The Bibi of mine

The Bibi of mine has three apartments

What do you do when you feel the sting of social injustice as reflected in a raised cost of living and a faltering economy? In the States chances are you dress like  your ready to attend a reenactment of 1770’s America, waive some racist placards in front of the white house and elect a few multimillionaire congressman to represent the will of the tea baggers tea partyers. Any accredited economist, journalist or jackass that reads the news would tell you that that tea partyers are just a collative of pissed off, god fearing (and/or Jesus touching) white middle class people scared of the alleged big black Muslim man from Kenya who most Americans thought was more qualified to lead the United States then some senile old coot.  For some reason, that exists beyond the realms of normalcy, these eighteen Republican tea partiers brought America to a grounding holt, further devastating the economy, just to defend some sort of dysfunctional governmental ideology.  Does any of this make sense to you?

In Israel there is also a major social movement created in response to the nation’s economic derogation. The first inkling of it started when Israelis discovered that cottage cheese cost twice as much in Israel then it does in Europe. This in turn set off a national movement protesting the increased cost of living throughout Israel. If it had turned out that it had been cigarettes or beer, and not cottage cheese, there would have probably been a revolution so violent that it would have made the rebels in Libya look like a bunch of pussies.

Throughout residential areas in Tel-Aviv there are tent cities with communal kitchens and even libraries in neat rows along the grassy meridians that divide the spacious Tel-Aviv roads. In Jerusalem, almost every public park (including the one next to my building) has its own ragtag collection of tents. The plight of these tent dwellers has gained a pan-national citizenry including religious Jews, Arabs, semi religious Jews (the ones without the black hats) and normal/secular Jews. This movement eventually culminated in a nationwide mass rally on August 7 with Tel-Aviv 300,000 thousand people (according to Wikipedia this would be roughly ¾ of the cities entire population) and 30,000 in Jerusalem. At the time I was studying but decided that the test I was going to fail was far less interesting then the 30,000 people marching, chanting and bashing pots & pans outside my apartment. I floated through an ocean of people flowing through the streets of Jerusalem all the way to the prime minter’s protesters. Together we chanted ‘the people demand social justice,’ and others sang (to the tune of 99 bottles of beer on the wall) ‘ The Bibi of mine has three apartment , three apartments, has the Bibi of mine. And to me I have none.” (it doesn’t really translate well in English) a shirtless twenty-something year old banging a pot, while his friend waved a banner, dabbed blue war paint on my face before I climbed a tree to watch Israeli musicians do there shtick for the cheering crowd.

People say that this protest is in keeping with the Arab Spring, which would be true if it weren’t for the fact that Bibi (Benjamin Netanyahu Prime minster of Israel) is capitulating to the collective will of the people instead of popping caps into  the collective buttocks of the people (as is the case in Assyria, Libya and Bahrain). Well peace out I’m going to go drink a beer and take a nap before the next protests tonight.

Coming up soon; is Israel better then Canada? I’ll ask some Canadians who moved to Israel because of that Justin Beaber shit (also maybe Zionism).

Quick note: I actually wrote this three weeks ago and was going to edit it, but since I’m lazy I figured screw it and just posted it anyway. Since writing this there has been an even bigger mass protest and some of the tents have packed up but the movement is still going strong.