Alerts and Reports 

Stop considering – Recognize Palestine Now!

Demonstration in front of embassies in Tel Aviv, demanding recognition of the State of Palestine state - now!

No people can be free and safe as long as they occupy another people. The denial of the Palestinians' national rights has been the policy of Israeli governments over many years. The horrible results blew up in all of our faces on October 7th. The Palestinian issue, which the government tried to bury inconspicuously behind "separation fences", has now returned to center stage.

And what is the reaction of the right-wing Government of Israel? An intensive effort to prevent any possibility of a Palestinian state coming into being. The war of destruction in Gaza, which makes the Strip uninhabitable, the ongoing violence all over the West Bank and ongoing expulsion of communities, and the moves to delegitimize all Palestinian leadership - all of these are designed to eliminate any chance of a Palestinian state being established.

In the face of these moves, members of the International Community must state a straight forward position - a Palestinian state is a vital and immediate necessity. Its sovereignty must be recognized within the internationally recognized borders - those of June 5, 1967. Recognition of the State of Palestine by the International Community, and especially by the powers that support Israel, can be a decisive step. It might bring to a successful conclusion an inclusive and calculated international struggle against the occupation and for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state alongside the State of Israel.

We, Arab and Jewish citizens of Israel, will meet on Friday, March 15, 14:00, at 99 Hayarkon St./Frishman St. in Tel Aviv, and march towards the United States Embassy (71 Hayarkon St., Tel Aviv), demanding the recognition of a Palestinian state now.

Already months ago, the United States said it was "considering" a recognition of Palestine - as did Britain and other Western countries. We call on them to stop considering and proceed here and now with recognizing Palestine.

Only a real political solution to the conflict can provide peace and security to both Israelis and Palestinians


US involvement in the Gaza carnage: Protests in Tel Aviv - and in Boston, Chicago, and Los Angeles / Urgent appeal to trade unionists

Food Not Bombs: Rally at the US Embassy in Tel Aviv! No to U.S-produced massacre, weapons shipment, and diplomatic impunity!

Tomorrow, Friday March 3, 12:00.

American and Israeli citizens will gather tomorrow, Friday March 3, at the US Embassy (Hayarkon St, Tel Aviv) to demand the US stop arming Israel and end the massacre. Last week over 100 Palestinians were killed and over 750 injured after Israeli troops opened fire at a convoy of food trucks in Gaza City during what has been called the “Flour Massacre.” Since then, the US air dropped food into Gaza - all while continuing to fund the military assault, ship weapons, and provide total diplomatic impunity. The US dropped a mere 38,000 meals - enough only for one meal for just 1.6% of the population.

Join us to demand the US stop arming Israel and a ceasefire now.


An appropriate and praiseworthy response to the carnage: Trade unionists refusing to load munitions for Israel's war in Gaza


Joint Statement

The United States has a long-standing policy of providing Israel with massive amounts of military aid (which incidentally provides enormous profits to the American armament industries). This was greatly expanded and intensified since the outbreak of the current war in Gaza.

The constant flow of munitions from the United States - and to a lesser degree, from other Western countries - is completely indispensable for Israel to sustain its war. Israel's own armament industry could in no way provide for a massive bombing campaign, in which Israel in a few months threw far more bombs on a very narrow and overcrowded strip of land than what the US itself did over years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Supplying arms to Israel has been traditionally justified as "helping Israel defend itself" and anyone objecting to it was castigated as "wanting Israelis to be exposed to danger"'. However, the war which Israel launched - ostensibly as a response to the deadly Hamas attack on Israeli communities and military outposts on October 7, 2023 - was soon revealed to have not the slightest resemblance to any kind of "self defense", and it was never meant to be such.

Rather, it is a completely unrestrained rampage, an orgy of killing and wanton destruction.

Under a constant barrage of enormous one-ton bombs - of which a constant supply is provided to Israel by the boatload - schools, universities, Mosques (and some Churches), libraries, public buildings of any kind and most of the private houses in the Gaza Strip were destroyed or greatly damaged. The city of Gaza was left in ruins, as were many smaller towns and villages. Thirty thousand Palestinians were killed, including more than ten thousand children, and the death toll continues to rise. A million and half people were driven out of their homes, to live in horrifying conditions under the open sky.

The International Court in the Hague, the highest tribunal set up to deal with violations of International Law, met to hear South Africa's charge that Israel's acts in the Gaza Strip may culminate in actual genocide - the most terrible of all crimes. Sixteen out of eighteen judges - prominent jurists of various countries and backgrounds - were unanimous in taking very seriously the danger of genocide in the Gaza Strip.

Specifically, The International Court found it plausible that Israel’s acts could amount to genocide and issued six provisional measures: ordering Israel to take all steps within its power to prevent genocidal acts, including preventing and punishing incitement to genocide, ensuring aid and services reach Palestinians under siege in Gaza, and preserving evidence of crimes committed in Gaza.

