Palestinian Hunger Must Have a Place in Israeli Protest

Standing on the square, I agreed with all that was said about the hostages, the anguish of their families, and the government that seems more interested in endless war than in its duty to free them. But I was also dismayed. The war that began with Hamas’s unthinkably cruel attack on Israel has morphed into inconceivable brutality ordered by our government. And I was struck by the dissonance between the march and the rally that followed, between the voices from the crowd demanding to stop that horror and the speeches that largely avoided talking about it.

Jerusalem is a right-leaning city, and rallying for the hostages is a weekly ritual. This time, I’d estimate, perhaps 2,000 people came out.

Two nights earlier, I’d headed to Tel Aviv for a one-off demonstration, headlined explicitly as “End the War, Bring Everyone Home.” The stress on stopping the war, and the advertised participation of soldiers’ parents, marked a shift in mainstream protests from the hostages alone. Implicitly, “everyone” included Israeli troops. The price of the war in the deaths of Israeli soldiers, in long and traumatic reserve duty for many Israeli citizens, and in the strain on the families of those in combat is growing as a political issue.