Latest news with #antiwar
Yahoo
5 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Divided Israel faces internal unrest amid escalating Gaza conflict
As Israel's devastating war on Gaza grinds on, pushed forward by a prime minister insistent that a goal of total military victory be met, the divisions within Israeli society are growing increasingly deeper. In the last few weeks, as Israeli peace activists and antiwar groups have stepped up their campaign against the conflict, supporters of the war have also increased their pressure to continue, whatever its humanitarian, political or diplomatic cost. Members of the military have published open letters protesting the political motivations for continuing the war on Gaza, or claiming that the latest offensive, which is systematically razing Gaza, risks the remaining Israeli captives held in the Palestinian territory. Another open letter has come from within Israel's universities and colleges, with its signatories doing a rare thing within Israel since the war began in October 2023: focusing on Palestinian suffering. Elsewhere, campaigns of protest and refusal of military service have spread – a result of a mixture of pro-peace sentiment and more prevalent anger at the government's handling of the war – posing a risk to Israel's war effort, which is reliant upon the active participation of the country's youth. The war's critics say that the man they oppose, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has become reliant upon the extreme right to maintain his coalition, and an opposition too cowardly to confront him in the face of mounting international accusations of is important not to confuse the growing domestic criticism of the Israeli government's handling of the war with any mass sympathy for the Palestinian people. A recent poll reported that 82 percent of Jewish Israeli respondents would still like to see Gaza cleared of its Palestinian population, with almost 50 percent also backing what they said was the 'mass killing' of civilians in enemy cities occupied by the Israeli army. And on Monday, thousands of Israelis led by the country's far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, rampaged through occupied East Jerusalem's Old City, chanting 'death to Arabs' and attacking anyone perceived to be either Palestinian or defending them. Also addressing the crowd at the 'Jerusalem Day' march was the country's ultranationalist finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, who has been vocal in his push for the annexation of the occupied West Bank, and the displacement of Palestinians from Gaza. Smotrich asked the crowd: 'Are we afraid of victory?'; 'Are we afraid of the word 'occupation?'' The crowd – described as 'revellers' within parts of Israeli media – responded with a resounding 'no'. 'There's a cohort of the extreme right who feel vindicated by a year and a half of war,' the former Israeli diplomat Alon Pinkas told Al Jazeera. 'They think their message that, if you blink you lose; if you pause, you lose; if you waver, you lose, has been borne out.'Alongside the intensifying of Israel's onslaught on Gaza, which has now killed more than 54,000 Palestinians, voices of dissent have grown louder. In April, more than 1,000 serving and retired pilots issued an open letter protesting a war they said served 'political and personal interests' rather than security ones. Further letters, as well as an organised campaign encouraging young Israelis to refuse to show up for military service, have followed. Perhaps sensing the direction the wind was blowing, the leader of Israel's left-wing Democrats Party, Yair Golan – who initially supported the war and took a hardline position on allowing humanitarian aid into Gaza – launched a stark broadside against the conflict earlier this month, claiming that Israel risked becoming a 'pariah state' that killed 'babies as a hobby' while giving itself the aim of 'expelling populations'. While welcomed by some, the comments of the former army major-general were rounded upon by others. Speaking at a conference in southern Israel alongside noted antiwar lawmaker Ofer Cassif, Golan was heckled and called a traitor by far-right members of the audience, before he had to be escorted off the premises by security. Cassif, who refers to himself as an anti-Zionist, has long attracted the outrage of mainstream Israeli society for his loud denunciation of the way Israel treats Palestinians. 'There have always been threats against me,' Cassif, who has been alone among Israeli lawmakers in opposing the war from its onset, told Al Jazeera. 'I can't walk down my own street. I was attacked twice before October 7 and it's gotten much worse since. 'But it's not just me. All the peace activists risk being physically attacked or threatened, even the families of the hostages are at risk of attack by these bigots,' he said. 'Many people are coming to realise that this government and even the mainstream opposition aren't fighting a war for security reasons, or even to recover the hostages, but are carrying out the kind of genocidal mission advocated by Smotrich and the other messianic bigots,' Cassif said of the finance minister and his supporters. 