Topic Exploration: Israel Tents

1. Israel’s “Tent Protest” movement was a protest fixated on changing the government policy to form an anti-capitalist legislature to benefit homeowners in Israel. The movement began with a woman, Daphne Leef, lost her home because of a raise in the cost of living and pitched a tent in the street. Neighbors and friends gathered with her to protest in the street and soon thousands of people joined. This protest was assisted with television news coverage and social media. 

This movement began small and grew to become a large voice for the lower class Israeli population across the globe. There are even some instances of tent protests today in recognition of the original Israel tent protest movement. For my project, I am focusing on the first 6 weeks of the protest. The 6 weeks was the timeframe the original movement lasted until it disbanded 

2. The Israeli lower class was the identity tied with this protest. I believe this identity is significant because Israeli individuals all over the world connect with their motherland and connect with the people back home. Those who understand the struggles of the lower class would be willing to sit in the streets with signs written in Hebrew to make a statement to the Israeli government. It’s interesting because individuals didn’t need to identify as a lower class Israelite and located in Jerusalem to participate. There were participants (in tents) across the world (including New York, etc). 

3.  For the most part, the participants just camped out in tents in their city. This form of body rhetoric was mostly the entire rhetoric the movement had. There wasn’t any large marches or pickets directed towards the government itself. A thing to note is the lack of direct protest toward the government. This protest was criticized for “hiding their political agenda.” When anarchist protestors would join the group, the original protestors would denounce their existence in the protest. The movement overall just took place in the tent with no explicit agenda.

4. A struggle I think I will find with the project would be to find the explicit goals of the movement. It seems like Rothschild protestors (the original location of the protest) formed under a common cause but lacked a goal. There were multiple outcomes that were beneficial from the protest, but not explicitly stated. I don’t think there will be that much difficulty tying the identity to the protest. The only people who took part of the tent pitching were lower class Israelites. 

I think answering the question of why the protest never expanding to direct protest of the government might be weird to answer. The political motivations of the movement later on didn’t seem solidified. 

I think the project will be most difficult when it comes to the history between Israel and Palestine. There was some mentioning of the conflict between the boundaries of the two in the articles I read and that might be lead to some decent context to the movement. I have to just find the right pieces. 

I also can’t read Hebrew so analyzing the rhetoric of the signs might be hard. 

Works Cited: 

Gordon, Uri. "Israel's ‘tent protests’: The chilling effect of nationalism." Social Movement Studies 11.3-4 (2012): 349-355.

Marom, Nathan. "Activising space: the spatial politics of the 2011 protest movement in Israel." Urban Studies (2013): 0042098013477699.

Alimi, Eitan Y. "‘Occupy Israel’: a tale of startling success and hopeful failure." Social Movement Studies 11.3-4 (2012): 402-407.