“I want to make it perfectly clear to the staff of the Finance Ministry and to the finance minister himself … [W]e are not political people. We are just run-of-the-mill Israelis who want a roof over our heads and food — basic needs. We don’t understand economics. We don’t understand regulation. Still, you'd better start learning geography. We are mobile, we are educated and we know how to move from one country to another.” That was just part of a post that appeared Oct. 6 on the Immigrating to Berlin Facebook page.

The “Milky” chocolate pudding protest had begun there a day earlier, spreading like wildfire across the social networks. Then the protesters responded to attempts to portray their concern as little more than detached griping by a bunch of spoiled Israelis, so alienated from the Holocaust that they would immigrate to Germany just to save a few shekels.

The protest began after someone posted a photo of a receipt from a grocery store in Berlin to the Immigrating to Berlin page. The receipt featured the prices of several staples, including orange juice and milk, which were fractions of the cost in Israel. What stole the show, however, was the price of a chocolate pudding snack, very much like a Milky, one of the most popular products produced by Israel’s Strauss Dairies: The price in Israel is three shekels (87 cents), while in Berlin it's less than one shekel (27 cents).

Ever since the social protests that erupted in 2011, the Internet has been inundated with random grocery receipts from around the world, proving that everything is significantly more expensive in Israel. Yet, the Milky protest provoked an outrage that quickly burst through the barriers of new media to dominate the daily news cycle. A day after the Milky post appeared, not a single current events show on radio or television could ignore it. In most cases, the media conducted quick surveys of supermarket food prices in major cities around the world, showing yet again that prices in Israel are usually significantly higher. One other thing the news coverage revealed was that the focus on the cost of living is unlikely to fall from the public agenda in the foreseeable future. This should worry Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and even more so it should worry Finance Minister Yair Lapid, a hero of the social protests of summer 2011.