'This has been allowed by people like [Benny] Gantz, [Yair] Lapid and [Yoav] Gallant,' he said, citing prominent politicians opposed to the prime minister, 'who didn't dare criticise it [the war] and Netanyahu, who has manipulated it for his own ends.' Cassif's comments were echoed by one of the signatories to the academics' open letter criticising the war, Ayelet Ben-Yishai, an associate professor at the University of Haifa. 'The opposition has nothing,' she told Al Jazeera. 'I get that it's hard to argue for a complicated future, but they do and say nothing. All they've left us with is a choice between managing the war and the occupation and Smotrich and his followers. That's it. What kind of future is that?'Many members of the government and opposition have previously served in senior roles within the army, either engaging in or overseeing combat operations against Palestinians, and maintaining the illegal occupation of Palestinian land. Democrats Party head Golan was even previously criticised by the army in 2007 for repeatedly using Palestinian civilians as human shields. 'What we're seeing right now is a struggle between two Zionist elites over who is the greater fascist in different forms,' Yehouda Shenhav-Shahrabani, a professor at Tel Aviv University, said of the political struggles at play within Israel. 'On the one hand, there are the Ashkenazi Jews, who settled Israel, imposed the occupation and have killed thousands,' he said of Israel's traditional military and governing elites, many of whom might describe themselves as liberal and democratic, and were originally from central and Eastern Europe. 'Or [you have] the current religious Zionists, like Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, who [the old Ashkenazi elite] now accuse of being fascists. 'You can't reduce this to left and right. I don't buy into that,' Shenhav-Shahrabani said. 'It goes deeper. Both sides are oblivious to the genocide in Gaza.' While resistance against the war has grown both at home and abroad, so too has the intensity of the attacks being protested against. Since Israel unilaterally broke a ceasefire in March, almost 4,000 Palestinians have been killed, hundreds of them children. In addition, a siege, imposed upon the decimated enclave on March 2, has pushed what remains of its pre-war population of more than two million to the point of famine, international agencies, including the United Nations, have warned. At the same time as Israel's war on Gaza has intensified, so too have its actions in the West Bank. Under the guise of another military operation, the Israeli army has occupied and levelled large parts of the occupied territory displacing a reported 40,000 of its inhabitants as it establishes its own military network there. On Thursday, Israel's Defence Minister Israel Katz, alongside Smotrich, who as finance minister enjoys significant control over the West Bank, announced the establishment of a further 22 Israeli settlements, all in defiance of international law. Smotrich's announcement came as a surprise to few. The far-right minister – himself a settler on Palestinian land – has previously been clear about his intention to see the West Bank annexed, even ordering preparations to do so in advance of US President Donald Trump's inauguration, who he expected to support the idea. He has also said Gaza will be 'totally destroyed' and its population expelled to a tiny strip of land along the Egyptian border. For Shenhav-Shahrabani, little of it was surprising. 'I went with some others to South Africa in 1994. I met a justice of the Supreme Court, a Jew, who'd been injured by an Afrikaner bomb [during the struggle against apartheid],' Shenhav-Shahrabani said. 'He told me that nothing will change for Palestinians until Israelis are ready to go to jail for them. We're not there yet.'
New York Times
27-05-2025
- General
- New York Times
An Antiwar Movement Is Stirring in Israel
I just spent a week in Israel and, while it may not look as if much has changed — the grinding Gaza war continues to grind — I felt something new there for the first time since Oct. 7, 2023. It is premature to call it a broad-based antiwar movement, which can happen only when all the Israeli hostages are returned. But I did see signals flashing that more Israelis, from the left to the center and to even parts of the right, are concluding that continuing this war is a disaster for Israel: morally, diplomatically or strategically. From the political center, the former prime minister Ehud Olmert wrote an essay in the newspaper Haaretz in which he pulled no punches against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his coalition. 'The government of Israel is currently waging a war without purpose, without goals or clear planning and with no chances of success,' Olmert argued. 