The middle class stayed home on Saturday night [May 11]. The public did not swarm the streets in an authentic display of anger at the harsh budget cuts thrust on them by Finance Minister Yair Lapid; people did not demonstrate in droves against the election campaign commitments violated willy-nilly by the same man in whom they placed such hopes just four months ago and who now explains to them, with great aptitude, why “he had no choice.” The demonstrations, which were supposed to jump-start a public protest, do not have a leadership for the time being and it is uncertain if one will emerge. Itzik Shmuli and Stav Shaffir, the vibrant young protest leaders who captured the public imagination in the summer of 2011, are now members of the Knesset, representing a strife-ridden opposition party with little influence.

In hindsight, Lapid and Trade and Industry Minister Naftali Bennett were the political leaders of that protest; they were carried on its back like rock stars to their seats in the Knesset and the government. Now that they have been appointed as finance minister and minister of economics, respectively, they are directly responsible for each and every measure against the middle classes.

Of the two, expectations of Lapid were greater and so, too, is the extent of the disappointment in him. From a modern-day savior, he is being gradually exposed as a false prophet. For now, he still appears to be successful in addressing a public sentiment which desperately wants to believe that “the final word has yet to be said” and “better days are just around the corner.” And with the fog of uncertainty and attempts at persuasion hanging over us, it is hard to get people out into the streets.

The 10,000 protesters (or 15,000, depending which paper you read) who nonetheless took to the streets in five flash-points around the country do not even amount to the number of votes which provided Lapid with one of his party’s 19 Knesset seats and sent him to the finance minister’s office. In fact, most of those who marched last night on Tel Aviv’s Rothschild Boulevard, where the protest was born two years ago, are obvious, hard-core “professional” social protesters. They form the organized supporters of left-wing parties such as Hadash, the Labor Party and Meretz as well as representatives of many social change organizations.