The response of Israeli civil and military leaders was to make preparations for an all-out assault on the city of Rafah - the very place to which Israel had driven, in earlier stages of the war, a million and half Gazans displaced from their homes. Israeli warplanes continue to pound Raffa, the southern town of the Gaza Strip with bunker-busting bombs. Pleas for a ceasefire continue to be ignored by Israel. Indeed, Israeli leaders persist in making preparations for a massive ground assault on Rafah, even though Israel's own allies warn that this may lead to a terrible carnage and an untold humanitarian disaster. Yet President Biden's making such dire predictions has not made him stop the constant supply of arms and munitions to Israel.

It was under these terrible circumstances that the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU) issued an urgent appeal calling on "trade unions in relevant industries" to refuse to build weapons destined for Israel as well as refusing to transport such weapons.

Some unions in various countries did respond to that call. For example, five Belgian transport unions issued a joint statement saying they were refusing to load or unload arms shipments heading to the war zone, and the Barcelona dock workers’ union announced that it "would not permit activity, in our port, of ships containing war materiel" and called for a ceasefire in Gaza.

We the undersigned, Israeli citizens and activists in political organizations, who are shocked and horrified by the acts of the Israeli government and armed forces, and who want to see a future of brotherhood between Israelis and Palestinians, regard the above acts by Belgian and Catalan trade unions as an appropriate and praiseworthy response to the terrible carnage in Gaza. We call on all other trade unions worldwide to emulate that example, refuse to build weapons intended for Israel and to load or unload such weapons.

Adam Keller for Gush Shalom Yossi Schwartz for the ISL, RCIT section in Israel/ Occupied Palestine


---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Eva, IfNotNow

A large group of people gathered in the rain in front of Boston's South Station, holding banners reading ''Our Safety is Intertwined / No Money for Massacre'' ''Thriving Future for All'' and ''Biden: Lasting Ceasefire Now''

IfNotNow Boston just rallied in front of South Station to demand a lasting ceasefire.

Add your name to our open letter to President Biden: No Money for Massacre.

Dear All,

Tonight, President Biden will deliver his State of the Union address. But first, we have a message for him.

This morning, IfNotNow leaders rallied in Boston, Chicago, and Los Angeles to demand a lasting ceasefire, a full hostage exchange, and an end to Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza.

In Boston, over 50 Jews and allies were arrested for demanding a ceasefire in front of South Station. In Chicago, IfNotNow leaders and Palestinian, Jewish, and multiracial partner organizations are currently holding a 24-hour vigil to address the “State of the Genocide.” And in Los Angeles, we just dropped a massive Ceasefire Now banner on the 110 Freeway.

We need to keep up the pressure on Biden before his speech tonight — and we need you to join us.

If you haven’t already, add your name to our open letter demanding President Biden support a lasting ceasefire and refuse to fund Israel’s assault on Gaza.

https://secure.everyaction.com/ddP6IwxFdk2nGbjb5G7MHw2?ms=3724EmailSOTU&sourceid=1051385&emci=6c205bc3-b8dc-ee11-85fb-002248223794&emdi=81205bc3-b8dc-ee11-85fb-002248223794&ceid=16811480

When you sign the letter, we’ll make sure you get plugged into opportunities for action near you. Together, we’ll be bringing this message directly to Biden, our elected officials, and extremist organizations like AIPAC that are supporting or enabling Israel’s assault on Gaza.

It’s been heartening seeing such a groundswell of support for a ceasefire this week, from hundreds of thousands of “uncommitted” voters on Super Tuesday to dozens of protests around the country.

But this is still an urgent crisis. Israel has killed over 30,000 Palestinians in the past five months, and more than two million Palestinians face starvation, disease, and permanent displacement. And in the past week, the Israeli military opened fire — in at least two separate occasions — on Gazans gathering for aid.

We cannot be silent as President Biden and our elected leaders fund and enable these atrocities. We must raise our voices and say: No Money For Massacre. Ceasefire NOW.

Before Biden’s State of the Union address tonight, can you sign the open letter from U.S. Jews demanding a lasting ceasefire now?

Thank you for all you do,

Eva, IfNotNow

We continue to put all our resources into actions to respond to this moment.

IfNotNow Movement 1629 K Street Suite 300 Washington, DC 20006 United States


You are invited to take part in a Jewish-Arab joint demonstration demanding an immediate end to Israel’s war of annihilation, destruction, killing of children, and starvation in Gaza.

Saturday, March 9th 2024, in Umm al -Fahm

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1eWOLsvzD9DiGVHZNLTHjT6-D2QN-c0jvoFskfOG7p3k/edit


No more sorrow, destruction, destruction, despair, and hate! We will march in Tel Aviv, calling "Only peace brings security!"

4 months of sorrow, destruction, destruction, despair, and hate. It's time to end the war and understand that only peace will bring security. It's time for the public, Jews and Arabs, women and men, to go out to the streets and demand the government to stop the madness and turn to another way: a way of a political agreement, of real security for all residents and solutions instead of more troubles and violence.

