The anti-war left makes inroads in Israel: An interview with Standing Together’s Uri Weltmann
by Uri Weltmann and Federico Fuentes
Omdim be’Yachad-Naqef Ma’an, or Standing Together, is a Jewish-Arab social movement in Israel that organises against racism and occupation, and for equality and social justice. Federico Fuentes interviewed Standing Together’s national field organiser Uri Weltmann to discuss the growing peace movement inside Israel, how activists are confronting far-right extremists seeking to disrupt humanitarian aid going to the Gaza Strip, and the left’s recent electoral breakthroughs.
How has the peace movement inside Israel developed since October 7? Is the movement succeeding in shifting broader public opinion and undermining Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's war efforts? And what role is Standing Together playing within the movement?
After October 7, Israeli police limited people’s right to protest and exercise their civil liberties. It was nearly impossible to get a permit to demonstrate. That is why, throughout October and November, most of the actions taken by the peace movement — including Standing Together — were not necessarily marches, pickets and rallies. Instead, we hung posters in the streets saying “Only Peace Will Bring Security” and organised emergency Jewish-Arab conferences in two dozen towns and cities across Israel, where we raised the demand for an alternative path to the government’s.
Only in December did openings arise to organise larger protests. Standing Together brought hundreds to a rally in Haifa on December 16, and then a further thousand people to a rally in Tel Aviv on December 28. In January, we had our first march against the war. A coalition of more than 30 peace movements and organisations mobilised thousands of people.
The latest, and biggest, demonstrations to date occurred in early May, involving Palestinian and Jewish speakers and thousands marching in Tel-Aviv under the banner “Stop the War, Bring Back the Hostages”. One of the speakers was Shachar Mor (Zahiru), whose nephew is being held captive in Gaza by Hamas. He strongly criticised the cynicism of Netanyahu and his allies, and called for an end to the war in order to bring back the hostages. Avivit John — a survivor of the massacre in Kibbutz Beeri, where many innocent civilians were murdered on October 7 — told the crowd that while she lost friends and family in the Hamas attack, she did not want us as a society to lose our humanity as well. She called for an end to the war, recognition of the shared humanity of Israelis and Palestinians alike, and to bring back the hostages.
Alongside these protests, there has also been a broader movement calling for the return of the hostages, which over time has developed along explicit anti-war lines. In the first months after October 7, families and friends of the hostages organised demonstrations to raise awareness of their plight, with a strategy of lobbying the government. However, two months ago this movement shifted to the left when it linked up with anti-Netanyahu organisations. They publicly announced that they had concluded that Netanyahu and his government were an obstacle to a ceasefire agreement that could return the hostages alive. Instead, they said, what is needed is mass protest to bring down his government and force early elections.
A few weeks ago, when negotiations between Israel and Hamas seemed on the brink of an agreement, this protest movement openly declared that they supported ending the war in exchange for returning the hostages. They held one of their mass Saturday protests in Tel Aviv — attended by tens of thousands — under the slogan “Hostages, not Rafah”, and popularised the chant “Kulam Tmurat Kulam” (in Hebrew: “[Release] all of them, in exchange for all of them”), which is a call to release the thousands of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jail in exchange for the Israeli hostages taken by Hamas.
This broad protest movement has shifted the political climate in Israel: the right-wing parties that comprise Netanyahu’s coalition are losing ground. While they won 64 out of 120 seats in the Knesset (Israel’s parliament) in the November 2022 elections, according to recent polls they would only win between 45-52 seats if new elections were held. This spells trouble for Netanyahu, as it not only means he would be ousted from office, but that his trial over corruption would resume and he could possibly end up in jail. So he has both a political and personal interest in a prolonged and protracted war on Gaza, as demanded by his far-right coalition partners. He knows that a hostage deal will most likely mean an end to the war. And an end to the war would mean the unravelling of his coalition government and early elections — and with that political defeat and possibly loss of personal freedom. This assessment is what brought the broad protest movement calling for the return of the hostages to realise that Netanyahu is an obstacle that must be removed, rather than a mere stakeholder that requires convincing.
Standing Together members have intervened in these mass protests — in Tel-Aviv, Haifa, Jerusalem, Beer Sheva, Kfar Sava, Karmiel and elsewhere — stressing that the safe return of the hostages must be accompanied by an end to the war and the further killing of innocent civilians in Gaza. Furthermore, our message is that the long-term safety of both peoples will not be achieved through war, occupation and siege. Rather, it requires ending the occupation and achieving an Israeli-Palestinian peace that recognises the right of everyone to live in freedom, security and independence. There are millions of Jewish-Israelis in our country — and none of them are going anywhere. There are also millions of Palestinians in our country — and none of them are going anywhere. This must be the starting point of our politics if we are to imagine a future of justice, liberation and security.
Standing Together established the Humanitarian Guard to counter far-right attempts to block aid convoys going to Gaza. What can you tell us about this initiative?
In mid-May, the Israeli public’s attention was drawn to images and videos of violent and extremist settlers, known as “The Hilltop Youth”. They attacked supply trucks at the Tarqumiah checkpoint — a main border crossing connecting the Occupied Palestinian West Bank with Israel — that were carrying food and other humanitarian aid to the besieged Gaza Strip. Palestinian truck drivers were beaten and hospitalised, bags of flour and wheat trashed and trucks set on fire. These violent attacks received media attention, locally and internationally, especially as they occurred in front of Israeli soldiers and police who did nothing to stop them.