The Israeli gov't is violating the will of the people

The mass protests on Sunday prove for certain that Israelis overwhelmingly want all this to end right now... Bibi Netanyahu doesn't care.

Israel is going forward with plans to completely take over Gaza. This, despite the fact that Israelis do not want this. Neither does the rest of the world. And certainly Palestinians do not want it.

The Israeli government doesn’t care.

They are sending more troops to Gaza to do the unthinkable. More of the unthinkble. Despite Israel’s increasing isolation and accusations of war crimes and genocide. Actual arrest warrants against government ministers. Economic boycotts. Diplomatic rows. Israeli citizens being arrested or threatened with arrest around the world.

The Israeli government doesn’t care. Netanyahu doesn’t care.

On Sunday, 2.5 million Israelis went on strike and took to the streets to demand an immediate cease fire, for Israel to get out of Gaza in exchange for releasing all the hostages. The protest, led by the Hostage Family Forum, culminated with a record 400,000 people protesting in Israel, demanding an end to all this.

The Israeli government doesn’t care. Netanyahu doesn’t care.

Yesterday, Hamas agreed to the deal it was presented with. The deal was then sent to Israel for agreement. Netanyahu rejected it. Israel will be saying no. ISRAEL will be sabotaging the ceasefire deal, not Hamas. ISRAEL is responsible right now for the fact that the hostages are not coming home today.

Not surprising. Netanyahu has been sabotaging all along. Always a reason… It’s called moving the goalposts….

Israel is also responsible for the fact that Israelis are losing their minds. Losing our minds. Are we really surprised by the increase in soldiers’ PTSD and suicide? Should we even ask what they are seeing and doing? Are we ready for the answer?

This is on Israel. This is on Bibi Netanyahu and his government of killers. They have blood on their hands.

3 observations, 3 concerns, and a new thing

On Monday morning, the day after the big protest, I made a video sharing my thoughts about Sunday’s events. I didn’t get a chance to upload it until now. It’s still relevant, only moreso. The transcript is below.

Transcript:

Good morning. I’m here at the Israeli mall in Modi’in, which yesterday was one of dozens of locations of mass protest against the war here in Israel. An estimated 2.5 million Israelis took part in protests yesterday, culminating in approximately 400,000 people getting to Tel Aviv to support the hostages and the hostage families in a march from the train station, to Hostage Square and to Begin. This is one of the most important moments in the history of this war, especially in the history of the anti-war protest movement. First of all, because a huge number of people who participated, and also it was a strike day, people took off for work for this.

So I have three observations about this, three concerns, and one new thing.

My three observations

My three observations are as follows:

(1) Clearly this is what Israelis want.

2.5 million people who actually show up, not to mention the people who didn't show up, people who couldn't, they were looking after kids, they couldn't stop work, maybe they're away, maybe they're not well, maybe they just don't like crowds, maybe they don't like protesting.

That 2.5 million people showed up in a country of 10 million is not insignificant. And it matches with current polling data, which suggests that upward of 80 % of the population wants this, wants the war to end and all the hostages to come back in a negotiated ceasefire, in one “peima” in one step, in one action. Just do it all, whatever it takes. Get the hostages back, get the ceasefire, do it all right now.

This is what most Israelis want. that's number one.

(2) This is clearly what the hostage families want.

Lots of times when I post things about how we should end the war, some people, especially people outside of this are like, “Well, don't you care about the hostages?!” And it's like, “Yes, I PRECISELY care about the hostages!” This is what the hostages and the hostage families are demanding. This is what they want. If you care about the hostages, listen to the hostage families. And what they're saying is that this war is killing them.

The war is killing hostages, which of course we have backed up the numbers also. People are like, “Oh, we have to continue the war for the hostages.” This war has NEVER been about the hostages. This war has not succeeded in getting back hostages, saving hostages.

In the two years of the war, you know how many hostages came back through some kind of, you know, heroic military, whatever? Eight. Out of 250.

You know how many were killed as a result of IDF Israeli actions? 41, according to hostage families.

And you know how many came back to negotiate ceasefire? 150.

Which tells us very, very clearly: The only way to get hostages back is through negotiated ceasefire.

