Unemployment in Israel at the Turn of the 21th Century: Why Have the Unemployed Not Formed a Protest Movement?

Abstract

Israel holds high unemployment rate of more than 10 percent, in the last decade, and a parallel continuous erosion of unemployment insurance benefits. This article explains the reasons for the passivity and for the lack of protest and resistance among the unemployed. 

Israel is essentially an immigrant society, in which the bonds of solidarity among the various population groups remain weak. The economic and social gaps within Israeli society are mostly corollary to the issues of origin and identity that separate the various groups. Thus, the unemployed are seen as another separate group within the wider Israeli society, which draws negative attitudes toward them, thereby affecting their capacity to organize collective protest activities. 

Other salient factors that limited the possibilities of the jobless to organize protest activities were linked to the indifference of the major labor parties towards the predicament of the unemployed; the weakness of the Histadrut – the Labor Unions Federation – in general, and in particular among the lower etchelons of the workforce; the open and hidden efforts on the part of the government to de-legitimize the unemployed by manipulating public opinion against them and using various methods to control their behavior; the efforts to individualize the problem of high unemployment; and the heterogeneity of the unemployed themselves, regarding their individual frustration and incapacity to organize and act together.