Protesters display tombstones for closed businesses in Rabin Square
"As long as the government continues to play roulette with our lives, this cemetery will expand."
By CELIA JEANThe Centers for Social Justice install a graveyard of businesses that have closed down during the coronavirus pandemic, August 26, 2020. (photo credit: SHAI YEHEZKEL)
In order to express the plight of Israeli business owners and illustrate the government's failure to address the economic situation, the Centers for Social Justice set up a protest in the form of dozens of tombstones bearing the names of recently closed businesses, on Wednesday at Rabin Square in Tel Aviv.
"While the government is engaged in political survival and petty quarrels, businesses continue to close wholesale and tens of thousands of Israelis lose hope and are thrown into the cycle of poverty," said Zohar (Izzy) Carmon, Director of the Centers for Social Justice.
Facts about the restaurants, such as the number of employees a restaurant supported and more, were also listed on the tombstones. The Centers for Social Justice install a graveyard of businesses that have closed down during the coronavirus pandemic, August 26, 2020. (Credit: Avshalom Sassoni)
Protesters aimed to use the tombstones to illustrate the economic difficulty in which tens of thousands of Israelis have been living for many months, and who, in light of the government's response to the coronavirus pandemic, have been forced to close the businesses they built with great effort and send their workers home without a salary.
"Business owners pay for the careless and disrespectful conduct of the government in losing their livelihood. The exhibit is meant to illustrate the sad reality we all feel on the street, more and more businesses are closing; more and more life-works are being buried and more and more people do not see a future in Israel. People are tired of hearing hollow statements and plans," Carmon said.
"As long as the government continues to play roulette with our lives, this cemetery will expand," he said, further noting that other countries have been able to succeed in providing a safety net and providing solutions to businesses in distress.
"Every business that closes is dozens of families of workers and suppliers thrown into the cycle of poverty," he said.
In recent years, the Centers for Social Justice have been working to create a broad field movement that will reach every corner of Israeli society and lead to a change that will lead to value-based and attentive leadership for the people, according to Carmon.
"We express solidarity and share in the grief of tens of thousands of Israeli taxpayers who have lost their livelihoods and dignity,' he concluded.
Rabin Square in Tel Aviv has often been a site where Israelis gather to protest, especially since the coronavirus outbreak in Israel, as hundreds of thousands have gathered to demonstrate against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's conduct during the crisis, in addition to the financial state of the country and the government's response.