This is what the hostage families are saying. Hostage families and the former hostages, released hostages are also saying that military actions are terrifying for them. Military actions are bad for them.

Also famine and starvation are bad for hostages too. When Israel starves the people of Gaza, Israel is also starving hostages. And this is what returned hostages are saying.

And so, number one, this is what the people of Israel want, over 80 % want. Number two, this is what the hostage families want.

(3) The government doesn't seem to care. The government is acting in direct violation of the will of the people.

The government is acting against the will of the people.

You know who also said this? Dr. Dahlia Sheindlin, one of the most prominent Israeli pollsters. I interviewed her on my podcast maybe six months ago, and she said very, very clearly, the Netanyahu government is acting against the will of the people.

We need to understand this clearly. It's not that hard to imagine because, you know, Netanyahu is a follower of fascist dictatorship policies in many ways. He's a Trump acolyte and all of that, or maybe Trump's a Bibi acolyte. I don't know.

But you should listen to the podcast and listen to Dahlia Sheindlin explain this, that this government is acting against the will of the people. Which by the way also says that just because people elect a leader in a democracy doesn't mean that they agree with everything that the leader does. And also doesn't mean they deserve to be punished for what that leader is doing. Which goes to arguments about for people who say, well, the people of Gaza deserve what it comes to them because they elected Hamas. And hello, people who elect somebody doesn't mean that they necessarily even agree with everything that that elected person that elected a body does. And certainly it doesn't mean that an entire population deserves to be punished for what the government is doing So that's just an aside.

Anyway, so those are my three observations. That clearly Ending the war in one “pe’ima” with getting all the hostages back in a ceasefire and getting out of Gaza and getting all soldiers from that is clearly the consensus in Israel. And people were really willing to show up yesterday. 2.5 million people going on strike and heading to the street. is historic.

(Last time we had some kind of strike like that was in 2018 on behalf of women. A women's strike, 100,000 people showed up on the streets back then and that was considered a really big thing. That was considered historic at the time. It was historic. It was a big deal, even though it took the government another five years to act on what the women were demanding, which was transferring funds.)

Today, 2.5 million people showing up on strike for a thing is really unprecedented, and we should be paying attention to that even if the government isn't. So those are my three observations.

My three concerns

I also have three concerns. My three concerns have to do with (1) democracy, (2) the place of Palestinians, and (3) the future vision for this country.

(1) Democracy. So what is my concern about democracy? Well, exactly this, that the government doesn't seem to understand that it is the government of all people. Democracy used to be a system in which an elected government was the government of all the people and had some obligation to be the government of all the people. But since 2016, the world has shifted, concepts of democracy have shifted, and now it seems to be legitimate for government and power to think that it's only a government of its loyalists. And that everyone who is not a loyalist is bait, is the enemy of the state, can be blacklisted, can be arrested, can be demeaned and fired from their jobs, maybe even hung. Remember January 6, what Trump tried to do to Pence?

We're seeing a lot of this here in Israel. We're living in a time where people who are deemed as not loyal to the governing power are seen as expendable or as not quite human, certainly not citizens. So yesterday we were hearing a lot of this. We've been hearing it throughout. We heard Miri Regev a few months ago dismiss the entire hostage family protest as noise, something that her whole purpose was not to have to deal with. Yesterday we heard the same thing from Ben Gvir. He said, “We will not let these anarchist protesters dictate to what to do.” In other words, it was defiance against 2.5 million Israelis. I mean, there wasn't even a thought that these people are people you're supposed to protect. It's that these protesters are the people that “we” have to protect “our” people from. So that the protesters became enemies of the state.

And also we saw some serious violence from the police against protesters yesterday. There's some footage about that going around. So, you know, we're hearing this all the time.

In last week's last week's cabinet meeting, when the government decided that they're just going to go in and conquer Gaza City, whatever that even means, despite the fact that the country is totally against that at this point, people brought it up in the cabinet meeting, somebody said, “What about public opinion? What about world opinion?” And Bibi Netanyahu just said, “Don't worry, I'll take care of that.”

