One of the campaign ads for the Labor Party shows the leaders of the social protests, Stav Shaffir and Itzik Shmuli, sitting opposite each other against a neat blue background, nostalgically reminiscing about the mass protests of summer 2011. These were the protests that transformed them from unknown social activists to media stars.

Eighteen months after the protest that shook the nation — the one that began with a single tent pitched on Rothschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv and ended with thousands of tents down the city's main streets and hundreds and thousands of young people blocking streets and filling the town squares to protest the high cost of housing and more — Shaffir, 27, and Shmuli, 32, now have a very real shot at being elected to the next Knesset on the Labor Party ticket.

At the end of the ad, they express their hope that "what started in the streets will continue at the polls." There is no doubt that Shaffir and Shmuli will join the Knesset with a clear agenda, energy to perform and strong public-speaking skills. They are filled with good intentions and avow that they decided to enter the political scene after learning the hard way that "politics was the only way they could make the world a better place."

Only through politics? To be fair, we need to say that many of the young people who dedicate their time to bringing about change have another opinion — one that is diametrically opposed. The most outstanding example of this belief is Daphni Leef, who Shaffir and Shmuli know well. After all, the three of them fought shoulder to shoulder in the leadership of the social-justice protests and marched in the front row of each demonstration. Daphni Leef believes that you can only bring about change from outside the system. As she sees it, as soon as you become part of it, you lose your authenticity. That is why she established a new social organization to try to change things from the outside, and even threatened to closely monitor the political activity of her fellow protesters, "without cutting them any slack."