We have arrived at a historic crossroads and it's time to choose: peace or eternal war, and this is the moment when we the public of Israel have to go out to the streets and demand peace. Join us on Thursday February 29th at 19:00, for a rally and march: Only Shalom will bring security to Tel Aviv. We'll meet at King George on the corner of Ben Zion Avenue.


Is there still a chance to break the cycle of revenge and bloodshed?

By Adam Keller

What made Hamas launch its devastating attack on October 7, precipitating the most terrible episode in this country’s century of conflict and bloodshed? The full answer might never be known, but there are at least two obvious answers.

First, Hamas leader Yihya Sinwar, himself released in a previous prisoner exchange, vowed to obtain the release of his fellow prisoners, still held in Israel. An obvious motive for October 7 was to capture Israelis who might be exchanged for the Palestinian prisoners. Secondly, in the months before October, the US oversaw an accelerated diplomatic effort to achieve a peace agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia– without Israel being required to end its occupation of the Palestinians. This would have been taken – quite correctly – as the Arab World abandoning the Palestinians to a never-ending Israeli oppression. Hamas was obviously motivated to strike a powerful blow and demonstrate that the Palestinians cannot be ignored and passed over, and that if ignored they have the ability to cause very big trouble.

However,Hamas could have easily achieved both aims simply by capturing the Israeli armypo sitions along the border and taking dozens of captive soldiers off to Gaza –without needing to overwhelm Israeli civilian communities and perpetrate a terrible series of massacres and atrocities. In fact, from the pure military point of view Hamas had shown considerable skill – planning and implementing without hitch a complicated operation involving thousands of fighters, utterly deceiving the famed Israeli intelligence and achieving a complete strategic surprise, breaching by simple and cheap means the hi-tech Israeli border defenses in which billions of Dollars had been  invested…

In other circumstances, Hamas might have won the grudging respect of generals and strategists – except that they had also shown themselves to be major war criminals, particularly brutal and cruel. Why did they? Here, too, the answer – simple and cruel - is not difficult to find: revenge. Whether or not it was planned in advance, the Hamas fighters who for a day conquered a slice of Israeli territory got carried away into an orgy of rape, torture and massacre. The motive, very clearly,was to get their revenge on Israel and on the Israelis.

They had 75 years of grudges against Israel and accounts to settle, starting with the expulsion of 1948 and the destruction of hundreds of Palestinian villages and the construction of beautiful Jewish kibbutzim on their site, and going on to what Israel did to Gaza in the past twenty years, a suffocating siege and bombings and destruction and  killings every few years. There were thousands of Gazans (not all of them from Hamas by the way) with very many years of accumulated bitter grudges against Israel and just one single day in which to get their revenge. So they wanted to make the most of this one day, pack as much cruel revenge into the few hours they had before being expelled from Israeli territory - and they very terribly managed that, all too well.

Ironically, Hamas happened to have invaded some of the most left-wing and peace-minded communities in Israel. In the indiscriminate killings, several well known Israeli peace activists perished and others were taken off to captivity in Gaza...

Well,where do we go from here? Obviously, the first stage is Israel's own revenge which is truly terrible. Death and destruction rained down on Gaza, destroying the city more thoroughly than Dresden was destroyed in 1945; 25,000 Palestinians dead so far, nearly half of them children, some twenty times the number of Israelis which Hamas killed on October 7. Nearly two million people uprooted from their homes to live as refugees under the open sky, in terrible hunger and rampant disease. 29,000 bombs were thrown on Gaza in three months –many of them one-ton monsters - while the US had used 4000 bombs in five years of Iraq fighting.

Very many Gazans – hungry, destitute, bereaved of dear ones torn to bits by relentless Israeli bombing, knowing that death might descend on them from the sky without warning – must be at this very moment vowing new vows of revenge against Israel. And they will find a way to get this revenge, sooner or later, and then Israel will again take its own revenge, and so this cycle of hatred and bloodshed might roll on and on,for decades or even centuries. Unless we can break this cycle and get peace and reconciliation instead. Can we?

Previous to October 7, Israel was sharply polarized over the Netanyahu Government’s plan to implement “judicial reforms” which would have crippled the Supreme Court and allowed the government to rule without restraint. Tens of thousands of protesters filled the streets, determined to block at any price the government’s plans.Tensions rose to the point where an Israeli civil war seemed an increasingly plausible scenario. And then – in just a few hours, Hamas totally changed the Israeli public agenda. The Israelis’ simple and highly understandable reaction was a very strong and widespread call for National Unity. We have been divided,ferociously confronted each other, and the Enemy used our divisions to attack us and kill us indiscriminately. Let us then forget our quarrels and divisions and unite, Left and Right, to fight and utterly destroy this terrible Enemy!