Meaning that there's no thought which says, the people who are out there opposing our actions are also citizens, right? They're people that we're supposed to protect. is no, they are people we have to dismiss and squash and silence in whatever ways that is.

When Netanyahu says he’ll “Take care of that,” what does that mean? Well, we know some of what it means. It means he's going to put together his spin machine and his lying. And we see a lot of that.

Another thing really terrifying is that keep that ministers keep calling protesters Hamas supporters. Could you imagine such a thing? Could you imagine that hostage families are being labeled as Hamas supporters? How sick and twisted is that? But that's part of this very new anti-democracy democracy that we're living in, in which as soon as someone is critical of the government, they are deemed needing to be squashed up with enemy akin to Hamas. Someone protesting for hostage release is all sort of the same as murderous terrorists. How did that become a thing?

So this is really a sign of the times about how definitions of democracy have completely changed and how dangerous it is to be in a position critical of the government in this new so-called democracy. And we're seeing that around the world. Clearly, it's Israel, it's America, it's the Bibi and Trump bromance thing, and not just. So that's number one.

(2) What about the Palestinians?

My second concern is, of course, the place the Palestinians. Because the message of the protest yesterday was very much, the war, get out of Gaza, get a ceasefire going. Not 100%, it was predominantly an Israeli perspective. There was very little leadership language about Palestinian perspectives, about how we should also be getting out of Gaza because what we're doing in Gaza to the Palestinian people is completely immoral. There was none of that. No talk about war crimes, certainly no mention of genocide, not at least in official channels. There were certainly corners in that 2.5 million people. There were many corners where those were parts of the protest. Yes, my friend, Adi Argov from The Daily File was collecting yesterday locations where that was the message. And of course, on my sign also that I hold up everywhere, it's about all of it. It's about ending the killing, that we have to stop being that killing machine. So, but again, it wasn't the mainstream message. And in fact, when I was walking into the Modi’in Mall yesterday to go to the protest, I met a woman who was coming out. She said, “Well, they promised they weren't going to say anything against the government, so I'm leaving.” Right. So clearly this was like it was some kind of like intention to try to keep the message narrow.

And so that raises a lot of questions for me about whether or not this protest movement is about deeper change, about root cause change. Because, of course, one of the big root causes of all of this is the Israeli cultural failure to see Palestinians as human beings. The dehumanization of Palestinians from history, all throughout history, all that indoctrination and the way the media covers that too. have, of course, government chatter all about that and we have everyday grass-roots chatter about that on the media. The media really does not even cover Palestinians as human beings.

I write about this all the time in a zillion ways. This is a reality. And the question is, is this protest movement addressing that? It’s not clear. So that's a very big worry for me about what this all means.

I could have some hope that something is shifting because. What gives me hope is that some of the strongest voices to stop doing what we're doing to Palestinians in Gaza are coming from hostage families. We saw this at the Democratic National Convention last year when John Polin Goldberg stood up there in front of all the Democratic Party — the Democratic Party that refused to allow Palestinians to speak at the convention — he was there with his wife Rachel, course, and they both spoke. When he spoke, presumably to talk about hostages and to give an Israeli perspective, he also said, “We need to stop killing innocent Gazans, innocent Palestinians.” So he said that. And that was really interesting to me.

I've since heard that I've heard even formerly right wing members of the Hostage Family Forum talk about this, saying, “Do not kill innocent Gazans in order to save my son, because that first of all, it doesn't work and I don't want that on me.” They don't want to be killing babies, especially when it doesn’t even get hostages get released.

So that tells me that Just as violence feeds into violence, at the same time, empathy breeds empathy. Empathy cultivates empathy. And that when the hostage families are saying to the world, Please have empathy for my child, for my family member, for my husband, please, we're begging for empathy and compassion, what happens is then that empathy spreads to other things.

So, you know, hostage families can be forgiven if all they can talk about is their hostage family member. Einav Zangauker would be forgiven if all she ever talked about was Matan, her hostage son. But she ALSO talks about having compassion for the people of Gaza, which is absolutely fascinating, which tells you how empathy spreads. Empathy spreads. Once you're in the place of empathy and compassion, the world starts looking differently.

