By: Shimrit Braun Kamin
July 25, 2024
My name is Shimrit Braun Kamin. I work for the New Israel Fund in San Francisco, and I am an Israeli expat, and proud member of UnXeptable’s volunteer organizing team. Yesterday, I was in Washington D.C. with hundreds of UnXeptable activists and a coalition of American Jewish organizations to tell my Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, that he does not represent me.
Prime Minister Netanyahu came to Washington, D.C. at an incredibly painful and difficult time in our country’s history — a time when more than one hundred hostages remain in captivity, when many Gazans continue to suffer and die, and when Israelis in Israel’s north and south remain in limbo — unsure of when they can go home, or living in and out of bomb shelters.
Yesterday, while he was in Washington, the IDF Chief of Staff was in Israel’s south, speaking with the residents of Kibbutz Be’eri, and taking responsibility for the colossal security failure there. Be’eri — a community of just 1,000 people — was the hardest hit on October 7. 101 civilians (10% of the community) were murdered, among them Vivian Silver, a beloved friend of NIF. 30 residents were taken hostage by Hamas, 11 of whom still remain in Gaza. (Silver’s son, Yonatan Zeigen, is a close friend of my family. You can hear him speak about his mother and his courageous decision to become a full time peace activist in the wake of her death on the upcoming episode of NIF’s podcast, Groundwork.)
And yet Netanyahu was in Washington. Why?
Because he wanted to shore up his support with his far right base in Israel with a photo of him speaking to Congress, where he could sound bullish on Iran, and tell Americans that he protects them and not the other way around.
And to add insult to injury, he took a photo on the way to Washington: It was of him and his wife Sara on a brand new plane that he had my government purchase for his trips abroad. Israel’s State Comptroller has said that each flight will cost the Israeli taxpayers something in the range of $1.4 million dollars. The photo had him next to Sara at a desk, looking busy with a hat in the foreground bearing the slogan “Total Victory” across the front.
Total victory!? We all know — certainly the 72% of Israelis who think Netanyahu should resign and take responsibility for his failures — that “total victory” is a farce. We need a hostage deal now. They do not have time to wait, and neither do their families. At the same time as he took that photo, we were hearing news of the death of two hostages in captivity: Yagev Buchshtav and Alex Danzig.
It was ironic to me that just a couple of days before his inaugural flight on this brand new, exceptionally expensive plane, they found a crack in its windshield.
During this visit, I’ve had a chance to get a close look at the absolute insanity surrounding Netanyahu and his wife: Everyone’s schedules revolved around theirs, including the hostage families who came with him, and the journalists who he left to fend for themselves this weekend as he hops back on his plane to visit former President Trump in Florida at Mar-a-Lago. With him, everything is about the visual — nothing is about the substance. I found it all deeply disturbing.
While in Washington, I had the privilege of meeting several hostage family members who refused to join his flight and instead made their way to Washington on their own. Some of them were invited to meet Netanyahu and his wife, and they did go. But they were sorely disappointed: Netanyahu did not make them feel that the hostages’ safe return was a priority for him. They felt, they said, no genuine empathy from him. During his speech, many of the hostage families stood outside with us, but some of them were inside, in the spectator gallery. When six of them revealed t-shirts that read ‘Seal the Deal,’ Capitol police arrested them.
There is nothing more to say to all of this than “busha!” or “shame!”, which is precisely what we said on the lawn in front of the Capitol yesterday.
I screamed “shame” for Netanyahu’s brazen attempts to hold on to power at the expense of the citizens he ostensibly represents. I screamed “shame” on behalf of all of the Israelis — Jewish and Arab — affected by this war, whether by death or injury, displacement, or this government curtailing their basic democratic rights to protest and to free expression. I screamed “shame” for the horror that innocents are facing in Gaza every day, and the sheer quantity of death that this government’s management of this war has visited on people — children especially — who did not deserve this. And I screamed “shame” on my own behalf: as a citizen of a country that, even before October 7, was sliding quickly into autocracy and right-wing populism, and whose leaders were trying to eviscerate the checks and balances that uphold a system meant to work for everyone, not just the few.
I also screamed “shame” for everyone gathered there with me. It was so important to make it clear to Congress and to the world that Netanyahu does not represent us. That’s also why we chose to amplify the voices of those Netanyahu ignored by going to Washington: The hostage families, the bereaved families, the evacuees from the north and south of Israel, our brothers and sisters, the protesters in Tel Aviv and across Israel, and everyone who believes in peace, democracy, and equality for all and opposes the dangerous extremist government of Netanyahu’s ministers of Jewish supremacy Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich.
We gathered to stand together with the hostage families, and remind them that they are not alone — that we are with them, shoulder to shoulder. Until this war is over, we reach a hostage deal, and in the work towards what we all ultimately seek: a democratic future and a diplomatic solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Yesterday I felt, truly, like I was a part of the democratic camp of Israelis and Jewish Americans working in partnership for our shared values of democracy and humanity. I felt, out there, with so many others, that we do have power, that we are the change we want to see in the world, and we will stand strong, and stand together.