Israeli man sets himself on fire during Tel Aviv social protest
Israeli man sets himself on fire during Tel Aviv social protest
Moshe Silman, a 57-year-old Haifa resident, set himself on fire Saturday during a Tel Aviv demonstration marking the anniversary of last summer’s social protests.
As thousands marched down Kaplan Street to mark a year since the start of social protests, as Silman poured gasoline on his body and set himself on fire.
Silman was evacuated to Ichilov Hospital shortly afterward.
“The state of Israel stole from me and robbed me. It left me helpless,” wrote Silman in a letter he left at the scene.
“Two Housing and Construction Ministry committees rejected me, even though I had a stroke,” wrote Silman in the letter, adding that the facts could be checked with a public housing company in Haifa.
In the letter, Silman wrote that he blames “the state of Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz, for the humiliation that weakened citizens go through every day, taking from the poor and giving to the rich.”
This act of social protest against auster govt economic policies In Israel echoes the act of Tunisia’s Mohammed Bouazizi who set himself on fire sparking the Arab Spring and the act in Greece of a 77 year old pensioner who killed himself in protest in front of the Greek Parliament in Athens.
Right wing economic austerity policies are killing people the world over in favor of ‘pro-market’ reforms that make people poorer but make the few rich richer.
