Stop the war, not because of the photos – real or fake

At least 74% of Israelis want the war to end today.

There is real hunger, yes, starvation in Gaza. Everyone knows it. It cannot be hidden, even in the fog of war, even when lies and disinformation blur the picture. Both sides are to blame for this humanitarian crisis. Hamas expertly presents an image of misery and victimhood through its well-oiled propaganda machine. It does not matter that there are documented cases of staged and misleading photographs. The hunger is real. It does not matter which side is more at fault. Yes, Hamas started this. Yes, Hamas continues to steal food from its own people. Yes, Hamas leaders eat well, while innocent civilians starve. And yes, Hamas is deliberately starving our hostages, putting their skeletal bodies on display for all to see, torturing us with the cruelest of videos.

Eli Sharabi, an Israeli former hostage, testified before the UN Security Council in March that “Hamas eats like kings, while hostages starve.”  Mr Sharabi said: “I saw Hamas terrorists carrying boxes with the UN and UNRWA emblems on them into the tunnels, dozens and dozens of boxes, paid for by your government. They would eat many meals a day from the UN aid in front of us, and we never received any of it.”  In the horrific video of Evyatar David, we see the bulky arm of his well-fed captor handing him a can of lentils which will be his only food for several days.

But Israel is also complicit. Israel continues to wage a war that cannot be won. This war can only bring more suffering and death to people on both sides. Israeli leaders have shown again and again that they do not care about the lives of our hostages, nor do they care about the lives of our soldiers. They send our exhausted soldiers off to their deaths while working hard to ensure that their constituents, the ultra-orthodox, will not need to serve in the army. Our soldiers die in battle. Others die in preventable accidents, caused by the lack of alertness which results from being overextended, overworked, and undertrained. And now, our soldiers are dying by suicide. Every week, new cases come to light of Israeli soldiers taking their own lives after having been forced to take the lives of others.

Israelis take to the streets. Our leaders are not listening.

More and more Israelis have taken to the streets. Yet our leaders do not care. They do not care that 74% of Israelis want the war to end. TODAY. The majority of Israeli citizens declare that they want the war to end immediately, albeit for different reasons. Most Israelis want the war to end to save our soldiers and our hostages. There is also a growing group of Israelis distressed about the innocent Gazans being killed. That concern was once limited to long-time antiwar protesters like me in the peace camp. But today it has become harder and harder for everyday Israelis to ignore Gazan suffering. Read Ruth Margalit’s article to learn more. No matter the reason, the Israeli consensus is there: End the war!  But our leaders are not listening. They hear the cries coming from the streets, but they do not care. Instead, they send police officers to quell our protests with increasing aggression.

Up until June, we, the hostage families and supporters who protested peacefully near Defense Ministry HQ in Tel Aviv were protected by friendly police officers. They helped us stop traffic and stood by protectively as we blocked the road just long enough to read out the names of the hostages. When angry drivers or pedestrians threatened us, the police intervened on our behalf. That benign behavior stopped in June. Suddenly, we were told our protests were illegal. Suddenly, protest leaders, who are family members of hostages, found they could not get demonstration permits from the local police. These days, there are more and more incidents of police brutality against protesters. Some of us also sustain injuries because the police refuse to stop attacks from counter-protesters. In Israel, whether municipal or national, police instructions come from above. There is a police force in Israel. It belongs to Ben Gvir.

War Crimes – Real and Imagined

Yes, there is hunger in Gaza. No, this is not genocide. War crimes are committed whenever countries go to war. There is no just war. It does not matter who fired first. No war anywhere is waged without collateral damage. No army, no matter how ethical, how careful, and how technologically advanced, can assure that innocent lives will not be lost. And there is no defense for the position that killing civilians is an acceptable cost of war.

I oppose the use of the word genocide to describe Israel’s actions. This, despite the horrendous statements made by some of my country’s far-right ministers. I believe these extremists do not represent most Israelis. I want to say that judging Israel based on these fanatics is like judging the USA based on comments made by Robert Kennedy Jr. or Kristi Noem. Yes, they are high-ranking cabinet members. No, their hateful views do not represent the majority of our citizens. But the allegations are hard to ignore, especially when the venom keeps coming. Evil ministers Ben-Gvir and Smotrich lead the pack, with their chauvinistic and racist pronouncements.

And Israel’s inability to protect Gazans from starvation is deplorable. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation experiment has been a catastrophic failure. This was predictable. But not, I believe, part of a genocidal plan to intentionally starve the population. Delivering food aid in a war zone is dangerous and complicated. In Gaza the situation is even more complex. Hamas is intent on keeping the food out of the mouths of those who need it most. The UN knows this and yet puts the blame solely on Israel. Please read Dr. Michal Hatuel-Radoshitzly’s excellent analysis of the situation.  If anyone in this region could be accused of genocide, that would be Hamas, whose entire platform rests on the eradication of Israel.

A word to the haters:

I do find it ironic that we Israelis are accused of being colonialists. We are people living in our ancestral homeland. We are of many colors and widely varying religious practice. We have one language, one semitic origin and one thing in common: Israel is our home. Who is accusing us? Well, besides the Islamic propaganda machine, the main accusers seem to be white people living on other peoples’ land. Europeans? Who’s calling whom a colonialist? As for the “Free Palestine” protesters in the US and Australia, these white people are living on Native American or Aboriginal land.

It will not please my mother to learn that on a recent trip to visit my family in Portland ME, I stopped to speak to a group of ‘Free Palestine” protesters on Congress Street. Several were wearing keffiyehs, so I naturally approached them in the language of Palestine. “Min ayna ataytum?” (where are you from?)  I asked in a friendly tone. Blank stares. So I tried again: “Hal antum min mintaqati?” (do you come from my region?) Nothing. One last try: “Hal tatahaduth al arabiya?” (do you speak Arabic?) Nothing, nada, zilch. So no, they don’t speak Arabic.

Still in a friendly tone, and before revealing my own identity to the Congress Street protesters, I then asked them where this freed Palestine would be located. Are they talking about two states? A blond man in a keffiyeh answered, “No, just one state: from the river to the sea.”  I said, “Well, that’s problematic for me. I’m Israeli. I live in that neighborhood. I want peace. I have Arab and Jewish and Christian friends in Israel who want the same. I wouldn’t mind sharing the land. But I don’t intend to disappear.” And then, to put them out of their misery, I did disappear – at least from their sight. I walked down the street, wondering if they would even give a thought to anything I’d said. Want to read more about how uninformed some of these protesters are?

The sad truth is that no matter how misguided or misinformed the protesters outside of Israel, they are not our problem. Our real problem lies here, inside our own country. We Israelis are being held hostage by a leader waging a disastrous war for purely political motives. The Israeli people want this war to end now.  No matter what hateful declarations are made by various ministers or parliament members, there is one man who has the power to stop the killing. There is one man who has the power to end the war and bring our soldiers and hostages home. His name is Benjamin Netanyahu.