By CARLOS SAPIR
In late June, large protests marched throughout Israel, calling for an end to the war in Gaza or otherwise opposing military efforts. The slogans were generally self-interested, primarily expressing dissatisfaction with the government’s methods, leadership, and the growing costs of the war, rather than actual solidarity with the Palestinian resistance. But they nevertheless present a growing obstacle to the apartheid state’s ability to prosecute its genocide in Gaza or to expand its operations in the West Bank and Lebanon.
Tens of thousands rally for hostages
A peculiarity of Israeli support for the invasion of Gaza has been the presence of an outspoken movement around the families of Israelis captured in the Oct. 7 Al Aqsa Flood. The movement has remained independent of the government, despite sometimes aligning with its goals.
Small but persistent rallies have been organized in city centers since even before the Israeli invasion began, calling for the return of hostages—by any means necessary. At first, they had a largely pro-war character, showing equal enthusiasm for either recapture of the hostages or securing their release through negotiations, and the hostages have featured prominently in pro-war propaganda spread throughout Israel, the U.S. and elsewhere. However, as the war has drawn on and it has become increasingly clear even to the Israeli public that the military has pursued a strategy of unmitigated violence in Gaza at the expense of the lives of the hostages (including recent confirmation by Haaretz of the long-held suspicion that Israeli soldiers were issued orders to kill Israeli civilians on Oct. 7 rather than allow their capture), the hostages movement has moved away from supporting the continuation of the war. It has often disavowed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s stated war goal of the complete destruction of Hamas and called for the acceptance of a ceasefire proposal that would secure the release of remaining hostages. Police have responded to protests with violence, beating, and detaining even elected politicians who participated in the protests.
There is evidently significant overlap between the hostages movement and the anti-Netanyahu protests opposing his 2023 judicial reform. Liberal Zionist civil society organizations such as Kaplan Force have played a leading role in recent mobilizations. In addition to demanding hostage negotiations, the slogans of the protests have focused on blaming Netanyahu and his far-right cabinet as being the sole problem, and called for immediate elections. Protests have maintained a patriotic, pro-Zionist, pro-military, rhetoric; they do not oppose the perpetual occupation of Palestine, just the current prosecution of a military campaign by a politician they mistrust.
Given that Israeli flags and praise for the military have been ubiquitous at Israeli protests, it is unsurprising that Palestinians living within the ’48 borders have largely avoided participating in them. They have further been targeted with fierce repression and silencing by the Israeli state, facing marching bans and the pre-emptive arrests of professors, civil society leaders, and activists. Despite this pressure, these Palestinian communities have managed to organize their own mobilizations, particularly marking Land Day in April and Nakba Day in May, although even then, the Israeli authorities have prohibited Palestinians from marching in major cities and have confined their protests to inside Arab communities.
Thousands attend a “flawed” peace conference
Following the late-June week of protests, Israeli activists organized an “Israeli-Palestinian Peace Conference” in Tel-Aviv. Despite facing a hostile media blackout, the conference was attended by 6000 people, although its political content was tepid at best. Once again, this event primarily centered the plight of Israeli hostages over that of the Palestinians, who have been the victims of the war. +972 Mag notes the particular “dissonance” of featuring dancing at the conference at the same moment as the population of Khan Younis was being forced to flee from their homes to make way for Israeli settlers.
Speakers spoke broadly and vaguely of peace, but failed to articulate what that peace would mean politically. Nevertheless, it represents a step forward for the antiwar movement in the ‘48 territories in two ways. First, while only a minority, Palestinians were given the floor to speak about the oppression that they and their families have faced, and to call attention to the atrocities being actively carried out by the Israeli military despite a social and media climate that has fiercely silenced reporting on the genocide. Second, while speakers were vague in their proposals for future peace and some made allusions to a two-state solution, the conference broadly established a hope for coexistence with Palestinians, acknowledging Palestinians’ right to exist.
This is a far cry from a principled defense of Palestinian liberation against a settler-colonial project, and is not ideologically incompatible with Liberal Zionism, but it is still a step forward from the dominant perspective that has been raised by Israeli protesters in the streets, which is that the Israeli state has only erred insofar as it has endangered Israelis.
