Celebrating May Day in Israel

This morning I was listening to Reshet Bet (Israel Radio) and heard the Internationale sung in Hebrew, and then interviews with some of the Knesset members from the Hadash party. The word Hadash in Hebrew means "new," and it's also an acronym for the name of the party - HaHazit HaDemokratit LeShalom VeLeShivion - The Democratic Front for Peace and Equality. The party was formed in 1977 out of the Israeli Communist Party and other left-wing Israeli groups. It is a joint Arab-Jewish party and currently has four members in the Knesset: Afou Agbaria, Mohammed Barakeh, Dov Khenin, and Hanna Swaid. Barakeh is the leader of the party.

This evening, as I was cooking dinner and feeling rather tired, I turned on Army Radio (Galei Tzahal), and discovered that they were broadcasting a program about Leon Trotsky! I haven't listened carefully to the whole program, but thus far it has included a survey of Trotsky's life, his role in the Bolshevik Revolution, his role as head of the Red Army, and of course his assassination by agents of Stalin in 1940. The talking is interspersed with rather outrageous music (for example a band called Baba Yaga singing what I think was the Internationale in Russian a heavy metal style, another group singing Bob Dylan's song "With God on our Side" in Hebrew - that was actually pretty funny). The program is taking place at a bar called "Barbi" in Tel Aviv.

From the advertisement on the Galei Zahal web site (Life of Others presents an evening with Trotsky):

On the first of May 2012 at 7:30 p.m. an evening program of the program "Life of Others" on Galei Zahal will be devoted to the daring revolutionary and persecuted fighter Leon Trotsky. This is a special evening, one-time, and out of the ordinary which combines live musical performances, mini-lectures of six minutes, video clips - all under the direction of the radio broadcaster Eran Sabag....

On the basis of the social protest awakening last year, we decided to devote the program to Leon Trotsky, the Soviet communist revolutionary, in order to try to remember and understand the revolutionary ideas that succeeded and that failed in the 20th century.

Also tonight, there was a May Day march in Tel Aviv, organized by a coalition of left-wing groups and parties.