Letter from #Israel #1 – Be careful what you wish for

“What do you want to do while you’re here?”

“I wanna go to an anti-war #protest.”

I want to better understand Israeli perspectives on the war. It’s been nearly 25 years that I’ve lived in the UK and the world looks very different from here, even more so since 7th October.

Last week the bodies of six Israeli hostages were recovered in #Gaza by the Israeli military. After surviving nearly eleven months in captivity, they had been executed by Hamas a day or two earlier, lest they be rescued. This infuriated Israelis.

Saturday night there were protests all over the country. We went to the largest, in Tel Aviv, with hundreds of thousands of people. It was a joint anti-Bibi (Netanyahu) protest – those started before the war and have now been rekindled, and are generally angry; and a make a deal / bring the hostages home protest – those have been happening weekly, a mixture of anger and sadness.

I was very nervous about going to a large protest in a country that is at war and also bitterly divided internally. But once we got there and I saw the massive number of people, I relaxed. It helped that I knew I wouldn’t encounter antisemitism, or fifty shades of ‘anti-Zionism’.

Most of the speakers were relatives and loved ones of hostages, and two were released hostages. The speeches were visceral, and it’s hard to believe people keep up this intensity week after week. It was a lot to take in, story after story, plea after plea. Wow.

The focus was only on the hostages and Bibi’s refusal to make a deal – purely for his own political gain, not the good of the country. Hardly any mention of Palestinians and nothing about the situation in Gaza. It’s a real dissonance coming from Britain. But the narrow focus is unifying, something many (most?) Israelis support. Any discussion of how to end the war, let alone what comes next, would cause division. There was an anti-occupation / anarchist block in the distance, but I didn’t get a chance to talk to them.

We left when most people did, after the speeches. Some protesters stayed behind to keep roads closed and possibly have confrontations with the police. Good luck to them, I had enough for one evening.