So that's a little bit of a hopeful thing for me that despite the fact that Palestinian perspectives weren't really front and center yesterday, it is a little bit present. And maybe just because this movement is a movement rooted in compassion, maybe that will bring long-term change.

(3) Future vision.

But this of course brings me to my third concern and my third concern is where is this all going, especially politically. If you have 2.5 million people agreeing on a thing that is not being represented by the government,presumably that should translate into some kind of political power, especially since if it doesn't translate into political power, then it's powerful at all.

It's troubling, especially because we're seeing some really, really bad polling, especially since the Iran war. We're seeing Bibi Netanyahu up there on top of the polls that he would get either the number one party, possibly the number two next to Bennett. I mean, his popularity, his popularity is still up there.

And actually, Dahlia Scheindlin has an analysis of that too, she wrote last week in Haaretz where she talked about this how people don't like Netanyahu necessarily and don't agree with him, but somehow, sometimes when he comes out with some kind of like strong, bullying kind of, on your protector kind of stance, somehow some people still support that. Some kind of like really deep contradiction she's pointing out. It's really hard to fathom, it's really hard to wrap your head around, but something really strange is happening and not only that but you know when you look at the polls and their channel channel 11 con 11 had a picture of this that I shared on social media last week of all the top parties that would get into power it's 12 or 13 parties they are all headed by men a whole bunch of them are generals a whole bunch of them are rabbis you know there isn't a single party out there headed by a woman. There's only one party besides the Arab parties that can be considered on the left, is the Democratic Party, which is the only one that would cooperate with Arabs. It is the only party that supported Ayman Odeh when he was threatened with being ousted from the Knesset for daring to have sympathy for Palestinians. Yair Golan's party is the only one that's there. But Yair Golan is also a general and he still has a very military perspective. You know, I have lot of respect for Yair Golan. He has said and done a lot of great things. But the bottom line, he is still a military person with military thinking. And the Democratic Party also was run mostly by men — generals and rabbis.

We are being run by this very patriarchal culture and there's no sign, there's no light at the end of the tunnel here. And so I look at this protest from yesterday, these 2.5 million people, and I'm asking myself, how does that translate into political power? How does that translate? We need at least one or two new parties here.

I would really love to see a Standing Together party. I would really love to see Standing Together, creating a party, in my opinion. That might change things. Certainly there should be something. Something here which is different, which is not run by generals, which is not run by all men, not run by rabbis, not run by any patriarchal system. We need that. So right now it's not yet on the horizon, but there are murmurings that maybe there might be change.

We need change in that direction. So those are my three concerns about democracy, about the Palestinians, about the future vision of the country.

One new thing

And then I said there's one new thing.

What's the new thing? Yesterday we heard of a new strategy for this protest movement. And that is the strategy of the wallet. Stop shopping. Just people stop shopping. So I felt that very strongly, actually, when I was in the mall and people are protesting in the mall while people other people are like, oh, shopping. And it was like weird. The whole point of the protest movement was that we need to stop everything. It was a strike day because the message was we need to stop everything. These poor people who are suffering, it's just crazy that we're just going life as normal. So yesterday started a new campaign for people to just stop shopping except for like food and necessities. And apparently yesterday there was a 5.5 % reduction in people using their credit cards, which could be something or could be nothing. You know, I'd like to think that it's maybe something, but this government also doesn't necessarily even seem to care about the economy. I mean, this war has been absolutely appalling for the Israeli economy, Israeli credit ratings and budgets and the costs are insane and you know all kinds of boycotts, economic boycotts. mean but this government doesn't seem to care about that which defies logic, defies you know political common sense so who knows but anyway that's a new thing so I'm going to try to participate in that too because we got to stop everything we got to end this we just got to end it.

Anyway so yesterday was source of hope. A little bit, but I don't even want to say I'm cautiously optimistic. I say I'm cautious and almost optimistic, but I'm not quite optimistic yet. But feeling a little energized. Certainly the hostage families this morning are saying that they feel energized, they feel supported. So that's something. And apparently the hostages listen to all this. All the hostages who return home said that they listen to Israeli radio. They sometimes watch Israeli television. They feel very, very energized by all this. So that’s something good. Onward and upward. To be continued.