An anguished confession by “President Baruch O Bema,” as channeled through Phil Wolfson:

When I took office, I had convinced many of you that I would be honest, forthright, for democracy for all, against big corporate and financial interests and would champion an economic, emotional, cultural and political resurgence and rectification after the greed and near fascism of the Bush years. Many of you thought I would bring honesty back to politics and that I was made of other stuff — good stuff. There was great enthusiasm for my administration and me and I made promises, even vows, that my presidency would be different and usher in a new era of intelligence, capability, and justice. I had spoken clearly and frequently about the environmental crisis, about international corporatism’s grip on the political system, about the need for campaign finance reform.

I have to confess: I was posturing to get elected and had no intention of doing anything but supporting the system as it was, promoting U.S. imperial ambitions abroad, supporting global finance corporatism and making sure that the rich folks I truly admired and who helped me out, many of them information age capitalists, would have their interests served. So here we are, approaching three years into my term and things are a wreck. I have to come clean.

The popular protests now engulfing Israel, originally spurred by a housing crisis, have quickly morphed into an amalgamation of economic and social demands, leaving many in Israel’s progressive left to wonder exactly how broad these protests now threatening to paralyze Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s leadership will become.

150,000 Protesting near Tel Aviv, Israel. Credit: Avivi/Creative Commons

Make no mistake; these protests, begun in Tel Aviv by Israel’s young, left-leaning middle class, are awakening the voices of many sectors that have long-been dormant. There is a social reordering underfoot — the 150,000 Israelis who took to the streets in 11 different cities across the country on Saturday, directing their anger squarely at Netanyahu, are a testament to this. (To understand the scope of these protests, approximately two percent of Israel’s population swarmed the country’s streets and public squares, which in the United States would be around 5.5 million.)

While a lack of affordable housing is the rallying cry around which protesters throughout the country began mobilizing, a deeper discontent has been fomenting. Netanyahu’s championing of anti-democratic laws aimed at squelching criticism of the State coupled with continuing economic policies that have widened gaps between the rich and the poor have angered citizens — so much so that they are now symbolically rejecting both by aiming their protests squarely at their leader.

But many in Israel’s left see a disconnect in what’s occurring; how can Israelis protest housing prices without mentioning the settlements? How can Israel’s young progressives demand social justice without mentioning the occupation?

We at Tikkun have been saying for the past 3 years what former Sec. of Labor and economist Robert Reich says below and what Paul Krugman has been saying for the past 2 years: there is no serious budget crisis. Instead, we have an employment and housing crisis.

It is true, as Robert Reich says below, that the Republicans have been running with this lie for the past several years in order to prevent the Democrats, when they had the majority in both houses of Congress, and the presidency, 2009-2010, from doing what the country needed: a massive Work Progress Administration (WPA) employment program coupled with a freeze on mortgage foreclosures and a law requiring the banks to renegotiate mortgage interests to what it was when the mortgage was first offered to the buyers.

But Reich plays down the huge culpability of Obama and his economic advisors (who could have been Reich and Krugman, and no Republican forced Obama to go with the pro-corporate advisors he actually chose form the start).