About 2,000 people demonstrated in Tel Aviv this Thursday to demand an end to the war, the same day that Israeli President Isaac Herzog declared in Davos (Switzerland) that “no Israeli in his right mind is ready now is to think about peace.” An agreement had been reached with the Palestinians and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had predicted “many months” of fighting until “victory was achieved” in Gaza.
The protest, with the slogan “Only peace brings security”, was carried out thanks to a precautionary measure from the Supreme Court after it was banned last week by the police, which reports to the ministry headed by the far-right Itamar Ben Gvir (Public Security). . Although it was the country's largest demonstration against the war since it began 104 days ago, the relatively low attendance shows how difficult it is to convey the message of pacifism after the Hamas attack on October 7 that killed about 1,200 people were killed.
According to polls, the vast majority of the population supports continuing the war until Hamas is eliminated. When it ends, there will be no horizon for a Palestinian state as demanded by the United States, Netanyahu has told his key ally. “I told our American friends this truth and stopped the attempt to impose a reality on us that would harm Israel's security,” he said in an appearance.
The march was organized by Standing Together and Women for Peace, two civil society organizations that focus on joint Jewish-Arab actions and have gained visibility in recent years. It was also supported by twenty left-wing, pacifist and human rights groups opposed to the military occupation.
The demonstrators shouted slogans and carried banners such as “In Gaza and in Sderot.” [ciudad israelí cercana a la Franja y blanco de cohetes]“The children want to live” or “The majority demand a ceasefire.” A few waved Israeli flags and none, Palestinian ones, whose unveiling was prevented by the police. In fact, agents forcibly removed a wool hat with the colors of both flags from the head of a protester, Shoshana Lavan, who refused to do so. Lavan, a 44-year-old teacher, called for a final ceasefire linked to the return of hostages as a “first step” before attempting to permanently resolve the conflict. “The fact that we are killed and they let us be killed doesn’t get us anywhere. “We’ve had enough,” he said.
He was also defended by Mor Benedek, 20 years old, whose uncle was murdered on October 7 and whose brother is now in uniform in Gaza, mobilized as an army reservist. “I want to make sure that what happened to my uncle doesn’t happen again,” he defended himself, turning the majority discourse about the need for war on its head. “Also,” he continues, “you are sending a message at this time when so many Jews and Arabs are being persecuted for speaking out against the war.” “The priority is to reach a ceasefire. It makes no sense for this to continue. And then the people who support it now understand that the military solution will never work,” he stressed on the same day that the Houthi militia fired a rocket from Yemen at the Israeli city of Eilat for the fifth time. It was intercepted.
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The ideas of the future and hope were very present in the songs and speeches on the stage in front of the city's cinema, where both Jews and Arabs spoke. There, too, the causes that mobilize the most were defended: an agreement to repatriate all hostages still in Gaza – “Now!” the demonstrators often shouted – and early elections to remove Netanyahu from power. But even in Tel Aviv, considered the most liberal and secular city in the country, words like peace, ceasefire and occupation get on the nerves of many, especially now.
Every few meters a passerby reprimanded the demonstrators. “What peace? “Don't you understand that the Arabs want to kill us?” one of them shouted to them. “I hate Bibi [el mote por el que es conocido Netanyahu] as much as you, but the word profession distances me from you,” said another. As participants chanted, “Jews and Arabs refuse to be enemies,” a taxi driver rolled down his window and shouted to them, “Arabs deserve death.” Even though the protest slogan was written in Hebrew and Arabic and there were also Palestinian speakers , the vast majority of demonstrators were Jews of various ages.
The demonstration comes against the backdrop of Ben Gvir's battle with the institutions he sought to disempower with judicial reform, the first major law of which was recently annulled by the Supreme Court. After the Oct. 7 attack, he ordered police to “prevent protests by identifying with Hamas Nazis,” as he put it.
Banned protests
Since then, protests against the Gaza war have been largely banned, particularly in the country's Palestinian-majority areas. Four former Arab members of Israel's parliament were even arrested in November while speaking at a meeting in the city of Nazareth. The police have also prevented them from doing so in the Arab towns of Um el Fahem and Sajnín (with the acquiescence of the Supreme Court) and more recently in mixed Haifa. There was a call for one there last Saturday, involving dozens of Jewish-Arab groups, but the local police chief refused the green light “out of real concern that it would seriously disrupt public order.”
Last week the police banned the event this Thursday. The Israel Civil Rights Association, the country's largest human rights group, accused them of “acting in the service of Ben Gvir by rejecting demonstrations that are inconsistent with the government's policies” and reminded them that “the right to freedom Expression exists.” It is not confined to a single side of the political map, nor does it disappear in times of war.”
The government's legal adviser, Gali Baharav-Miara, then accused Ben Gvir of intervening in police work “erroneously and illegally” and of hating him and being guided by ideological motives.
The Supreme Court then issued a precautionary measure against him, considering that he had violated an order that the Supreme Court had already given him in this regard last year during the months of mass protests against the controversial reform. This prevents them from issuing “operational instructions” to the police on “the application of their policy regarding the exercise of the right to demonstrate and the freedom to protest.” That is, it tells you that you can decide what general policy you want to follow, but it doesn't get to decide when or how much force you want to use or what protests you want to allow. “How can a decision be made that allows the enemy to demonstrate against our soldiers when we bury the best of our fighting sons day after day?” he replied on Facebook.
An anti-war demonstration took place in Tel Aviv in November. The police initially did not grant permission, the Supreme Court intervened and in the end the celebration was limited to a maximum of 700 participants and with the promise not to carry Palestinian flags. This Tuesday there was also a small rally against the war by dozens of mostly older people. In a video broadcast on social networks, a police officer is seen violently taking a banner from a protester's hands after he warned that the slogan “Enough of the massacre” was “harassing” passers-by. Sidewalk.
A group of protesters during the anti-war march on January 18 in Tel Aviv. Antonio Pita
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