In the first month after October 7, the whole of Israel was in the grip of a war frenzy such as I have never seen. Walking the streets of Tel Aviv and everywhere the same ever-present slogan: “Together We Will Win!”, “Together We Will Win!” , “Together We Will Win!”. Victory! Victory! Victory! Victory!!! Very reminiscent of the nightmare atmosphere in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four. “Together We Will Win!” in enormous big banners spanning house fronts and in small signs on shop windows and on the doors of private homes and in hand made signs made by very devoted young children who lovingly drew every letter of the slogan in a different color of their crayons.

Israelis - including some normally sane and decent people – were full of blind hatred and indiscriminate thirst for the blood of Gazans. I can't blame them too much, revenge is a very basic aspect of human nature – but it was very difficult to endure. A few weeks ago a nice old lady which I know for a long time, a cultured lady who likes Classical Music and often shows the photos of her sweet grandchildren, calmly expressed the opinion that, since "Gazan children are brought up to become terrorists" it would be a good idea to kill them already in the cradle, it will save the trouble of killing them as grown terrorists fifteen or twenty years hence. I did not get up there and then and I did not tell her I did not want to see her ever again, though the thought of doing so did come into my mind. No, I hotly debated with her for about ten minutes and then we moved to more neutral subjects and continued sipping our tea for another two hours and then we parted still as friends. Though I did feel tainted by it, as if I had betrayed the Gazans and became a minor accomplice to war crimes. But cutting myself off from ordinary people and finding refuge in a cocoon of the few people who share my opinions and feelings would not be the right thing to do, either.

This friendly and monstrous old lady was fairly typical. The atrocities of Hamas have totally blinded Israelis to the pain of Gazans. The Israeli media, endless reiterating the horrors of October 7, hardly ever showed the terrible destruction and carnage in Gaza. Israelis did not know of it and did not want to know – except for the all too large fraction of the public who did know of it and were deliriously happy with it and wanted ever more death and destruction visited on the Gazans.

For the first time which I can remember, there were made specific and explicit public calls for genocide, assertions that there were “no innocents in Gaza”, that all two million Gazans were Hamas supporters and all of them deserved to die – or at the very least, ethnically cleansed  and chased off  into the Sinai Desert. Indeed, but for General Sisi of Egypt making it crystal clear that he would not tolerate Gazans being forced into Egyptian territory, this ethnic cleansing of Gaza might have already been an accomplished fact.

Calls for killing, for mass killing and ethnic cleansing, even for genocide, can nowadays be made with impunity. It is those who call for compassion who are severely punished. Hundreds of people who dared express sympathy for the innocent victims in Gaza and mourn the dead children were stigmatized as “Hamas supporters” and ostracized, some being arrested by police or losing their jobs.

In the early months, anti-war demonstrations were very few and small, and only very courageous people dared attend them. The police, controlled by a notorious extreme right minister,announced that no protests against the war would be allowed, and used extreme violence to enforce this ban.

There was one loophole which was available to us: demonstrations by the families of the Israelis kidnapped by Hamas. We actively participated in them, though these were not anti-war demonstrations as such. At least to begin with, the families reiterated their support for the war and their admiration for “our brave boys fighting in Gaza” and only added that the government must do all it can to bring the captives back. Nevertheless, it was clear to see that there was some contradiction between the call to bring back the captives “at all costs” and the call to utterly destroy Hamas “at all costs”. The contradiction became more and more obvious, especially after a tragic incident in which three Israeli captives in Gaza, who managed to escape their Hamas guards and tried to approach an Israeli army unit, were shot to death by trigger-happy Israeli soldiers.

By now there are explicit anti-war statements by some of the Gaza captives’ families, and the protests by the families have gathered enormous momentum and became a true mass movement, drawing crowds in the tens of thousands. There is a growing public debate about whether or not to accept a prisoner exchange deal, which would bring back the Israeli hostages from Gaza but also include a prolonged ceasefire and the release of Palestinian prisoners considered "dangerous terrorists".

The general atmosphere is gradually changing.The war in Gaza seems long and interminable, the crushing of Hamas seems a very faraway goal and the army chief say it would take the whole of 2024 and possibly longer – and every day the names and photos of ever more soldiers killed in Gaza are published. So the “gung-ho” war enthusiasm is increasingly evaporating. Though many “Victory!” signs and placards are still to be seen in the streets,they seem rather tattered, and when one falls down it is often not replaced.

The world – including the US, Israel’s big friend - has become aware that there is a very big problem here in the Middle East, which must be treated and cannot be allowed to fester. The statements  of President Biden – who initially gave full support to the Gaza war and supplied plenty of ammunition and bombs – are becoming more explicit in calling for the Two State Solution to be implemented in the here and now - much to Netanyahu's displeasure.

And meanwhile, a true Israeli anti-war movement emerged from the darkness of persecution. After some hesitation by the judges, the Supreme Court in Jerusalem did come down on the side of basic civil rights and militant anti-war demonstrations are now a possibility – thought still harassed by police and far smaller than in earlier wars, such as the invasion of Lebanon in 1982.

