They see the hullabaloo over illegal immigration and deportation in the US and the way it has energized Democrats.
Tel Aviv, June 17 - The weekly demonstrations against Israel's incumbent prime minister have taken on a perfunctory character since last year, forcing frustrated organizers to consider what key ingredient their effort lacks that other, livelier movements - such as those opposed to enforcement of American immigration laws - have which might invigorate the endeavor, and have tentatively concluded that maybe they should also pepper their demonstrations with the flag of the United Mexican States, a representative of the march and rally organizers disclosed today.
Left-wingers and Israelis of other political stripes who wish to see an end to the almost-all-Netanyahu premierships since 2009 - save for a brief interlude in 2020-22 - have spent almost every Saturday night plus many other occasions marching, chanting, blocking roads, and engaging in other protest activity to pressure Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu into leaving office. However, despite public concerns over the premier's stewardship of the country before and during the current war; years of corruption allegations; clashes over judicial reform that threatens established interests; tensions with successive US presidential administrations; and other controversies, no convincing alternative to him has emerged, rendering the public opposition to him impotent. Protest leaders, seeing the hullabaloo over illegal immigration and deportation in the US and the way it has energized Democrats, now think they have identified element hitherto missing from their own movement: Mexican flags.
"Palestinian flags have made the occasional appearance at our rallies," one leader acknowledged, "as it has at the riots and demonstrations in the US. But those are now almost automatic at any event to the left of the far, far right. Unremarkable. The Mexican flag thing is new and interesting, and we suspect that's the magic ingredient that makes the US protests compelling while ours have yet to accomplish anything."
"The Palestinian flag has most of the right colors, and maybe that's what threw us off," surmised another. "For us and the US, the two flags represent respective outside cultures or entities with no small measure of hostility to our territorial integrity and security. We must have made the mistake of assuming we had to choose a flag specific to our milieu, when in fact it's the Mexican flag per se that affords a protest movement the energy necessary to achieve its political aims."
While the mechanics of the process still elude the anti-Netanyahu camp, the working hypothesis has them hopeful that this coming Saturday night in Tel Aviv, the same people with the same slogans, placards, banners, and stickers, but with one different flag, will make all the difference.
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