Antiwar protests in Israel

Rally in Tel Aviv. 'No to brutal bombardments' (Photo: Eli Elgarat)

Antiwar protests in Israel

By Mike Head
18 July 2006

Despite a barrage of pro-war propaganda in the Israeli media, however, visible opposition has begun to appear. Some 2,000 people marched in Israel’s commercial capital of Tel Aviv on Sunday to demand prisoner exchange negotiations with the Palestinian Hamas and the Lebanese Hezbollah, and an end to the offensive against Lebanon.

They also accused Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defence Minister Amir Peretz of murdering children and carrying out war crimes in complicity with American policy. The slogans included “Olmert Agreed With Bush: War and Occupation” and “Peretz, Don’t Worry, We’ll be Seeing You at The Hague.”

For all the claims of democracy in Israel, the rally received almost no coverage in the local and international media and was dispersed by police within two hours. Police arrested three protesters, claiming they were holding a demonstration without a permit.

Some of the marchers interviewed for Ynet, an Israeli web site, expressed their horror at the outrages being committed in their names. Eitan Lerner said: “Israel is entering another cycle of fighting and continues the foolishness of exaggerated aggression. I came here to protest because there’s a link between starving and oppressing the Palestinians and the bombings in Lebanon.”

Abeer Kopty referred to the intensive efforts being made to stampede public opinion. “They keep telling us that there is a consensus in support of the war, and that’s not true. They keep telling the citizens that this is the only way, and I think that there is another way.”

A women’s protest was also held on Sunday, next to the central Haifa train depot where a Hezbollah rocket landed earlier that day, killing eight people. The women said that in the coming days, they would be assembling a new group of Arab and Jewish women against the war.

Under the headline, “ ‘Summer Rains’ Precipitate a Flood of Blood!” the e-mail accused the government of using “cruel military force and collective punishment against the civilian populations of Gaza and Lebanon.”

It continued: “The latest events in Gaza and Lebanon are directly related to the government of Israel’s campaign against the elected leadership of the Palestinian people. This policy prevents any chance of creating a channel of communications and diplomatic negotiations with our neighbours, and leaves the arena to those who want endless fighting.”

On the picket, the slogans chanted included: “Peretz—You Promised Education and Pensions, And All We Got Is Tanks and Dead Bodies!”, “Peretz, Peretz, Minister of Defence / You have Killed Seven Children Today!” and “Jews and Arabs / Refuse to be Enemies!”

However, having campaigned against the cuts in welfare and family payments implemented by the Sharon government, the three parties promptly joined the Kadima-led government, regardless of Olmert’s stated intention to continue the pro-business measures. In particular, the government is determined to see wages fall further in order to make Israel “internationally competitive.”

This programme has included privatisations and tax handouts to benefit the wealthy, accompanied by cuts in social benefits such as unemployment, child and insurance benefits, and income assistance, and a rise in the pension age as well as restrictions on the right to strike.

These measures have already brought unemployment and poverty to increasing numbers of workers and their families and given Israel one of the highest rates of inequality in the world, second only to the US in the advanced countries. According to the National Insurance Institute, the richest households have 14 times more income than the poorest, while one quarter of the 6 million population live below the poverty level, and 1 in 5 children go hungry every day.

While billions of US dollars have been poured into military spending to sustain the war against the Palestinians and an expansion of subsidised settlements in the occupied territories, most Israeli workers and their families have seen their living standards decline.

Aided by Peretz, Olmert and his military generals are intent on channeling the rising discontent into fratricidal warfare against the impoverished Lebanese and Palestinian masses. But the conditions are emerging for growing numbers of Israeli youth and workers to realise that the Zionist project of a national home for the Jews and refuge from persecution has turned into a nightmarish dead end.

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