As I write (second half of January),two heartening anti-war demonstrations have taken place, one in Tel Aviv and the other in Haifa, both drawing thousands of participants. Most touching is that in both, the speakers included people who personally suffered the Hamas attacks on October 7, and saw their dear ones being killed. No one could have blamed such people for being bitter and seeking revenge. But to the contrary,they made very heartwarming and touching speeches, explicitly rejecting revenge and strongly reiterating themes of peace and reconciliation. In two places – Cinematheque Square in Tel Aviv and Paris Square in Haifa – such inspiring and heartening speeches were made, like a cool and refreshing blow of wind after the furnace of blind hatred in which we lived over the past months.

Dare we hope that this is a new beginning? Time will tell.


The above article is due to be published in German in the forthcoming issue of  Friedensforum (“Peace Forum”),  a magazine of the German peace movement. Christine Schweitzer of Friedensforum  gracipusly gave consent for me to freely spread the English-language text.

FRIEDENSForum Zeitschrift des Netzwerk Friedenskooperative, 53111 Bonn, Tel. 0228-69 29 04, Fax 0228-69 29 06 Absenderin: Dr. Christine Schweitzer, Tel 040-655 90 940 (privat) c.schweitzer@friedenskooperative.de https://www.friedenskooperative.de/selbstdarstellung-friedensforum


310 Israelis support South Africa's lawsuit against Israel

310 Israelis support South Africa's lawsuit against Israel at the International Court in the Hague

310 Israeli citizens (as of Sunday evening) signed a petition addressed to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, expressing their support for the lawsuit filed by South Africa against the State of Israel. The petition read:


We, Israeli citizens, write to express our support for South Africa’s proceedings before the ICJ claiming that Israel’s conduct in Gaza violates its obligations under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The materials that emerge from South Africa’s application are horrific and credible. Israel is taking systematic steps to wipe out the population of Gaza, to starve them, to abuse them and to displace them. It implements a policy of erasing life possibilities, and Tsher leads to genocide. It systematically kills large sections of the population, leading academics, writers, doctors, medical staff, journalists and ordinary citizens.

We join the double concern expressed in the proceedings that Israel violates its obligations by committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, and by failing to prevent the genocide, including by failing to hold senior Israeli officials and others accountable for their direct and public incitement to genocide. We also join the applicants requesting a series of “provisional measures,” including that Israel immediately suspend its military operations in Gaza.


Initiators of the opetition include social worker Lior Kay, as well as Dr. Anat Matar and peace activist Yonathan Pollak. Lior Kay says: "Shortly after launching the petition we already got hundreds of signatures, and more keep coming in. We know that in the public mood prevailing nowadays in Israel, our initiative may provoke anger and outrage and we may face oppressive measures by the authorities, as was done against many Israeli citizens who expressed opposition to the war or even simple compassion for the many dead of Gaza. Still, we are bound to take this conscientious step, in face of the atrocities perpetrated every day and even every hour by our country.

As noted also in South Africa's suit, the horrors perpetrated by Hamas on October 7 offer no justification whatsoever for the complete destruction of the Gaza Strip, the killing of 22,000 people including thousands of children, and the expulsion two million people from their homes to live under the open sky in terrible conditions of hunger and rampant disease."

Contact: Dr. Anat Matar: +972-52-8560001

https://chng.it/PJVRfR86W4


Mourning the dead, calling for ceasefire and an end to the cycle of violence

Israelis gather in Jerusalem, in Independence Park outside of the US Embassy, to mourn those killed in Gaza and to call for a ceasefire and an end to the cycle of violence.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

December 22, 2023

CONTACTS:

Oriel Eisner: +972 58-789-5478, orieleisner@gmail.com

Sahar Vardi: +972 54-568-3419, saharmvardi@gmail.com

Jerusalem: This morning (Dec 22nd), around 100 Israelis gathered outside of the US Embassy in Jerusalem to mourn those killed in Gaza and to call for an immediate ceasefire. The vigil included a recorded message from a Palestinian who fled Gaza, written memorials about those who have been killed, poetry, music by a Gazan who was killed, and more.

“The death toll will only continue to rise if no action is taken. From our devastation for those already killed, we demand that this war end.” Maya Rosen, a participant in the vigil.

The vigil comes at a time when Israel is severely repressing and punishing any recognition of the suffering in Gaza or of the Palestinians who have been killed since October 7th. This most directly impacts Palestinians who have sought to mourn their family or friends, or who generally dared to speak out about the atrocities committed in Gaza. Many Palestinians across Israel have been arrested, threatened, and forced out of work for social media posts or statements. Israeli Jews have also faced repression in this crackdown.

“In the current environment, there is no space to speak to the suffering, loss, and deprivation experienced in Gaza since October 7th, and the nearly 20,000 people, the majority of whom are women and children, who have lost their lives,” said Itamar Israeli, another participant in the vigil.

Those gathered came to express their pain about all victims who have perished in this war -- Palestinians and Israelis -- and to demand an immediate ceasefire, at the doorstep of the US Embassy and down the street from Benjamin Netanyahu’s residence.

