‘In the area around Be’eri, the kibbutz where the Hamas attack took place on the 7th of October, there were people who had been supporting Gazans for years, for example by driving them to Israel if they needed better medical assistance. For an average Israeli, such activists have always been complete freaks,’ Matan, an Israeli living in Warsaw and member of the peace organization Combatants for Peace, tells Salam Lab
According to the Israel Democracy Institute, as many as 68 percent of Israeli Jews believe that humanitarian aid trucks should not be allowed into the Gaza Strip (data as of 20 February 2024), where more than 30,000 civilians have already been killed since October 2023. The vast majority are also against a ceasefire and an end to the invasion of Gaza.
Is there room among Israeli men and women for solidarity with Palestinians after the events of 7 October? We speak to Ben and Matan, Israelis currently living in Poland and Germany, who disagree with their state’s military actions.
Matan
I’m originally from Jerusalem, but I have been living in Warsaw for the last 10 years. I look at what is happening in Gaza with despair. Mainly because I do not see a political way out of this situation. Strategic solutions like the creation of two states or some kind of Israeli-Palestinian confederation seem politically unfeasible at the moment.
It is clear that the current government is a disaster. Not that the previous governments were any more supportive of the emergence of a Palestinian state or the resolution of the conflict. The war in Gaza continues, and many Israelis unfortunately find it difficult to find any empathy or sense of solidarity with the Palestinians. Yet there is hope. A small political awakening is sensed by the Israeli society, with many wanting to hold the Netanyahu government to account. There is at least a political willingness to talk about Palestinians who live inside Israel. Those in Gaza or the West Bank are unlikely to be the focus of care and attention.
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Solidarity movements in Israel may not have much clout, but they have social significance. Before I moved to Poland, I was a member of the peace organization Combatants for Peace. I created, together with others, a new branch of the organisation in Bethlehem in the West Bank. One of our core activities was to commemorate the victims of the two sides of the conflict during the national holiday of the Israeli Soldiers’ Memorial Day (Yom HaZikaron).
The commemoration of Palestinian victims is highly controversial in Israel. Activists from such organizations basically have nothing to say in the country, their words and actions lack real political weight.
In the area around Be’eri, the kibbutz where the Hamas attack took place on 7 October, some people had been supporting Gazans for years, for example by driving them to Israel if they needed better medical assistance. To an average Israeli, such activists are complete freaks. Activists are used to being in the very small minority of Israeli society.
The current invasion of Gaza is simply a revenge. Few in Israel really believe that it has any operational sense or that it can actually help destroy Hamas. Israel’s decades-long strategy has been to make life difficult for Palestinians on a regular basis. The current Israeli government not only has a bad political agenda. The Israeli Prime Minister only cares about his own well-being, not that of the state. Whoever replaces Netanyahu on the Prime Minister’s chair in the next election will be better for the future of Israel and the region. The goal of replacing the current government is short-term. It obviously does not solve the whole problem, but it is achievable.
The Israeli left has argued for years that the public will not be persuaded to do anything and support for peace must be sought from the international community. This war is part of global conflicts and international political alignments. I don’t know what the new world order will be, but there have been times in the past when changes in the global political system have allowed negotiations in our region as well, for example during the Oslo Accords. I hope that such a ‘window’ will appear soon.
Ben
I spent my childhood in the United States, my youth in Jerusalem, and for the past few years, I have been living in Berlin. I am appalled by what is happening in Gaza, and I have only a few friends with whom I can share my feelings and thoughts about it. I know many people who left Israel after what happened in the country last October. I think there is a huge sense of the lack of space to express opposition to the invasion of Gaza. I know from people who still live in Israel, my friends, what kind of atmosphere can be sensed there at the moment and how difficult it is to go to the streets.
The most well-known organization fighting for Israeli Jews and Palestinians to live together peacefully, Standing Together, put up a banner in the center of Tel Aviv some time ago saying ‘Stop the war’. I was surprised that such a slogan could appear in a public space at all. There is simply hysteria in Israel right now, when it comes to state defense, everyone is in a kind of fighting mode (ed. with Hamas). Anyone who speaks out against the actions of the Israeli army is treated as a traitor by the public, and it is becoming increasingly dangerous to oppose the war.
I have been living in Berlin for a few years now and after 7 October I unfortunately feel there is no place for me here either. It’s a city of freedom but I am finding it increasingly difficult here. I feel that groups such as Standing Together, whose aim is to bring both Israelis and Palestinians together in peace, are excluded from public discourse by both sides. In Israel, they are unwelcome by the mainstream, which supports the Gaza invasion. They are also not accepted at pro-Palestinian demonstrations in Germany and many other places in Western Europe. At such events, there is usually no room for recognising Israel or discussing intra-state solutions. Recently, Israel has become a forbidden word in some environments. The moment you say ‘Israel’, people immediately think of colonialism, terrorists, and genocide. There is no space to talk about trying to have dialogue or cooperation between Palestinians and Israelis. The minute I talk about what is happening in Israeli society, people call me a Zionist.
Recently I went with some friends to a screening of a Palestinian film. There was one Syrian woman there who asked my friend where he was from. He replied that he was from Israel. She asked: ‘Why do you say Israel? This is occupied Palestine’. My friend is a very left-wing person (which in the Israeli context means recognizing and opposing the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza), but he then said ‘Well no, I am from Israel’. This led to a rather unpleasant exchange between the two. Radicalisation means people are not even ready to hear each other out or engage in dialogue.
Peace organizations seem to be on a mission to tell the public that we are all in this together: Palestinians and Israelis. And nobody is going anywhere. There is a girl from Gaza studying with me in Berlin. When I met her for the first time in October and she said she was from Gaza, I didn’t know what to say. But then she smiled at me and struck up a conversation: ‘Ah, you are from Israel, we have some dairy products from Israel in Gaza, good sour cream and cheese’.
We also started sharing stories from our countries. There have been a few occasions when we met to protest against what is happening in Gaza, but instead of demonstrating, we just had coffee together and talked about the war and the occupation in the context of our personal stories. If you are from that part of the Middle East, slogans become less important to you, you care more about improving the reality around you – if only by simply talking and showing empathy. It’s always nice to meet people from the region who understand this, and I see hope in such personal interactions.
Strangely, having an ordinary conversation is an important experience for me. Why? It’s just that lately, I’ve found it difficult to have an ordinary and calm dialogue. Social polarization is a bit contagious. Over the last few months, I’ve been thinking about my identity more often than ever before. It’s not nice to be forced to choose a side, and lately, I’ve been feeling like I have to either define myself as a Zionist or say that the state of Israel should disappear from the map. If I don’t choose, I don’t belong anywhere. I often think about organizing a reading group of Israeli and Palestinian authors to just sit down, read, and learn about our history together in a relaxed way.
The interviews took place in mid-February of this year.
Ida Zając – Salam Lab media department volunteer, student of Middle Eastern studies at Freie Universität in Berlin. Graduate of Hebrew Studies at the UW, Hebrew language teacher.
