OpEd: Standing with the Protesters in Israel

By Daniel Sokatch

SAN FRANCISCO, California — This past Sunday we saw something truly remarkable: across Israel, around a million people took to the streets in protest of the war and in support of a ceasefire and hostage deal—500,000 came out in Tel Aviv alone.

From across the ocean, these numbers may be hard to grasp, so let me put it this way: by population, the Tel Aviv protest alone would be equivalent to roughly 17 million Americans protesting in the streets. It’s safe to say we’ve never seen anything like this on U.S. soil. At least not yet.

These protests were so big and so loud that Rachel Maddow opened her MSNBC show on Monday by asking “Did you see the size of these protests?!” Well, Rachel, we certainly did.

These nationwide protests were accompanied by a general strike, which began at 6:29 AM—the exact time Hamas launched the attack of October 7 nearly two years ago. Across the country, factory workers and educators, high-tech sector workers, and the staff of Ben Gurion airport, members of Israel’s Bar Association, and students said loudly and clearly: we’ve had enough.

The family of Matan Zangauker, taken hostage by Hamas terrorists on October 7, gathered with the protesters at Hostage Square and, on a megascreen, played a video of Matan that was discovered in Gaza. In it, Matan asks his family to “keep making noise.”

It breaks my heart that Matan, and so many others, are still there, starving alongside the rest of Gaza, languishing and in pain because his leaders are too cowardly to do the right thing.

When the video ended, Matan’s mother Einav addressed her son “My Matan, my hero, I’m so proud of you,” she said. “How you have stayed strong for 681 days. Continue to stay strong.” And then she turned to the gathered crowd. “Matan asked for noise, so give him noise!” The crowd roared in response. “We demand what we deserve—our children!” Einav continued. The Israeli government, she pronounced, had turned a “just war” into an “endless war.”

At NIF, we stand with Einav. Now more than ever. Last year, when we gave her our top prize, the Truth to Power Award, for her relentless work to bring the hostages home, we hoped against hope that Matan would already be back in her arms. And now, so many more Israelis are with us in their demand to end this war. According to recent polls, the number of Israelis who want to end this war immediately is at an all-time high of 74%.

But the Netanyahu government—led by the nose by messianic extremists—is pulling Israel in the opposite direction. They are working to entrench this war, go deeper into Gaza, to do whatever it takes to get Gazans to “voluntarily emigrate” themselves elsewhere so that they can reoccupy the Strip, and bring Jewish settlers back to replace Gazan families. But don’t take my word for it. If you don’t believe me (or Mickey Gitzin, our Director in Israel, who wrote about this last week), just listen to Israel’s government ministers themselves. They’ve said it over and over again. “Without settlements [in Gaza], there is no security,” Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said at a conference in January. “God willing, together we will settle and be victorious.” At the same conference, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir declared it “time to return home to Gush Katif,” referring to the settlement bloc in Gaza that was dismantled and evacuated in 2005.

This is what we are up against.

At the time of this writing, Defense Minister Israel Katz has approved Netanyahu’s shameful plan for full takeover of Gaza City. IDF troops are massing at its edge, as tens of thousands of reservists are being called up. The consequences for Gazan civilians, already suffering terribly, will be immense. How many more will die on the altar of a war that Israel’s own former military, intelligence, and political leaders say is no longer just or warranted? And what’s more, Israel is obligated to protect civilian lives—not to erase the last place that allows them to survive.

But even—and especially—at this fraught and fragile moment, we must stand up and stand firm. We know where our moral north lies: in the courageous hearts and minds of the activists who are standing up for equality, justice, compassion, and, yes, democracy.

Because at NIF, we know that Israelis are the ones who must bring the madness to an end. Earlier today, we held a webinar featuring journalist Emmanuelle Elbaz-Phelps, who was recently featured on the New York Times’ “The Daily” podcast. A freelance journalist who often appears on mainstream Israeli TV, she describes the horrors that take place daily in Gaza and the suffering of the population there. She and others, like Yonit Levi of Channel 12, have faced invective and blowback of all kinds for speaking the truth, for telling Israelis what so many of them desperately do not want to hear. But she is undeterred. Because what is happening in the name of Israel in Gaza is so much worse than the hatred she endures for pointing it out.

Emmanuelle spoke just before activists Alon-Lee Green, co-director of Standing Together, and Lior Milo, who serves as the deputy CEO of Citizens HQ, an NIF-supported coalition of organizations that supports Jewish-Arab partnership in Israel. They spoke powerfully about the shifts taking place in Israel’s public discourse, about what it’s like to be on the ground, disrupting, protesting, defending human rights and human dignity, and—to the extent that they can—responding to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza by protesting the Netanyahu government’s policy of starvation with the loudest possible coalitional voice. They refuse to defend the indefensible. They stand up for what is right despite great personal cost.

I am so proud to stand with them. I know … our NIF community, will continue to stand with us, and help us amplify their call for change.

P.S. If you missed the webinar, you can find it here. If you’re looking for a little bit of hope or inspiration, I recommend watching.

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Daniel Sokatch is the chief executive officer of the New Israel Fund (NIF)