In coordination with the vigil in Jerusalem, some 25 parallel vigils are planned across the world this weekend, including in New York, Chicago, Boston, Pittsburgh, Toronto, London, and Zurich.

Statements from attendees:

Erez Bleicher, from the vigil’s opening statement: “We are here to publicly grieve the 20,000 Palestinians lost in the Gaza Strip, to personally mourn our friends killed in the airstrikes, to bring their living memories and the fact of their death to the doors of those responsible, and demand a permanent ceasefire now. Joe Biden and Benjamin Netanyahu we are standing in direct sight of the US embassy in Jerusalem and meters from the Prime Ministers’ house because we hold you and your governments directly responsible for the 20,000 Palestinians killed and the ongoing mass expulsion of Gazan. We are here determined to publicly honor their memory and in the hope that this memorial can be even a fragile shelter for the many thousands of Gazans who have been lost. We demand the right to publicly mourn them as we simultaneously grieve Israeli members of our communities killed on October 7th. We will not allow our profound grief for the 1200 Israelis who have been killed to justify more death. We know that the only way to end this collective anguish is to build a future of mutual prosperity beyond occupation, closure, airstrikes, ground invasions, and massacre.”

Abigail Szor: “There are no winners in war. I am here today because there are names, faces, and stories to those killed in Gaza. I have friends there who have lost many relatives in this horrible and painful war. My good friend lost her mother, and I am speaking here, because she cannot speak, because her words would endanger her life. The idea and the policy according to which it’s possible to determine the fate of an entire people, to seek revenge, to kill and be killed and through this bring victory is flawed and mistaken. The choice stands before us whether to continue to sacrifice many lives and to bring more death and loss or to agree to a political solution which is the only way we can ensure true and stable justice, security, and calm. Beyond political faith, what guides me, perhaps more than ever, is my friendship with my friend from Gaza. This alone is sufficient to unequivocally make clear to me that this reality need not be our destiny. This war is terrible and will not bring about a solution or victory for anyone. My only hope is that it ends immediately. We have to imagine and create a better reality in the memory of those who are no longer with us and for those who are still alive.”

Yossef Mekyton: “Khalil Abu Yahia, my dear friend, a determined optimist and one of the most decent people I have ever known, was murdered, along with his entire family, in southern Gaza by an Israeli bomb. But right now the political repression is so extreme that even a simple expression of grief over a Palestinian friend who suffered so much and was murdered is cause to be fired, interrogated, judicially attacked, arrested, and fined. A society which doesn’t have room for grief and sorrow over the loss of life – even if it’s the life of someone who is not ‘your own’ – is rotten to its core. I will cry over Khalil for many years to come. Today I am taking my stand to do so also publicly, and politically.”

Oneg Ben Dror: “With every day that the massacre in Gaza continues, a part of our humanity dies, too. Palestinians are being slaughtered, imprisoned, severely tortured, and hunted down simply for speaking out, expressing grief, or attempting to maintain their livelihood. It is our collective responsibility to do everything within our power to stop the genocide, ethnic cleansing, and forced displacement of the Palestinian people. Do not acquiesce to the horrific dehumanisation of Palestinian lives. We all must act now.”

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Stand with us in protest of the Gaza onslaught, of the killing, the repression and silencing; and for the demands of an immediate cease-fire and the release of all detainees, prisoners, captives and hostages.

This Friday, December 15th 2023 At 12:00 Near Beit-Ha-Qranot, at the corner of Balfour and Herzl street, Haifa

The Gaza strip Israel has renewed its attack on the, the like of which this country has never know. Hundreds and thousands are killed, joining the ranks of the tens of thousands whose life was cut short among the smoldering ruins, as hundreds of thousands of Gazans and hundreds of thousands of refugees, twice and thrice-dispossessed, are fleeing from corner to corner of their prison, damned by the cruel occupier to enter a winter with no shelter, no regular access to food, water and medical care.

And on the other side of the wall: A fist clenches the lives of Palestinians, not only in the West Bank and also within the pre-1967 Green Line. The Israeli government has loosened more of the restraints on the police, and thus the wave of hatred and the thirst for revenge becomes a wave of snitching, questionings, hearings, denunciations and dismissals - the ripples of which now reaching the non-Arab opponents of the attack.

We cannot stay silent in the face of all this. We will not accept the diktat to keep our heads down, to look away, to mind our personal business, enabling the insidious project of a false image of Hebrew unity and Arab silence.


