How general strike backfired on Israel’s anti-govt movement
Sept 4, 2024 20:37:08 GMT -5
Post by shalom on Sept 4, 2024 20:37:08 GMT -5
How the general strike backfired on Israel’s anti-government movement
A labor court's overruling of the Histadrut's wartime shutdown likely eliminated such actions from the protest's arsenal, analysts say.
(September 4, 2024 / JNS)
The general strike that shut down Israel’s economy for several hours on Monday was a brief but long-awaited achievement for the country’s anti-government protest movement, whose activists had pressured the Histadrut labor union for months to join their cause.
However, the decision by Histadrut chairman Arnon Bar-David to acquiesce and finally declare a strike encountered legal pushback that some say has turned the achievement into a pyrrhic victory for the anti-government movement.
As at least 150,000 people protested across Israel over the government’s handling of the war in Gaza and in favor of a ceasefire with Hamas, a labor court on Monday ordered the Histadrut to end the strike. In declaring it, Bar-David said the strike was to protest the murder of six Israeli hostages by Hamas. Politics outside the Histadrut’s purview and mandate motivated the strike, the court determined.
The ruling may have eliminated large workers’ strikes from the protest movement’s arsenal, at least in the context of the war. It also underlined the limitations of the Histadrut as a political player. Yet Monday’s events also demonstrated the growing impatience and frustration of many Israelis over the slow-rolling war, which is nearing the one-year mark with Hamas still in existence and using hostages as leverage.
“The strike that the anti-government movement had sought so badly was a defeat on the legal front,” Shai Glick, the CEO of the B’Tsalmo, a Zionist, pro-Jewish human rights group, told JNS. However, Glick added, “The turnout for protests on Monday was major, reflecting a growing unease in society, not only among leftists, about the war’s progress.”
Bar-David, the Histadrut chairman, declared the strike hours after news broke that Hamas terrorists had murdered six hostages and left their bodies in a tunnel in Rafah, possibly for fear that they would be freed by nearby Israeli troops.
In a statement, Bar-David tied the strike to how “we must reach a deal [with Hamas] above all else.” He added: “We’re in a tailspin and we keep getting body bags. Only a strike will be shocking [enough] so I’ve decided to declare a general strike.”
Israel and Hamas are engaged in indirect talks for the release of dozens of Israeli hostages presumed to be held in Gaza. Hamas is demanding the release of many Palestinian prisoners and a ceasefire, as well as an Israeli pullout from Gaza. A main issue preventing a deal is Israel’s refusal to leave the Philadelphi Corridor—a move that could restore Hamas’s access to the border with Egypt.
Hamas is believed to have smuggled into Gaza countless tons of arms through the Philadelphi Corridor. The weapons were used to mount the murderous onslaught of Oct. 7, in which Hamas terrorists murdered some 1,200 Israelis and abducted another 251, in addition to launching thousands of rockets across the border. The onslaught triggered an Israeli ground offensive in Gaza amid exchanges of fire with Hezbollah in the north and rocket attacks from Yemen.
Bar-David also acknowledged the pressure on him by anti-government activists to declare a strike to pressure the government into accepting a deal with Hamas.
“I have demonstrated much responsibility so far, and it wasn’t easy,” he wrote in his statement announcing the strike.
The decision to declare a strike, whose cost to the economy has been estimated at 1.5 billion shekels ($407 million), may have satisfied some on the left but exposed Bar-David to harsh criticism from the right.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said during a Cabinet meeting Monday that “Bar-David is strengthening [Hamas leader Yahya] Sinwar with this strike. It’s like telling him: ‘Go on, murder along, we’re with you’.” Activists, including from NGO Im Tirtzu, protested outside Bar-David’s home over the strike, which the chairman had said would last 24 hours before the court canceled it.
Even before the court’s ruling, multiple municipalities and a major teacher’s union represented by the Histadrut said they would not strike.
“It was a failure, it was widely perceived as partisan and it undermined the Histadrut’s status as a true representative of the hundreds of thousands of employees it says that it represents,” Mordechai Tzivin, a prominent lawyer, told JNS.