'What we are doing in Gaza now is a war of extermination: indiscriminate, limitless, cruel and criminal killing of civilians.' His conclusion: 'Yes, Israel is committing war crimes.' From the right, you have the likes of Amit Halevi, a member of Netanyahu's own right-wing Likud party, who is staunchly pro-war but thinks its execution has been bungled. Halevi had his membership on the Knesset's foreign affairs and defense committee suspended by Netanyahu's coalition after he voted against a proposal to extend the government's ability to issue emergency call-up orders for Israeli reservists. In an interview with the newspaper Yediot Ahronot following his dismissal, Halevi said: 'This war is a deception. They lied to us about its achievements.' Israel has 'been fighting a war for 20 months with failed plans' and it 'is not succeeding in destroying Hamas.' And from the left, Yair Golan, the leader of Israel's liberal alliance, called the Democrats, stated in an interview with Israel Radio: 'Israel is on the way to becoming a pariah state, like South Africa was, if we don't return to acting like a sane country. A sane country does not fight against civilians, does not kill babies as a hobby, and does not set itself the aim of expelling populations.' After the 'hobby' comment drew an outcry, Golan, himself a Gaza war hero, clarified that he was not blaming the military, but rather the politicians who were extending the war for reasons that no longer have anything to do with Israel's national security needs. While Golan probably should have used a different word, so as not to give Israeli rightists an easy way to discredit him, the truth is this: Virtually no independent foreign journalists have been allowed to report firsthand from Gaza. When this war is over and Gaza is saturated with international reporters and photographers free to roam, the level of death and destruction is going to be fully reported and pictured — and that is going to be a very bad time for Israel and world Jewry. So, Golan was right to warn his nation — bluntly — to stop now, forge a cease-fire, get the hostages back, get an international and Arab force into Gaza and deal with the remnants of Hamas later. When you are in a hole, stop digging. Unfortunately, Netanyahu has insisted on continuing to dig, claiming that he can bomb Hamas into giving up its remaining 20 or so living Israeli hostages — and because the religious-nationalist members of his coalition have essentially told him if he stops the war, they will topple him. So, the Israeli military is going after more and more secondary targets, and the result is Gazan civilians being killed every day. Amos Harel, the military analyst for Haaretz, explained why: 'Many bombing runs are actually assassination attempts against Hamas leaders, often when they're with their families. And these officials no longer live in private houses or apartment buildings — they're usually in the crowded tent camps with thousands of civilians. Even when the army declares multiple steps of caution, these attacks result in massive killing.' It is not only, and indeed not even mostly, the rise in Gazan civilian casualties that are turning more and more Israelis against the war. It's simply that the war has worn down the whole society. The signs, Harel notes, are everything from 'an increasing number of suicides (which the army doesn't report) to families that are breaking up and businesses that are collapsing. The government conveniently ignores these developments and scatters promises of victory instead.' And it's not only the voices of adult politicians who tell you that Israel has been too long at war. It's the innocent actions of 4-year-olds, too. During my trip, I heard a story from the popular Israeli anchor Lucy Aharish, the first Israeli Arab Muslim news presenter on mainstream Hebrew-language television. She and I had both arrived at a dialogue we did together in Tel Aviv a bit bleary eyed because around 3 a.m. we had each been awakened by the wail of air raid sirens telling us to take cover from a Houthi missile attack. There is something distinctive and particularly nerve-jangling about this air raid siren, but you have to be an adult to detect it. Why do I say that? Well, every year Israel commemorates the fallen soldiers and civilians of its wars with a two-minute wail of a siren. Wherever they are, Israelis stop, pull off the road and stand in silence for this siren, which is a steady blare, not the wave used for air raid warnings. On the commemoration this year, Aharish told me, the national siren went off at the designated time, and 'my 4-year-old son, Adam, who was playing on the floor, started to panic and immediately began gathering up his toys to go into the safe room in our house.' 'I told him, 'No, you don't have to. This is a different siren. For this siren we stand in respect for superheroes who kept us safe and are no longer with us.'' When 4-year-olds must learn to distinguish the difference between siren wails — those that you stand in respect for and those you need to gather your toys for and rush for a room with no windows — you have been too long at war. If many Israelis feel trapped by their own leaders, many Gazans clearly feel the same. Polling in Gaza is obviously difficult, but the antiwar movement there seems to be stirring as well — although there you can get killed by Hamas for protesting. A survey by the independent, Ramallah-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research of people across the Gaza Strip found that 48 percent supported the anti-Hamas demonstrations that erupted in several places in recent weeks. Indeed, be assured, it's not only some Israeli leaders who will face a reckoning when the guns of Gaza finally fall silent. Hamas's leaders will live in infamy. They attacked Israeli border communities on Oct. 7, 2023, and, when Israel predictably retaliated, they essentially offered up Gaza's civilians as a collective human sacrifice to win global sympathy for their cause — while Hamas's leaders hid in tunnels and abroad. Hamas is still operating, but now Gaza is unlivable. And yet, Hamas's leadership is still stubbornly