction here. People just honk, drive around you, and give you a rude gesture, if they even bother to show a reaction. I can’t get a critical mass here for anything. People get to work, their errands, social events, and back home without any disruption on my part that might make them think, or at least get them angry. Or even remember that anything happened, by the time they reach their destination. I feel useless here.”

“You should have been at the last Extinction Rebellion event,” Cohen recalled. “We sat in the middle of the Ayalon Freeway, about a dozen of us, raising awareness by stopping people from getting back home from work at a reasonable hour. That’s how we win hearts and minds.”

“Now, Tel Aviv, even Jerusalem, that’s where the social action action is,” he added. “You can back up lines of cars as far as the eye can see, and they can think about all the emissions they’re emitting by just sitting there instead of living a sustainable lifestyle, just as we activists… well, just as we activists urge everyone to do. It’s  beautiful sight, all those idling vehicles, vomiting smoke, carbon monoxide, nd other pollutants into the…” he trailed off, as if realizing something.

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