On Sunday, August 17, over one million people across Israel turned out in protest, demanding a halt to Israel’s assault on Gaza and the return of the Israeli hostages being held there. 400,000 people protested in the streets of Tel Aviv, Israel’s capital.
Of the 50 remaining hostages, it is estimated that 20 are still alive.1 The protests condemned the government of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu for jeopardizing their lives by insisting to pursue the slaughter in Gaza and refusing to come to an agreement with Hamas to end the fighting.
This was a significant outpouring that reflected deep divisions within Israeli society over the ongoing military assault on Gaza and other issues. However, this protest with its focus on the lives of Israeli hostages, as well as public opinion, overall continues to reflect the Jewish supremacist ethos that characterizes the majority of Israel. There is within this, a secondary but growing current of real concern for the lives and humanity of Palestinians.
“[I]t’s important to say that the vast majority of the protesters yesterday, although the fact they called to end the war, they’re not speaking directly on the suffering in Gaza, on the killings, on the children, on the starvation,” Oren Ziv of the Israeli magazine +972 told Democracy Now!. “You can hear it here and there. You can hear it from smaller groups that have been protesting from the beginning of the war against the genocide and the ongoing ethnic cleansing. But it’s not on the stages. It’s not the main message yet.”
There are small groups of protesters that feature the faces of starving Palestinian children demanding an end to the siege, and direct calls to soldiers to refuse orders to serve in Gaza specifically.
Netanyahu, along with his supporters, condemned the protests: “Those who call to end the war delay the hostages’ release and guarantee that the horrors of October 7 will return.”
Trump loudly signaled his support for Netanyahu—aka Netan-Nazi—and Israel’s escalating genocide in Gaza, posting on social media: “We will only see the return of the remaining hostages when Hamas is confronted and destroyed!!! The sooner this takes place, the better the chances of success will be.”
These outrageous lies underscore the determination of fascists in the U.S. and Israel to carry forth their imperialist-Zionist agenda of destroying and likely removing the Palestinian population of Gaza, no matter how many Palestinians—or Israeli hostages for that matter—are slaughtered.
Graduation Israeli medical student protests genocide in Gaza
And this in turn underscores the urgent need for ongoing, massive protests in the U.S., Israel and across the planet to stop this genocide!