Why Israeli hostage protests must expand to advocate for all of Gaza
Why Israeli hostage protests must expand to advocate for all of Gaza
A genocide is taking place in Gaza. Israel’s war of extermination there must end, and any step that helps to hasten its conclusion should be embraced, for the sake of every life still possible to save: those of more than two million Palestinians, and those of the surviving hostages.
That is why this past weekend’s day of protest and disruption, led by the hostages’ families and culminating in a mass rally in Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square, was significant. Although the demand to end the Gaza war was not the rallying cry that drew hundreds of thousands of people into the streets, it was embedded - sometimes more explicitly, sometimes less - within the very essence of the day.
Every voice raised against this war of destruction matters. If climate activists had protested the war for its environmental devastation, that too would have been welcome.
Still, after two years of systematic devastation and slaughter in Gaza - on a scale and with a brutality that shocks decent people around the globe - the protest’s total silence about the other side of this war, the very war preventing their loved ones’ return, is nothing short of astonishing.
When Lishay Miran-Lavi, the wife of hostage Omri Miran, urged the public to come out “for one purpose only: to save the hostages and the soldiers”, I felt repulsed and deeply frustrated.
This is not mere omission. It is an explicit call to silence anyone who dares to point out that the hostages are languishing within the catastrophe that Israel is inflicting on the Palestinians of Gaza - as if the torment of the hostages and the agony of Palestinians were unfolding in two separate territorial units, or even in parallel universes.
We cannot separate the severe hunger afflicting the hostages from the starvation that Israel is imposing on two million people, a brutal policy that has already claimed countless lives.
Muted criticism
Miran-Lavi is not alone, and this past weekend was not the first time that families of hostages have strongly opposed incorporating messages of concern for Palestinian lives into protest demands. Criticism of this stance is usually muted, silenced by the aura of immunity conferred by the immense suffering of the hostages and their families - suffering that is real and utterly shattering.
But at this very moment, a genocide is taking place in Gaza. No one has the right to exempt themselves from, or try to subdivide, the moral duty to acknowledge this genocide and demand its end. Yes, for the sake of the hostages - but above all, because this abhorrent crime must stop.
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One might assume that some of the reluctance stems from fears that protests will be branded with the indelible stain of being “leftist” or “pro-Arab”. In today’s fascistic, genocidal Israel, a universalist morality has itself become a crime.
The truth is, the political right already labels such protests as benefitting Hamas. But even if the concern is about losing broad popular support, we must bear in mind: the hostages’ families are not just another special-interest group within Israeli society. Their struggle, although deeply personal, is far from sectoral.
In fact, the families themselves define the fight for the hostages’ return as a battle over the very character of Israeli society - over its capacity to heal.
In this time of apocalypse and genocide, what is the meaning of this posture of fidelity to the state, to which the families of the hostages still cling?
And if this is truly a struggle over Israel’s identity, then it is both legitimate and necessary to demand that after this apocalyptic devastation, Israeli society is not reshaped through a renewed denial of the Palestinian catastrophe and the crimes committed in our name - a denial that brought us to this point in the first place.
If protests over the hostages are being positioned to function as a collective compass, we cannot afford to let it be blind to the genocide, in which the hostages’ fates is also intertwined. A compass is not selective.
There are also pragmatic considerations. The harrowing images of hostages reduced to skin and bones testify to the acute food shortages in Gaza. The total destruction of the health system, and the ban on medical supplies, inevitably affects the hostages as well.
It would be logical, even essential, for protesters demanding the release of the hostages to loudly call for the lifting of Israel’s restrictions on food and medical aid into Gaza - if not for the sake of the starving Palestinians, then at least for the sake of their own loved ones.
And who knows, perhaps an explicit, forceful demand by the hostages’ families - or even a signal that they recognise the unimaginable suffering of more than two million Palestinians who have no connection to their relatives’ fate - could influence the treatment of the hostages themselves?
Expression of humanity
After all, according to testimonies from some released hostages, their captors’ treatment of them worsened sharply after Israeli officials publicly called for harsher measures against Palestinian prisoners. Perhaps, then, an expression of humanity by the hostages’ families towards the people of Gaza may encourage more humane treatment of the hostages as well.
And let’s not neglect another pragmatic consideration: Isn’t it obvious that against the backdrop of this past Sunday’s mass protest, looms Israel’s intention to expand its war of extermination, as per the revived discussions of a military plan to conquer Gaza City, with all that this implies for the fate of the hostages still alive?
We already know that there is an overwhelming majority in Israeli society who opposes the war and wants it to end. Another thing we know is that this government is run by people who hold the public in complete contempt, dismissing the outrage of hundreds of thousands of demonstrators in the streets as of no consequence.
Why, then, do protesters avoid issuing a clear call to refuse military service - if not for the sake of Palestinians in Gaza, then for the sake of their loved ones? Why do protesters not say explicitly that anyone who dons a uniform now and enters Gaza is betraying the families of the hostages, and endangering their sons, fathers and spouses?
In this time of apocalypse and genocide, what is the meaning of this posture of fidelity to the state, to which the families of the hostages still cling?
Almost two years have passed since that accursed day, after which nothing will ever be the same. This is something the protest movement must internalise. The reckoning required of our leaders also confronts the rest of us as citizens.
How did we allow such a distorted reality to grow and metastasise right alongside us, until it exploded in our faces? From where we are now, at the very heart of this total destruction, can we still permit ourselves to ignore the other people upon whose ruins we sought to build?
If the hostage protests represent a struggle for the future of Israeli society, what kind of society can be expected to emerge after this devastation, if it rebuilds itself once more on foundations of selective morality, indifference and denial?
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
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