But the truncated strike wasn’t necessarily a defeat for Bar-David, according to Glick of B’Tsalmo.
“Bar-David has been cautious in deploying the Histadrut in the service of the anti-government movement. It’s a risky move for him because it introduces unnecessary divisions into the Histadrut, potentially weakening it. By declaring a strike that the court is sure to end, Bar-David gets the anti-government pressure groups off his case,” Glick said.
Some supporters of the anti-government movement condemned the court’s ruling and lionized Bar-David for declaring the strike.
“The State of Israel is in a situation where there’s no longer any significance to the question of what lies within the mandate of any one official,” a senior financial analyst for the left-leaning TheMarker newspaper wrote. “When civilians are abandoned in captivity and hundreds of soldiers risk getting killed because of the government’s inability to end the war, anyone with leverage should use it, regardless of official position,” wrote analyst Hagai Amit.
Michael Kleiner, a former senior lawmaker in Netanyahu’s Likud Party, noted how Bar-David had already aligned the Histadrut with the anti-government movement in the past, when he declared a one-day strike in July 2023 against the Netanyahu government’s judicial reform legislation. That controversial strike also had partial participation, with only 2,000 out of 36,000 state employees participating.
Bar-David had been hard-pressed to explain why that strike was nonpartisan, Kleiner wrote in an op-ed in Ma’ariv. “He thought that he didn’t need to offer such explanations this time around because he had the support of the protest movement, relatives of hostages, and the friendly mainstream media,” Kleiner wrote.
However, Bar-David “did not take into account that the rules of the game have changed. Israelis have wised up and out of the [pre-Oct. 7] conception and the generals’ assurances that ceding land to the enemy is reversible,” Kleiner wrote. “Israelis will no longer obey the wacky whims of politically driven organizations that hitch a ride on the backs of the hostages’ relatives to attack the wartime economy.”
Monday’s partial strike did bring out many thousands to protest, Tzivin said. But following the strike, “that option, of shutting down the economy to strongarm the government, seems less likely to make a reappearance,” he added. “We may see some private corporations staging brief solidarity strikes, but major union shutdowns appear to be off the table.”
link
A labor court's overruling of the Histadrut's wartime shutdown likely eliminated such actions from the protest's arsenal, analysts say.
(September 4, 2024 / JNS)
The general strike that shut down Israel’s economy for several hours on Monday was a brief but long-awaited achievement for the country’s anti-government protest movement, whose activists had pressured the Histadrut labor union for months to join their cause.
However, the decision by Histadrut chairman Arnon Bar-David to acquiesce and finally declare a strike encountered legal pushback that some say has turned the achievement into a pyrrhic victory for the anti-government movement.
As at least 150,000 people protested across Israel over the government’s handling of the war in Gaza and in favor of a ceasefire with Hamas, a labor court on Monday ordered the Histadrut to end the strike. In declaring it, Bar-David said the strike was to protest the murder of six Israeli hostages by Hamas. Politics outside the Histadrut’s purview and mandate motivated the strike, the court determined.
The ruling may have eliminated large workers’ strikes from the protest movement’s arsenal, at least in the context of the war. It also underlined the limitations of the Histadrut as a political player. Yet Monday’s events also demonstrated the growing impatience and frustration of many Israelis over the slow-rolling war, which is nearing the one-year mark with Hamas still in existence and using hostages as leverage.
“The strike that the anti-government movement had sought so badly was a defeat on the legal front,” Shai Glick, the CEO of the B’Tsalmo, a Zionist, pro-Jewish human rights group, told JNS. However, Glick added, “The turnout for protests on Monday was major, reflecting a growing unease in society, not only among leftists, about the war’s progress.”
Bar-David, the Histadrut chairman, declared the strike hours after news broke that Hamas terrorists had murdered six hostages and left their bodies in a tunnel in Rafah, possibly for fear that they would be freed by nearby Israeli troops.
In a statement, Bar-David tied the strike to how “we must reach a deal [with Hamas] above all else.” He added: “We’re in a tailspin and we keep getting body bags. Only a strike will be shocking [enough] so I’ve decided to declare a general strike.”
