On Saturday night, Standing Together (Omdim B’Yachad-Naqef Ma’an) led a large protest in Tel Aviv’s HaBima square. From a bird’s eye view, the square would have looked like a purple (Standing Together’s signature color) sea—with signs in Hebrew and Arabic, a broken purple heart made of cardboard, carried by Jews and Palestinians. Their messaging was clear: there must be diplomatic negotiations. It was the only way, they said, to secure the end of the war, the return of all remaining hostages in Gaza, an end to the war crimes being committed against Palestinian people in Gaza, and seek a peaceful resolution to the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict. At this peaceful demonstration, Uri Weltmann, part of Standing Together’s senior leadership, was forcefully arrested and Standing Together co-founder Alon-Lee Green was detained.
For the last number of weeks, there have been reports that the IDF is implementing what is known as the “General’s Plan” in northern Gaza. This is a plan to remove all civilians from the area and then lay siege, so as to starve out the remaining terrorists. The trouble is, at least 100,000 civilians, if not more, remain in northern Gaza.
NIF International Council member Talia Sasson wrote about the illegality of this plan in Haaretz this past week: “Nobody disputes Israel’s right to defend itself against a brutal terrorist aggressor like Hamas,” she wrote. “But it still has an obligation to act reasonably toward the civilian population of any territory it occupies, regardless of the needs of the war. Israel, however, has long since exceeded the bounds of reasonableness in its behavior toward Gaza’s residents, as evident from the International Court of Justice’s harsh criticism of its behavior. We have long since ceased to comply with international humanitarian law. And the generals’ plan is the diametric opposite of compliance with that court’s provisional orders.”
Standing Together is representing those Israelis who agree with Sasson, and who want this war—and Israel’s war crimes—to end immediately. Israelis, they say, are Jewish and Arab, Mizrahim and Ashkenazim, Druze, Bedouin, and Palestinian. They are secular and religious. And in their movement there are Israelis from all backgrounds who oppose the moral and strategic failures of their government and will not be silent.
Standing Together has been more than just a symbol of hope against the destruction that this war has wrought on Palestinian people in Gaza. Last month, in a first, the organization was able to successfully deliver trucks full of aid donated by Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel to Gaza. This powerful act of solidarity between Israelis towards the people of Gaza was preceded by months in which volunteers collected donations and planned out complicated logistics. Due to challenges with government bureaucracy, not all of the scheduled trucks were able to make it to Gaza, and this aid was donated to Palestinian families in need in the West Bank.
This joint aid collection project was made possible in part through a grant from NIF.