The Israeli working class’s continued support for the Zionist regime is not just a question of ideological fervor; it has a material basis in the active theft of land by the Israeli state and the inflated standard of living proportioned to Israeli workers, directly backed by Western imperialist powers. In addition to the theft of land, foreign military investment and state infrastructure, the Israeli military and its prosecution of the occupation of Palestine play a massive role in its economy, both in terms of the arms industries that directly apply their weaponry towards defending apartheid, and through the central role that military connections and training play in the Israeli job market.
Despite their material predisposition to support the state, Israeli mass movements still serve to somewhat check the violent designs of the far-right government and limit the extent to which it can pursue total war. While this, unfortunately, has not been enough to stop genocidal tactics in Gaza, it seriously undermines threats that Israel could expand the war into Lebanon without facing severe repercussions even before facing Hezbollah’s actual arsenal.
Haredim organize mass protests against the draft
Arguably, the most militant antiwar rhetoric and the fiercest condemnations against Zionism in Israel have come not from the liberal-left anti-Netanyahu movement, but instead from the ultra-religious Haredi communities, whose putative political representatives—Shas and United Torah Judaism (UTJ)—currently form part of Netanyahu’s war cabinet.
The Haredi community’s relationship to the Zionist state is distinct from that of the “secular” Jewish population. The origins of this community are distinct from that of the Zionist settler apparatus that would eventually form the Israeli state; a small community of Ashkenazi Haredi Jews from Eastern Europe migrated to Palestine decades before the formation of the Zionist movement. While their emigration was religiously motivated, and in that sense Jewish-centric—their goal was to live in proximity to holy sites in Jerusalem—they did not share the colonial goals of the later Zionist movement, namely the establishment of a Jewish sectarian state and the displacement of the indigenous population by Jews. This was expressed as overt hostility to the Zionist movement, which threatened to upend its way of life, both in Europe and in Palestine.
The hostility of this community to Zionist colonialism was mollified following the establishment of the state of Israel via a pact between the Zionist leadership and the Haredim: Haredim would be exempted from otherwise-mandatory military service for Jews, and unemployed Haredi men would be offered a stipend from the state in order to be able to dedicate their time purely to religious study instead of labor.
The combination of the stipends and the draft-exemption, as well as their sectarian, patriarchal, insular religious and social practices, have given the Haredi community a peculiar class character and social composition. Nearly half of Haredim live in poverty, and a significant proportion of the men are unemployed people who study in yeshivot (religious schools) and live off of the government stipend. Instead, women are the primary laborers of Haredi society (although their workforce participation rate is still lower than that of other Jewish women in Israel).
While at the time of the 1953 pact that accorded special privileges to yeshiva students, the community was tiny—numbering less than a thousand—today the Haredi population comprises nearly a fifth of the Jewish population in Palestine due to both high endogenous birth rates and its partial fusion with ultra-religious Jewish communities originally from the Arab world. Decades of privileges have softened Haredi opposition to Zionism (even as it bred resentment among non-Haredi Jews), and the community’s political representatives in government have used the Zionist state to pursue the imposition of religious laws as part of right-wing coalitions. Nevertheless, its abstention from the military, a central pillar of Israeli socialization and culture (and a prerequisite for many forms of employment), has maintained the community separate from the rest of Israeli society.
Facing the pressures of the war in Gaza, the Israeli government has moved to scrap the draft exemption for Haredim, which they do with the tacit blessing of the Haredi party leaders who form a critical part of the current cabinet. In response to this betrayal, thousands of Haredim took to the streets with slogans that included, “We will not enlist in an enemy army,” “We would rather live as Jews than die as Zionists,” “To jail and not to the army,” and “Zionism uses Jews as human shields.” While signs carried by protesters were primarily in English and Hebrew for broader messaging to Israel and the world, speeches were predominantly delivered in Yiddish, the traditional language of the Ashkenazi Jewish population, preserved today almost exclusively by Haredi communities.
While Haredi parties have historically participated in the administration of the Zionist state and signed off on its genocidal treatment of Palestinians, it is evident from these protests that significant layers of Haredim view themselves as an indigenous population of Palestine that is oppressed by Zionist colonization and its interruption of their traditional way of life. A significant portion of politically organized Haredi society consciously boycotts elections and disavows Israeli parliamentary politics. Military service is equated to forced secularization and the destruction of their communities. While there does not appear to be a majority consciousness of solidarity with Palestinians among the Haredi community, explicit Haredi support for Palestinian liberation is more prominently visible than support for the same among the Israeli secular left.
