Side by side, their postered faces bob high in the night air. Pictures of Israeli hostages held captive in Gaza by Hamas and pictures of Palestinian children killed there in Israeli airstrikes float above the crowd.
It is a rare intermingling of imagery of two peoples on the opposite sides of a brutal, ongoing war.
This recent anti-war protest in Tel Aviv drew several thousand Israelis pushing for the return of hostages after 19 months of fighting. But for the first time, many in the crowd were also rallying around Palestinian children in Gaza, thousands of whom have been killed since the war began in retaliation for the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attack.
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In times of war, empathy for the other can be elusive. But the growing number of children in Gaza who have been killed is prompting a moral reckoning on the part of some Israelis.
The protest, alongside a mushrooming of Israelis participating in silent vigils holding photographs of Gaza’s children, seems to signal a small but growing number of Israelis willing to break the public taboo against speaking out against the ongoing war. Such public shows of empathy for “the other” have made some Israelis uncomfortable. They have even generated some violent, hateful pushback. But many observers see an opportunity to reach Israeli society as it reckons with the youngest victims in Gaza.
“If we zoom out to other conflicts, it is not at all obvious that people can see the suffering of the other, especially when you are still at war. But I think there is a beginning of a crack or beginning of a shift,” says Limor Yehuda, a senior researcher at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, a think tank where she heads the Shemesh Center for the Study of a Partnership-Based Peace. “We don’t know yet where it will lead.”
She sees a combination of many factors, including the end of the ceasefire in March and a scale of casualties that many Israelis are finding harder to justify.
Children as victims
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu broke the ceasefire on March 18 that had facilitated the release of some of the hostages, arguing only more military pressure could defeat Hamas and lead to the release of the others. Since then, none of the 24 hostages presumed to be still alive has been returned, nor any of the 35 believed to be dead.
But in airstrikes that have continued since March, about 2,200 Gaza residents have been killed, according to the Hamas-run health ministry. The figure does not distinguish between combatants and civilians, but a large number of children are among the dead. Alon-Lee Green, co-chair of Standing Together, a growing grassroots organization of both Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel, notes that the toll surpasses the 1,200 Israelis killed on Oct. 7. More than 52,000 Palestinians in total have been killed since then.
“I think that through the help and focus on the story of the children, something is breaking through people’s consciousness,” says Mr. Green, whose organization has put posters on bus stops around the country with photos of the Gaza’s children killed since the ceasefire ended. “And the more we focus on this message the more it becomes normalized, a process of humanizing Palestinians with the help of the story of the children.”
At the anti-war protest, a man who only wanted to be identified by his first name of Itai became emotional describing why he was holding a poster of a young boy named Mahmoud. As a father, he said he could not distinguish between an Israeli or Palestinian child victim of the war.
“Before I would march with photos of Kfir and Ariel Bibas, and now I go with his,” Itai says, referring to the pair of red-haired brothers, just 9 months and 4 years old when they were taken hostage along with their mother from their kibbutz on Oct. 7. All three were killed in Gaza, their bodies returned to Israel in February as part of a truce.
It’s a sensitive subject. Most Israelis don’t see the same images of war-torn Gaza in mainstream media, which has focused since Oct. 7 almost exclusively on Israeli stories of victimhood. Most Jewish Israelis are still suffering from the trauma of the attack. And they also express fear, especially as some hostages have returned and recounted being tortured and starved in Gaza.
Now “is not the time,” says Yehuda Carmel, a retired engineer from central Israel, to spotlight suffering in the strip. “We see they [Gaza Palestinians] relish every opportunity to hurt us.”
Backlash against unity
That sentiment was bolstered by a violent turn Tuesday night on one of the most somber occasions of the Hebrew calendar, Memorial Day, which honors Israel’s fallen soldiers and war dead.
Unique among the ceremonies marking it is the Israeli-Palestinian Joint Memorial Ceremony, which for 20 years has brought together bereaved family members from both sides of the conflict to share their personal stories of loss. This year, amid continued war, organizers decided to extend its reach and message by setting up livestream viewing at venues across Israel, as well as other spots in the West Bank and abroad.
At one viewing at a synagogue in the central Israeli city of Raanana, a mob organized by the local branch of the ruling right-wing Likud party swarmed the event. Rioters hurled rocks at the building and banged on its doors. Attendees had to be escorted out by police, as protesters called them traitors and terrorists. Several people were wounded in the fracas, the most violent response to the ceremony since it began.
“Sadly on this day, when we commemorate the loved ones we have lost as a result of the cycle of violence, there are those who choose to drive violence again. We will not stop our fight for peace, justice, and security for both peoples,” read a statement by the Parents Circle – Families Forum, one of the groups that sponsors the ceremony.
Dr. Yehuda, the researcher, says the violence was not a surprise, since tensions around the event have been growing. And ultimately it might signal a softening of views in the long term. “We should expect such reactions and be prepared to respond to them,” she says. “It is a reaction against change.”
