Over 10,000 Israelis took to the streets of Tel Aviv this evening to protest new austerity measures in the country’s budget, echoing (and perhaps renewing) Israel’s historic social justice protests from two years ago.
Many activists who played a central role in those protests were involved in this evening’s renewed call for Israelis to march in the streets against Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Finance Minister Yair Lapid and their budget, which proposes cuts in social welfare programs and raised taxes on lower- and middle-income workers.
One of those activists, Itzik Shmuli, is now a Knesset Member and marched this evening. He told Ha’aretz:
“Lapid’s financial plan will severely hurt the working man and will trample the weak sectors. To block it, we will wage a persistent battle on the streets and in the halls of the Knesset. Israelis don’t expect their finance minister to be a socialist, but they don’t expect him to be a populist, either.”