saying it will not turn over all its remaining live hostages unless Israel agrees to leave Gaza and return to an open-ended cease-fire. Really? Israel should leave all of Gaza and accept a cease-fire? What a great idea. If Hamas achieved that 'victory,' it would mean that Hamas fought this entire war — losing tens of thousands of fighters and civilians and having few buildings in Gaza left intact — in order to get back to exactly what Hamas had on Oct. 6, 2023: a cease-fire and Israel out of Gaza. For this alone, history will remember Hamas's leaders as mendacious fools. They thought they were unleashing an apocalypse on Israel and instead unleashed an apocalypse on their own people that also ended up giving license to Netanyahu to destroy their ally, Hezbollah, in Lebanon and Syria, which weakened Iran's grip on both of those nations, as well as on Iraq, and helped drive Russia out of Syria. It was a rout of the Iran-led 'resistance network.' But here's the rub. As a result of Netanyahu's military operations, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah — not to mention Saudi Arabia — are all now much freer to join the Abraham Accords and normalize relations with Israel to a degree they never were when Iran's regional mercenary network was so powerful. Yes, Netanyahu made that happen! But he also never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity for peace. Netanyahu today staunchly refuses to harvest what Netanyahu has sown. He will not do the one thing that would unlock the politics of the whole region: open a road, no matter how long, to a two-state solution with a reformed Palestinian Authority. No wonder Donald Trump doesn't want to waste time with Netanyahu — he can't make any money from him and Netanyahu won't allow Trump to make any history with him. The more I would argue to Israelis that Netanyahu is making a historic mistake — trading peace with Saudi Arabia for peace with the far-right extremists who keep him in power — the more they would ask me: 'Do you think Trump can save us?' That question is the ultimate sign that your democracy is in trouble. I had to explain that Trump goes to countries that give him things — cash, 747s, $Trump meme coin and Official Melania Meme sales, arms purchases, hotel deals, golf courses, A.I. data centers — and not countries that ask him for things, like Israel. In fairness to Trump, he probably has no idea how much Israel has internally changed. Even many American Jews don't understand how big and powerful the ultra-Orthodox and religious-settler-nationalist community in Israel has grown and how much it sees Gaza as a religious war. 'Bibi is actually their pawn, not the real player,' explained Avrum Burg, a former speaker of the Knesset, referring to the religious-nationalist-settler right in Israel. 'You tell them Israel could have peace with Saudi Arabia and they will shrug and tell you that they are waiting for the Messiah. You tell them they could have peace with Syria, and they will tell you the Jewish people already own Syria — it's part of Greater Israel. You tell them about international law, they will tell you biblical law. You will tell them Hamas, they will tell you Amalek' (a biblical enemy of the Israelites). The real divide in Israel today, concluded Burg, who teaches about relations between religion and state, is not between conservatives and progressives: 'It's between the Jewish tribe and the democratic tribe. And the Jewish tribe is now winning. If Zionism was originally the triumph of secular nationalism over religious Judaism, what is happening to today is the resurgence of religious-nationalist Judaism over democracy.' And so, after a week, I flew home from Off Broadway — Israel — only to discover the same play, only bigger, is running on Broadway, in America. It is eerie to watch how Trump and Netanyahu are using a similar playbook to undermine their respective democracies. My only question is whose authoritarian impulses will trigger a full-blown constitutional crisis first. Each leader stands accused of trying to undermine his country's courts and the 'deep state'' — i.e., all the institutions that uphold the rule of law. In Trump's case, it's effectively to enrich himself personally and shift wealth in the country from the least privileged to the most privileged. In Netanyahu's case, it's effectively to escape the many corruption charges against him and shift power and money away from the democratic, moderate Israeli center to the settlers and the ultra-Orthodox. That group will keep Netanyahu's coalition in office as long as he excuses the ultra-Orthodox from fighting in Gaza and allows the settlers to continue their march to annex the West Bank today and Gaza tomorrow. When Netanyahu was elected in November 2022 and began forming his Jewish supremacist coalition, I wrote a column the next morning headlined, 'The Israel We Knew Is Gone.'' I hope I was premature — but I hope even more that I won't soon have to write the same column about America. The year 2026 will have a lot to say about whether the Netanyahu and Trump cults can be contained. That year, Netanyahu will have to hold national elections and Trump will have to face the midterms. Those committed to democracy and decency in both countries have one job between now and then: organize, organize, organize to win power. Nothing else matters. And everything is riding on it.
