Margaret Mead once said: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” Cynics heaped scorn on the famed anthropologist’s words, but history is filled with examples of protests that began with one person and ended up changing the world. (See box)
Right under my nose, I found a possible example in my hometown of Zichron Ya’acov. For the past year, as I drive past the roundabout at the entrance to the city, at the corner of HaHalutzim and HaKovshim streets, I honk my horn and wave to my neighbor Zwili. His full name is Zwi Ben Moshe. He started off as a one-person Bring Them Home protest in Zichron. Now people join him regularly at the circle.
Zwili is 80 and a grandfather of 11. He was born on January 21, 1945, on Kibbutz Maoz Haim, in the Beit She’an Valley, and grew up in Tiv’on. He and his wife, Dalia, were members of Kibbutz Nveh Ur for 35 years. Zwili attended the Technion’s technical high school and became an electronics technician. As secretary-general of the Kibbutz Movement, he negotiated a new debt reduction agreement with the banks in 1996, after a deal signed in 1989 had collapsed.
As an officer in the IDF Nahal paratroopers, he participated in liberating Jerusalem in the Six Day War. In the Yom Kippur War, under Ariel Sharon, he was in the first paratrooper units to cross the Suez Canal. Later, in 1979, he became an aide to MK Yigal Allon; and from 1984 to 1987, he was an aide to defense minister Yitzhak Rabin.
In the wake of the shock of the October 7 massacre, Zwili spoke with friends about what he could do constructively. His son, 51, volunteered for IDF duty in the air force. The IDF was accepting seniors as volunteers for packing food rations and medical kits – only up to age 72.
Zwili spoke to Edit K, who had begun manning a large sign at a nearby café, numbering the consecutive days that hostages were being held. It was day 169. He asked about her stock of numbers. Did she have a 3 for the hundreds digits? Inconceivable that it might be needed, they agreed.
Sadly, wrong. As I write these words, we mark day 610.
Zwili made a sign and borrowed some T-shirts from the protest organization Brothers in Arms. And then he initiated his daily one-man morning protest at the roundabout.
Initially, he focused on calling on the government to resign and to hold elections, as well as to negotiate the release of the hostages. But over time, and to avoid needless conflict, he focused solely on freeing the hostages. To keep the hostage issue in front of our eyes. Lest we forget.
How did passers-by react? Some shouted at him, he recalls. “Only Bibi,” they yelled. “How much are they paying you? Who lets you use a public circle?”
Zwili obtained official permission from the city council to use the traffic circle. That meant he could leave his signs in place – photographs of hostages, numbers of hostages still held, etc. – rather than trundle them to and fro.
Slowly, his one-man protest attracted supporters. A local printer donated signs. Eight or nine regulars began to show up every morning from 7:00 to 8:30 a.m. Zwili became a local icon.
While chatting with Zwili over coffee, I felt an instant bond. He and I are about the same age. We each have lived our adult years in a different Israel – an Israel whose leaders reminded me of a famous Hebrew National kosher hot dog ad. In it, a deep resonant voice says, “We’re kosher; we answer to a higher authority.”
Once, Israel’s leaders answered to truth, accountability, and the good of the nation and its people – a higher authority than self-interest. Left or Right, that higher authority was rarely in question.
And now? Times of Israel reported results from a Channel 13 poll showing that when asked what values motivate Netanyahu in his wartime decision-making, only one-third of respondents said they believe he is acting for the good of the country.
Back to Margaret Mead: “Never depend upon institutions or government to solve any problems. All social movements are founded by, guided by, motivated, and seen through by the passion of individuals.”
To be realistic, we do need governments to solve social and political problems. They make laws, muster resources, and initiate action.
But often, too often, governments are detached, lethargic, self-seeking, and incompetent, disconnected from the people who elected them. When this happens, it is up to us, concerned citizens like Zwili, to grab our flags and signs and posters and take to the traffic circles and streets to protest.
It often starts very small. And then it snowballs.
In 1974, mass protests led to the resignation of Golda Meir and her Israeli government. In 2006, the phrase “Me Too” was initially used on social media by sexual assault survivor and activist Tarana Burke – and led to a mass movement in the US that helped bring justice for abused women. Here in Israel, mass protests have so far prevented Yariv Levin’s maniacal obsession with hamstringing democracy. (See The Jerusalem Report, “The Defeat of Evil,” April 21.)
Truth be told, Zwili is not a lone protester. Zwili Circle in Zichron Ya’acov is in one sense an affiliate of Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square, in front of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. Since October 7, 2023, hostage families have made it the center of rallies and protests, in part because it is across the street from IDF headquarters.
At Hostages Square, you can find kiosks selling Bring Them Home shirts and umbrellas, stages for speeches, and tents where kibbutz survivors and family members speak to the press, along with a large LED screen that counts the days, hours, minutes that hostages are being held.
Huge rallies have taken place there. On January 13, 2024, some 120,000 people began a 24-hour rally to mark 100 days since October 7. There is even a 25-meter mock Hamas tunnel simulating a dimly lit passage through which participants can walk and experience a small taste of what the hostage are suffering.
One passerby told me that Zwili’s quiet protest is “balm for our conscience” for those who feel anger at the government’s failure to free the remaining hostages but remain passive. Hearing this, Edmund Burke’s tenet “Evil triumphs when good people fail to act” came to mind. Vicarious praise for Zwili’s dogged persistence falls far short of what is needed.
I plan to join Zwili more often at Zwili Circle. With more people at more local protests, massive protests, perhaps we can change Israel and get the hostages freed. Sitting at home and wringing our hands will not get it done. ■
One-person protests
Thomas Clarkson: In 1785, Thomas Clarkson entered a Latin essay competition at Cambridge University on the topic “Is it lawful to make slaves of others against their will?” He won the contest – and devoted his life to abolishing the slave trade, riding horseback up and down Britain to campaign. In 1807, the Slave Trade Act ended the trade and provided British naval support to enforce the law. Slavery ended in the US in 1865, only when the 13th Amendment abolished slavery in the United States, at the start of a bloody civil war.
Rosa Parks: In 1955, on a public bus in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks was told to move to the back of the bus, in compliance with segregation laws. She refused and was arrested. This sparked a year-long boycott by African Americans, which ended after the courts declared bus segregation unconstitutional. She is known as the mother of the civil rights movement.
Moti Ashkenazi: He was the senior IDF commanding officer at an outpost on the Suez Canal, the only one of its kind that did not fall to the Egyptians in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. In February 1974, months after the war ended, Ashkenazi staged a one-man protest outside prime minister Golda Meir’s office, bearing a hand-drawn placard proclaiming “Grandma, your defense minister is a failure, and 3,000 of your children are dead.” Defense minister Moshe Dayan reacted with scorn. But within three months, growing public pressure forced the Meir government to resign – and ultimately brought the Likud under Menachem Begin to power in 1977.
The writer heads the Zvi Griliches Research Data Center at S. Neaman Institute, Technion. He blogs at www.timnovate.wordpress.com