Israel and Hamas are engaged in indirect talks for the release of dozens of Israeli hostages presumed to be held in Gaza. Hamas is demanding the release of many Palestinian prisoners and a ceasefire, as well as an Israeli pullout from Gaza. A main issue preventing a deal is Israel’s refusal to leave the Philadelphi Corridor—a move that could restore Hamas’s access to the border with Egypt.
Hamas is believed to have smuggled into Gaza countless tons of arms through the Philadelphi Corridor. The weapons were used to mount the murderous onslaught of Oct. 7, in which Hamas terrorists murdered some 1,200 Israelis and abducted another 251, in addition to launching thousands of rockets across the border. The onslaught triggered an Israeli ground offensive in Gaza amid exchanges of fire with Hezbollah in the north and rocket attacks from Yemen.
Bar-David also acknowledged the pressure on him by anti-government activists to declare a strike to pressure the government into accepting a deal with Hamas.
“I have demonstrated much responsibility so far, and it wasn’t easy,” he wrote in his statement announcing the strike.
The decision to declare a strike, whose cost to the economy has been estimated at 1.5 billion shekels ($407 million), may have satisfied some on the left but exposed Bar-David to harsh criticism from the right.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said during a Cabinet meeting Monday that “Bar-David is strengthening [Hamas leader Yahya] Sinwar with this strike. It’s like telling him: ‘Go on, murder along, we’re with you’.” Activists, including from NGO Im Tirtzu, protested outside Bar-David’s home over the strike, which the chairman had said would last 24 hours before the court canceled it.
Even before the court’s ruling, multiple municipalities and a major teacher’s union represented by the Histadrut said they would not strike.
“It was a failure, it was widely perceived as partisan and it undermined the Histadrut’s status as a true representative of the hundreds of thousands of employees it says that it represents,” Mordechai Tzivin, a prominent lawyer, told JNS.
But the truncated strike wasn’t necessarily a defeat for Bar-David, according to Glick of B’Tsalmo.
“Bar-David has been cautious in deploying the Histadrut in the service of the anti-government movement. It’s a risky move for him because it introduces unnecessary divisions into the Histadrut, potentially weakening it. By declaring a strike that the court is sure to end, Bar-David gets the anti-government pressure groups off his case,” Glick said.
Some supporters of the anti-government movement condemned the court’s ruling and lionized Bar-David for declaring the strike.
“The State of Israel is in a situation where there’s no longer any significance to the question of what lies within the mandate of any one official,” a senior financial analyst for the left-leaning TheMarker newspaper wrote. “When civilians are abandoned in captivity and hundreds of soldiers risk getting killed because of the government’s inability to end the war, anyone with leverage should use it, regardless of official position,” wrote analyst Hagai Amit.
Michael Kleiner, a former senior lawmaker in Netanyahu’s Likud Party, noted how Bar-David had already aligned the Histadrut with the anti-government movement in the past, when he declared a one-day strike in July 2023 against the Netanyahu government’s judicial reform legislation. That controversial strike also had partial participation, with only 2,000 out of 36,000 state employees participating.
Bar-David had been hard-pressed to explain why that strike was nonpartisan, Kleiner wrote in an op-ed in Ma’ariv. “He thought that he didn’t need to offer such explanations this time around because he had the support of the protest movement, relatives of hostages, and the friendly mainstream media,” Kleiner wrote.
However, Bar-David “did not take into account that the rules of the game have changed. Israelis have wised up and out of the [pre-Oct. 7] conception and the generals’ assurances that ceding land to the enemy is reversible,” Kleiner wrote. “Israelis will no longer obey the wacky whims of politically driven organizations that hitch a ride on the backs of the hostages’ relatives to attack the wartime economy.”
Monday’s partial strike did bring out many thousands to protest, Tzivin said. But following the strike, “that option, of shutting down the economy to strongarm the government, seems less likely to make a reappearance,” he added. “We may see some private corporations staging brief solidarity strikes, but major union shutdowns appear to be off the table.”
link