BreakingNews.ie
25-05-2025
- Politics
- BreakingNews.ie
Bernie and Jane Sanders attend plaque unveiling in Co Kildare
US senator Bernie Sanders has accompanied his wife Jane to a Co Kildare town where she traces her roots for the unveiling of plaque commemorating an anti-war song. Dr Jane O'Meara Sanders, an activist and political strategist, has ancestral links to Athy. Advertisement The couple were special guests at St Michael's Cemetery in the town for the unveiling of the plaque dedicated to the 19th century anti-war folk song 'Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye'. The crowd at the St Michael's Cemetery war memorial at the unveiling of the plaque for the anti-war song in Athy, Co Kildare (PA) The song tells the story of a woman who, on the road to Athy, meets a former lover who has returned from war badly injured. The plaque is part of the Made Of Athy Project, a local initiative that recognises people with links to the town who have made significant contributions to world culture. Mr and Mrs Sanders attended the event during their short visit to Ireland. Advertisement On Saturday evening, the 83-year-old US senator urged working people in Ireland and across the world to unite to stop the rise of oligarchy as he delivered a keynote speech in Dublin. He used an address at the Robert Tressell Festival at Liberty Hall to criticise what he characterised as a new generation of billionaires who do not believe in government or democracy. Mr Sanders also expressed concern that artificial intelligence and new technology were being used against working people, to take their jobs, rather than being harnessed to benefit workers and generate wealth across society.
Malay Mail
24-05-2025
- Politics
- Malay Mail
Israeli defence minister bans leftist ex-general from army bases, wearing military uniform after anti-war criticism
JERUSALEM, May 24 — Israel's minister of defence said yesterday that he would seek to bar left-wing politician Yair Golan from reserve duty and forbid him from wearing a military uniform or entering army bases following anti-war remarks that sparked an uproar. Government officials and opposition leaders were united in their condemnation of Golan — a former major general — after he said in a radio interview this week that 'a sane country... does not kill babies for a hobby'. Golan later clarified that he was taking aim at the government's policies, not individual soldiers, and warned that Israel's conduct of the war in Gaza could make it a 'pariah state'. Defence Minister Israel Katz, accusing the politician of slander, announced on Friday he had 'decided to order (the military) to no longer call up Yair Golan for reserve service, and to ban him from wearing the uniform of (the army) and from entering military bases'. He added that Golan's statements 'serve the enemies of Israel' and could contribute to international prosecutions of soldiers, saying there was 'no place for people like Golan in public life'. Responding to the decision, Golan said: 'The last time I wore an (army) uniform, it was October 7, when I went down to the south to save civilians after your government's terrible security failure.' He added he would 'continue to do everything for Israel and its security'. Golan, a vocal opponent of Netanyahu's government, has been a divisive figure since a 2016 speech in which he appeared to draw parallels between Israeli society and the rise of fascism in Europe in the 1930s, but he later won praise for his actions on October 7. A survey on voter preference published Friday by the Maariv newspaper, showed that if an election were held immediately, Golan's party would win just seven seats in parliament, down from 11 a week before. Since ramping up its offensive in Gaza in recent days, Israel has come under increasing international pressure to dial back its campaign and allow more aid into the war-ravaged territory. — AFP
Al Arabiya
23-05-2025
- Politics
- Al Arabiya
Israel defense minister says will bar politician from uniform for anti-war remarks
Israel's minister of defense said Friday that he would seek to bar left-wing politician Yair Golan from reserve duty and forbid him from wearing a military uniform or entering army bases following anti-war remarks that sparked an uproar. Government officials and opposition leaders were united in their condemnation of Golan -- a former major general -- after he said in a radio interview this week that 'a sane country... does not kill babies for a hobby.' Golan later clarified that he was taking aim at the government's policies, not individual soldiers, and warned that Israel's conduct of the war in Gaza could make it a 'pariah state.' Defense Minister Israel Katz, accusing the politician of slander, announced on Friday he had 'decided to order (the military) to no longer call up Yair Golan for reserve service, and to ban him from wearing the uniform of (the army) and from entering military bases.' He added that Golan's statements 'serve the enemies of Israel' and could contribute to international prosecutions of soldiers, saying there was 'no place for people like Golan in public life.' Responding to the decision, Golan said: 'The last time I wore an (army) uniform, it was October 7, when I went down to the south to save civilians after your government's terrible security failure.' He added he would 'continue to do everything for Israel and its security.' Golan, a vocal opponent of Netanyahu's government, has been a divisive figure since a 2016 speech in which he appeared to draw parallels between Israeli society and the rise of fascism in Europe in the 1930s, but he later won praise for his actions on October 7. A survey on voter preference published Friday by the Maariv newspaper, showed that if an election were held immediately, Golan's party would win just seven seats in parliament, down from 11 a week before. Since ramping up its offensive in Gaza in recent days, Israel has come under increasing international pressure to dial back its campaign and allow more aid into the war-ravaged territory.