First Tel Aviv Anti-War Demonstration Reveals the Limits on Protest in Today’s Israel

The first anti-war demonstration in Tel Aviv since October 7 offered an important look at the current state of the protest movement in Israel, as well as how the government will seek to repress it.

https://scheerpost.com/2023/11/20/first-tel-aviv-anti-war-demonstration-reveals-the-limits-on-protest-in-todays-israel/

By Yoav Haifawi / Mondoweiss

Since October 7, Israeli police have implemented full dictatorship from the river to the sea. This has included preventing any anti-war protest within the Green Line and filling the prisons with ‘freedom-of-expression’ prisoners. Today, November 18, after a month and 11 days of massive bloodshed, there was the first anti-war demonstration in Tel Aviv. I joined the protest mostly because I felt obliged to support the call for immediate ceasefire and call for an “all for all” captives and prisoners’ exchange. But I also wanted to assess what this demonstration teaches us about the current policies of the repressive Israeli regime and about the protest movement. Court ruling allows demonstration

Hadash (“The Democratic Front for Peace and Equality,” organized around the Israeli Communist Party) applied for a license to demonstrate in Tel Aviv against the war and for a prisoners’ exchange. Their initial application was refused by the police, which suggested they hold a meeting in a closed venue instead. Then Hadash, with the help of ACRI (The Association for Civil Rights in Israel), appealed to the Bagatz (Hebrew acronym for “High Court of Justice”), which finally forced the police to allow the demonstration.

As I reported before, the same Bagatz, headed by the same judge, Yitzhak Amit, opposed a previous appeal by Hadash to hold anti-war demonstrations in Sakhnin and Umm al-Fahm. In their new appeal, in order to receive the license, the applicants explained the differences between the previous demonstration that was denied and this new request: “Sakhnin and Umm al-Fahm are not the center of Tel Aviv, a demonstration against the war in Gaza is not a demonstration that calls for the return of the captives, the north and beach districts are not the Tel Aviv district, and the appeal there was rejected for its specific circumstances… the verdict in this case strengthen the duty of the police to enable the holding of the demonstration in our case, because of the distinct difference between the cases.”

On ACRI’s website you can read in Hebrew the protocol of the deliberations in the Bagatz. I must say that I was astonished by the details of the discussion and how much it reveals about the political interplay.

Judge Amit himself asked the police, “Was there any big demonstration from this side till now?”

The commander of Tel Aviv police, Peretz Amar, answered: “No, they have behaved well, they did not even request one.”

Then Judge Amit explained: “They claim that they have a feeling, and the police should make extra effort. This side of the political map did not yet have its day. Because we disallowed the demonstration in Sakhnin, we heard about your lack of personnel, etc. Because of that… we must give this side the feeling that it is not deprived.”

Later in the discussion, when the organizers almost despaired from the police restrictions and suggested postponing for the next week, Judge Amit stressed his point: “It is very important that the demonstration will take place, for us to remove the cloud that we don’t allow the Arab sector to demonstrate and this side of the political map.”

In the end, under pressure from the court, the organizers and the police agreed on the location of the demonstration, in a public park between Yaffa (Jaffa) and Tel Aviv, and to limit the number of participants to seven hundred. I could not avoid thinking that compensating for the silencing of two million Arabs by allowing a muted demonstration in a corner of Tel Aviv is really emblematic of the “Jewish and Democratic” state. Police limit protest message

When we arrived at the site of the demonstration, the designated section of the park was all closed by police railings. There was just a small opening, and each one willing to enter was checked by the police.

Local Call‘s report about the demonstration was titled “At an anti-war demonstration, the police forbade the waving of anti-war signs.” They went on to report what banners were refused by the police: “Massacre does not justify massacre,” “Political solution,” “Bibi should be imprisoned,” “No to Apartheid,” “Food instead of bombs,” and “Return the captives, stop the revenge.” They also tried to prevent people with t-shirts with the phrase “Looking at the occupation in the eyes” (a very mild expression) from entering, claiming that even using the word “occupation” constituted incitement, but after a long argument, they let them in. I must admit that the police censorship was not hermetic, and similar signs were later seen in the demonstration.

After more than a month of intense oppression, speaking the truth terrified everybody. Organizers pleaded with the participants not to raise any flags and not to use any slogans that might provoke the police. This meant the Palestinian flag was forbidden. A single demonstrator with an Israeli flag and a sign calling for a ceasefire walked on the margins of the demonstration, and nobody dared to talk with him. Speakers call for ceasefire, prisoner exchange

If we could demonstrate safely in Palestinian towns and villages and Arab neighborhoods in mixed cities, you would see tens of thousands coming out in solidarity with Gaza’s people. However, the police are terrorizing the Arab population, and many people believed that this demonstration in Tel Aviv would be attacked even though it was permitted. Besides, there is a real danger of lynch mobs in the Jewish areas, especially as the Ben-Gvir police distributed tens of thousands of weapons to local militias. The militia in Tel Aviv is headed by a right-wing rapper called “The Shade,” well known for organizing attacks against peace demonstrations during previous wars.

There were about five hundred brave demonstrators who dared to gather in the park. Haaretz, by the way, always under-reporting leftist protest, headlined their report “Tens demonstrated in Tel Aviv.” About 80% of the demonstrators were Jews. It was all held in Hebrew, and the content was adjusted to challenge but not break with the current awful mood in the Israeli Jewish society.

The main demands of the demonstration were immediate ceasefire and the return of all captives, POWS, and prisoners through a comprehensive exchange deal, “all for all.” These are the most essential demands in the current situation, and they made this demonstration important.

