Thousands demonstrated in Rabin Square yesterday evening in protest against government delays and failures in providing assistance to people whose occupations and businesses had been harmed by measures to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic. Speakers at the demonstration told their personal stories, and the organizers insisted that it was not a question of right or left or of trying to topple the government.
The demonstration took place exactly nine years after the start of the social protest of 2011, which mainly concerned the cost of living, and in which organizations of the self-employed also participated.
Actor Rotem Cohen, representing the culture and entertainment industry, appealed to the crowd to be punctilious in wearing facemasks so that the demonstration could continue. "There is no word other than the death of culture," Cohen said. "The death of culture is the death of the country. We are not going to change profession; this is our profession. If there is no art and creativity here, there will be nothing here."
Avinoam, owner of a tourism business that had been hard hit, took the stage. "On March 12, everything was wiped out. Everyone was fired, sent on unpaid leave, and the offices were closed. There is no tourism and no horizon. Everyone in the industry, tens of thousands of people in this country who pay taxes, need money now to survive the coming days and the coming year and a half. I don't want our life's work to be ruined, which will be the end of our families." Other speakers told similar stories. In the background, loud cries of "Bibi go home" could clearly be heard.
The initiative for the demonstration came from the Committee to Save Culture and Performance, which set a date of it before Thursday's announcement by the government of a new economic plan. The organizers wondered whether to go ahead with the rally, but received the backing of the organization "Restaurateurs Strong Together" headed by Tomer Mor.
The demonstration was promoted on the WhatsApp group opened by Tiki Edison, head of the organization "Wage-earning Owners". Edison, who has become a focus of the complaints of self-employed people, spoke of the gap between the published figures purporting to show that most of the self-employed had received the state aid due to them and the dozens of messages she received daily from people who said they had received only a fraction of what they were supposed to receive. "The idea of the demonstration is 'without logo and without ego,'" Edison said. "People are going hungry. We want them to speak, not the heads of the campaign. So we asked people to come without placards or t-shirts with logos. This is a demonstration by the people, by people who have collapsed."
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on July 12, 2020
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2020