It’s hard to believe that the war is finally over. Like many other Israelis I was glued to the TV last Monday, watching the release of the 20 living Israeli hostages alongside their masked Hamas captors. Following their hand-over to the Red Cross and then the trek to the border, the handover to the IDF female soldiers and the first sights of them smiling, then talking with their families via WhatsApp.
From there, it was on to the arrival of Trump in Air Force I. As Trump came down the red carpet, I couldn’t help recalling Jimmy Carter’s arrival back in 1979 prior to the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty and his comment as he greeted Begin, Golda and all the other Israeli dignitaries waiting for him, “you are all such famous people.” Can the current international intervention also be converted into an opportunity for peace?
Trump met Palestinian President Abbas in Egypt, after refusing to allow him to come to the UN in New York, while Netanyahu chickened out. (Photo: You Tube)
The Knesset speeches and boos for Netanyahu
Then it was on to the Knesset, and the speeches. Netanyahu tried to brag about how proud he was that Israel had “won the war” and that the hostages were coming home. Getting ready to perhaps gamble to call a snap election to try to remain in power. Opposition leader Yair Lapid spoke about the important role of Israeli civil society and the hostage families demonstrating every week to make the return of the hostages a national priority and eventually the need to end the war. While Trump, gloating over the adulation he was receiving, “they really love me” he said about the hostage families at the Saturday demos and the American Embassy calling on Trump to be the savior, since they knew they couldn’t rely on Netanyahu. When Trump’s negotiator Steve Witkoff mentioned Netanyahu’s name as he spoke to the 400,000 demonstrators at the previous Saturday night demo it was greeted by a chorus of boos. All Witkoff, Jared Kushner and Trump’s daughter Ivanka could do was smile.
Witkoff and Kushner both used the word peace in their speeches, a word we hadn’t heard from Israeli leaders in two years. (Photo: Times of Israel)
It was Witkoff and Kushner in their presentations who used the totally unfamiliar word “peace” in their presentations, a concept none of us heard from Netanyahu throughout these two years, or unfortunately from the leaders of the Israeli opposition. And unlike both Netanyahu and opposition leader Lapid, Trump also talked about peace and a “new Middle East”. He was also the only speaker who mentioned the Palestinians and the need to deal with their suffering, while at the same time being unable to avoid making snide remarks about Biden “the worst president ever” with Obama being “not far behind.”
The Sharm Summit
Trump pushed Egyptian President Al-Sisi to invite Netanyahu – they hadn’t talked for two years – to the Sharm El-Sheikh summit with all the Arab and international leaders that was to take place later that afternoon to move the process forward, Netanyahu accepted. Did this mean that he would actually participate in a meeting intended to give Arab and international support for the 20 Point Plan, which includes in Point 19 “a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood”, and meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas who he had boycotted in favor of support for Hamas? Not exactly. He quickly chickened out, claiming because of the Simchat Torah holiday, a fact he knew when he accepted the invitation.
The tragic Gaza reality
Unfortunately the average Israeli has not been seeing the images of death and destruction in Gaza that the rest of the world is seeing since mainstream Israeli TV has self-censored that, thinking that the audience only wants to see images of the Israel pain. Only the daily Ha’aretz has provided ongoing coverage of the horrors, along with small Internet-based vehicles like the English language +972 and its Hebrew language counterpart “Sicha Mkomeet” (Local Conversation), and to a degree the Times of Israel. Protesters at the mass demonstrations against Netanyahu and the continuation of the war did begin to hold pictures of Gaza children who have been killed with signs saying “All children’s lives matter”. One thing we can be thankful for is that the Trump 20 Point Plan and the French-Saudi initiative which led to the “New York Declaration” at the UN for the end of the war, peace and a two-state solution clearly takes the messianic dreams of the Israeli fascist right of driving out all the Palestinians and resettling Gaza off the table. They had considered the war to be a “God-given opportunity” to do all of that. Trump also clearly told Netanyahu, urged on by the leaders of the Arab states, that there will be “no annexation” in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip. It also ended Trump’s absurd and immoral dream of creating a “beautiful Riviera” on the Gaza seashore while the local Palestinians would be “temporarily” removed from the mass “demolition site” to places unknown. Now hopefully international and Israeli journalists will be allowed into Gaza to show the Israeli public the fact that some 80% of the buildings have been damaged or destroyed, and to hear the pain of the Palestinian families who have lost so many members, including at least 20,000 children.