Haredim may not be able to play a significant role in paralyzing Israel’s economy, but the position of UTJ and Shas as key members of Netanyahu’s coalition government means that they currently have the ability to collapse the coalition prosecuting genocide against Palestinians. The Israeli military machine faces a sharp contradiction in its draft policy: if it carries on with the move to draft Haredim, it risks a coalition fracture. More catastrophically for its Zionist project, a Haredi anti-draft movement with the level of militancy currently threatened by their slogans could severely debilitate and demoralize the already-strained military apparatus, creating a situation similar to the one which the U.S. faced when it was forced to pull out of Vietnam. Alternatively, if the coalition concedes to Haredi pressure and walks back the measure, they will face increased non-Haredi discontent with the already-unpopular war and government.
Palestinians must lead the struggle for Palestinian liberation
It would be both insulting and politically backward to argue that Palestinian liberation is dependent on Israelis leading the charge. No national liberation movement has won its independence primarily through a change of heart or victorious anticolonial movement inside the colonial state. From Algeria to South Africa, the driving factor leading to victory against colonial forces has been persistent, organized, mass action for liberation by the oppressed—combining labor actions, social protest and armed struggle. Palestinians are being oppressed, dispossessed, and murdered by the Israeli state today, and their struggle against it cannot be postponed until some arbitrary future when Israelis are more prepared to let go of Zionism.
Nevertheless, Israeli mass movements with partial slogans can apply pressure against the war machine, and condition the extent to which the Israeli state can carry out military campaigns, even if we do not anticipate that they will break with the Zionist project as a whole.
The Israeli protest movement’s relationship to unions is instructive of the early stages of political consciousness in which it finds itself. Protests in June made a point of stopping by the headquarters of the Histadrut, Israel’s state-run Jewish labor union, to call on its leadership to organize a general strike and to adopt the movement’s demands. Normally, appealing to a union in this fashion would be a good tactic; it raises the slogan of class-struggle methods of political work (a general strike) and forces the union bureaucracy to either adopt the demand of struggle or to expose themselves as having abandoned workers’ interests.
The issue with appealing to the Histadrut, however, is that it is not an ordinary trade-union federation. It has been one of the key agents of Zionist colonization, organizing and implementing plans to import Jewish labor and exclude Arab workers from the creation of the Israeli state. It is thoroughly ingrained in the Zionist state, and its relationship with the state has also meant that it has largely operated as a yellow union toward Jewish workers as well, serving to discipline Jewish labor in service of the state and its bourgeoisie (and to create a separate underclass of Arab labor to the detriment of all workers), rather than to organize it to fight for its class.
While Palestinian citizens of Israel are today allowed to join the Histadrut, they have historically been subordinated to Jewish leadership within the organization, and the organization has historically worked to break Palestinian-led strikes, generally undermine labor solidarity with Palestine, and was the only major labor federation internationally to voice its support in favor of apartheid rule in South Africa. Palestinian workers in the West Bank, meanwhile, are not allowed to join it at all (but Israeli settlers living next door are). Despite this marginalization and exclusion, Palestinians are required to pay 1% dues to the Histadrut as part of a convoluted funding scheme for the West Bank territories that sees their money taxed in order to perpetrate the occupation.
The Israeli anti-war movement still has illusions about the Histadrut’s role in facilitating Israel’s war against Palestinians, even as it recognizes the role that organized labor could play in challenging the continuation of the war.
While the popular protest movement is stridently against Netanyahu’s government, it does not challenge the settler-colonial regime that his government and all prior Zionist governments have operated within, which is what ultimately drives its war against Palestine. Meanwhile, the Haredim vocally reject the Zionist regime, but have not transformed this rejection into mass support for the Palestinian cause, in part thanks to the privileges that they receive from the Zionist regime itself. Ultimately, it is the struggle led by Palestinians that not only charts its own path to freedom, but also calls to question other longstanding contradictions of the Zionist state that strain under the pressure of a brutal war.
