By Daniel Sokatch, NIF International CEO
After a two month break, war, and the crushing fear that it brings—of death, destruction, sirens, bombs, and fear itself–have resumed across Israel and Gaza. Everyone knows what this means for Palestinians. Two weeks ago, Israel cut off all supplies to Gaza as a negotiating tactic. Then, this past week, they cut off all electricity and made it harder for aid workers to get visas into Israel. And now, Israel’s government has decided to resume a military assault that threatens to bring death to tens of hostages, scores of soldiers, and thousands of Gazans. This cannot be the way forward.
And while Hamas would not budge from its position on the initial hostage deal and ceasefire, the renewal of this war must also be seen for its utility to a desperate Prime Minister trying to hold together an unpopular coalition of extremists bent on upending the institutions of democracy in Israel. Because, if you connect the dots, the resumption of violence is also of a piece with the attacks on Israeli democracy.
By now it is clear that the first thing on Netanyahu’s priority list is not bringing the hostages home, and ensuring the future security of regular Israelis. No. As many have noted, his priority is his own political and legal survival. And in order to stabilize his coalition and pass the state budget by the end of March (without which elections will automatically be called), he requires the support of the Kahanist former National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and the Jewish supremacist Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. Ben Gvir had departed the coalition when the ceasefire took hold, with the understanding that if fighting resumed, he would reenter the government. And that’s just what’s happening now. As for Smotrich, his condition for remaining in the government was that the ceasefire agreement would end after stage one, and, cruelly, a reduction of aid to Gaza. All of this has now happened. And so Smotrich and Ben Gvir are happy, while everyone else, including the hostages in Gaza, suffer.
Of course, when Smotrich and Ben Gvir are happy, the judicial coup—the overthrow of Israel’s judicial branch—cannot be far behind. Indeed, the day before Netanyahu broke the ceasefire he decided to fire Ronen Bar, the head of Israel’s internal security service, the Shin Bet. Bar, a couple of weeks earlier, had released the Shin Bet’s report about October 7, which placed some of the blame for the security failures of that day at the feet of the Netanyahu administration. Bar was also in the midst of investigations into the conduct of Netanyahu’s aides with the Qatari government.
The conflict of interest was not lost on Israelis. Nor was the fact that Bar’s firing comes on the heels of Netanyahu’s Justice Minister’s beginning the process of firing the Attorney General—the woman with the power to determine the length of Netanyahu’s ongoing trial for corruption, fraud, and breach of trust. Israelis saw these blatant moves to remove those who would ‘thwart’ him, as authoritarians are wont to say, we’re not going to take them lying down.
Now, Israelis are organizing. They are protesting. And we are supporting them.
This image says so much with so little. We want to offer it to you now, to share, to post, to make a statement about where we stand now: as people deeply connected to the people and place of Israel, we refuse death, destruction and war. We insist on life, and we say clearly: stop the war.
Yesterday, Wednesday March 19, was declared a day of protest by anti-government groups, and Israelis went out into the streets in the tens of thousands. Before speaking at one of the largest protests since the pro-democracy protests before October 7, Einav Zangauker, the activist and mother to Matan who is still held in Gaza, traveled to the Gaza border with other hostage family members. There, she sat down, up against the fence, in protest of the renewed violence. Simultaneously, masses of Israelis drove and walked to Jerusalem, where they plan to create an encampment. To insist, with their bodies, that there is another way.
As my friend, pollster and expert analyst Dahlia Scheindlin wrote this week in Haaretz, “Netanyahu wants endless war in Gaza. But most Israelis don’t want to fight anymore.” Remember, six in ten Israelis think Netanyahu should resign, and they’ve lost confidence in the war itself. More than 70% wanted Israel to get to stage two—“a complete cessation of hostilities, withdrawal from Gaza, and release of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the release of all the hostages”—and that number was on the rise.
We know this. We have funded polling on it by aChord. We have supported development of the messaging around it, as well as messengers like the social media experts at Mehazkim, and we have (and will continue!) to engage decision-makers and the public around a vision for what comes next through the collaboration we facilitated between the Berl Katznelson Foundation (BKF) and Mitvim Institute who speak with Israeli party leaders and others against annexation, occupation, and transfer.
We will not stop. On the contrary—we will turn up the volume. And as the opposition by our grantees ramps up—in the streets and in the corridors of power—so does our determination to stand with them.
Our Israeli team isn’t holding back. In our Hebrew-language newsletter yesterday, they wrote that by revamping the bombing campaign in Gaza, “the Israeli government has declared war on its citizens. The main casualties will be Gazans, but the renewed war is first and foremost against the state, the people who live in it, its institutions, and its values.” Talia Sasson, our long-time board member and former president published an op-ed (also in Hebrew) where she called for the Supreme Court to flex its muscles, and that the Attorney General should initiate the process of declaring Netanyahu unfit for office. “The situation has reached a breaking point,” she wrote.
The time is now. And we are here. Share the image. Stop the war.