There were different positions among the speakers, but none of them confronted the current situation of daily genocide as it is. Most speakers tried to create some artificial “balancing” and parallelism between the occupation and the occupied, stressing the suffering on both sides and calling to keep civilians out of harm’s way. I do not blame them. In today’s Israel, any position hinting that the struggle against the occupation is legitimate may land you in jail.

On the positive side, there is a continuous shift in the political discourse. Many speakers, Arabs and Jews, talked about the fact that there are millions of Arabs and Jews living between the river and the sea and that the only solution is to have full human rights and equality for all.

For many decades, the Israeli “peace camp” thought that its role was to be a pressure group within the “Israeli side” to promote a “peace process” with the Palestinian side. Now, almost everybody is aware that there is no peace process and that there should be a united struggle against the single Apartheid system.

Even though the demonstration was organized by Hadash, Sami Abu Shehadeh, the leader of the National Democratic Alliance, came to take part. The organizers spontaneously added him to the list of speakers, giving a boost to the most needed unity in these hard times, overcoming painful divisions that resulted from the splits in the last Knesset elections.

Abu Shehadeh mentioned at the beginning of his speech that the location of our demonstration was on the land of the destroyed village of Manshiya; many of its descendants are now refugees in Gaza and bombed by the Israeli army.

The last speaker was Mohammad Barakeh, The head of the Follow Up Committee, the united leadership of the 1948 Palestinian public. He started his words by mentioning that his family was expelled from Saffuriya, and most of them are now refugees outside Palestine. While lamenting suffering on both sides of the conflict, he mentioned that more than a hundred thousand Palestinians lost their lives before October 7. As the illusion of a state-level political solution is fading, the narrative is returning to the basics of human existence. The fascists in the government and in the streets

Being an irredeemable optimist, and as there are not many encouraging facts on the ground just now, I try to raise morale by reminding myself how many things were even worse not so long time ago.

In 2014, while Israel was massacring people in Gaza at an unprecedented rate (vastly surpassed in the current “round”), Hadash tried to organize an Arab-Jewish anti-war demonstration in Carmel Center, in a Jewish area in Haifa. There was a nationwide fascist mobilization to prevent them, and the brave peace demonstrators were chased all around. It was sheer luck that nobody died. Some of the activists who participated in today’s protest were still terrified by that experience. At the time, I published an eyewitness testimony in my blog.

Now, the fascist mob is in the government and the media, but they did not attack us with the same numbers and the same ferocity. There were, maybe, between one to two hundred fascists demonstrating around us, and they were kept, mostly, at some distance by the police. When we finally dispersed and were supposed to go through a safe passage northward, the police disappeared and allowed the fascists, many of whom were armed, to harass and curse the demonstrators. They especially concentrated on Mohammad Barakeh and blocked his car to prevent him from driving away. But, finally, the police intervened and let him go.


"A pivotal, historic moment which requires urgent leadership on the part of the international community, especially the United States"

Until tomorrow (Monday) you can join the following petition, addressed to President Biden. [Signatures to angela@jahalin.org - either names or digital signatures]

Dear Mr. President,

We are a group of Palestinian and Israeli peace activists, human rights defenders and development workers, working together for many years, trying to find a way forwards for both peoples, and a way out of this never-ending, but always deteriorating, hell.

We’d like to thank you for your empathy and leadership, especially following the atrocities of October 7th, which have traumatised so many. But we also know that if the current “status quo” continues, or reverts to the previous situation, levels of violence, suffering and calls for “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” revenge will only rise. The Israeli occupation of the Golan Heights and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, the inhuman siege and blockade of Gaza, nightly child arrests, home demolitions as part of forcible displacement policy, violence of settlers against Palestinians (encouraged by Min. Itamar Ben-Gvir’s instructions to the police not to act against it, and his distribution of US-manufactured weapons to those settler militias) must be stopped. Otherwise, as Mahatma Gandhi predicted, we shall all be blind and toothless. And none of us free.

We believe fighting terrorism based on fear and militarism, and without a political plan, will inevitably lead to increased terror, as we have seen so many times in the past – with definitions of terror often depending which “side” you happen to be. It also leads to further radicalisation, particularly of marginalised communities. Whereas promotion of peace is based on hope, on a better future, on healing, reconciliation, recognition of The Other, truth, accountability and justice. These are our greatest weapons against terror and violence, as can be seen with Israel’s successful peace and security agreements of the past, all of which still stand strong.

This is the urgent need of this moment: a pivotal, historic moment which requires urgent leadership on the part of the international community, especially the United States. The impunity and exceptionalism must be stopped, so that resistance to it also be curbed, even if that requires sanctions such as an arms embargo. Because the ripple effect is already impacting other nations, whether by increased anti-Semitism, polarisation, hate crimes, a breakdown in the multilateral system, disrespect for international law (especially international humanitarian law) or even cohesion among international allies.

We see the current onslaught by Israel on Gaza – with its horrendously disproportionate toll