Protesters in Tel Aviv hold up photos of slain Gaza children. (Photo: Times of Israel)
All of this took place on the eve of the Simchat Torah holiday, the last of the four fall Jewish holidays, almost 2 years to the day of October 7th and the deadly Hamas attack. I couldn’t help remembering calling my friend peace activist Vivian Silver that morning when I heard that Kibbutz Be’eri was attacked, and discovering there was no answer. I also hoped that 83 year old Oded Lifshitz, a veteran journalist and peace activist from Kibbutz Nir Oz who my partner Etty worked with at the left-wing daily Al Hamishmar would survive captivity and would return to say what he really felt about Netanyahu and his policies, but that was not to be.
The day before, I spent three hours at Hostage Square, the plaza in front of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art that had become the home of hostage families and the site of the regular Saturday night demonstrations. One of the hostage families had organized a virtual reality experience. I put on the headset and saw myself in a basement in Gaza with some frightened Israeli hostages, with a Hamas guard watching over them. I told the organizers it was a very powerful experience. An artist had created a tunnel that people could go through to feel what is was like in Gaza, which I had done ages ago. And of course there was the clock, ticking off the days and minutes since the war and captivity began, now reaching 736 days, 11:14 hours and 30 seconds. And there was a new sculpture at least for me, modeled on the LOVE image created by Robert Indiana, with the Hebrew word תקוה (HOPE). Two young girls asked me to take their photo with the sculpture in the background.
The TIKVA (HOPE) sculpture by Luis Har in Hostage Square based on the famous LOVE sculpture by Robert Indiana. (Photo: Wikipedia Commons)
Singing for hope and peace
Then I came upon a musical interlude. Turns out that an architecture professor at Tel Aviv University has been coming every Saturday from 5 to 8 p.m. before the main demo to lead general singing of veteran Israeli songs. This time he had the reinforcement of two singers from the nearby Israeli Opera. He began with a travelogue of traditional Israeli folk songs beginning from the north to the south. The site held a picture of hostage Alon Ohel, a talented pianist who had said that the first song he wanted to hear after his release was “Shir L’lo Shem” (A Song Without a Name) by Shalom Chanoch. I sat there for two hours, singing along with that song and many of the other songs. I was surprised when he also launched into Shir L’Shalom (Song for Peace), the anthem of the Israeli peace movement which was considered “defeatist” by the Israeli right, the song that Yitzhak Rabin was singing a few minutes before he was assassinated and hopes for peace were derailed on November 4th, 1995. Here’s the very powerful song with English subtitles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sz8O0OcAA3c
The professor and the opera soprano leading the singing in Hostage Square (Photo: Author)
After the announcement of the agreement to end the war, my favorite background music station 88 f.m. began the morning with a series of peace and change songs, beginning with Sam Cooke’s “A Change is Gonna Come” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEBlaMOmKV4, followed by “Sof Tov” (A Good End) by Israeli singer Yoni Bloch who imagined peace breaking out throughout the Middle East with an imaginative AI video including a performance by…Taylor Swift in the Yarkon Park in Tel Aviv, accompanied by…Yoni Bloch https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=Sof+Tov#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:a483789b,vid:erLAgHIP6UM,st:0, followed by “Wind of Change” by (my “cousins” Michael and Rudolph Schenker’s German band) The Scorpions https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4RjJKxsamQ , followed by John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s “Happy X-Mas (War is Over)”, even though it was the Succot holiday and not Christmas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMH_wMvMy_8
New Opportunities Have Opened Up
There is a long way to go, but new opportunities have now opened, for both Israelis and Palestinians. We in Israeli and Palestinian civil society can’t allow this opportunity to be missed. Vivian Silver’s son Yonatan Zeiger and many other members of families of the victims on October 7th and the hostage families are committed to continue the struggle, to replace the “forever war” government and build a path to an end to the conflict. A few days before the hostages were released and the war ended, about 40 Israeli peace activists under the banner of the “It’s Time” initiative met with Palestinian President Abbas in Ramallah to discuss how to proceed. And after the dramatic day in the Knesset and Sharam El-Sheikh, ALLMEP (the Alliance for Middle East Peace), which has 180 member organizations, arranged a meeting between Israeli and Palestinian civil society activists to discuss where do we go from here.
We can’t allow Netanyahu’s dream of Israel becoming a “Sparta” and an “autarchic” society to become a reality. We will not survive by sword alone, and no nation is an island.