Israeli rights campaigners find it harder to speak out amid conflict
Human rights and peace advocates in Israel were facing an uphill struggle before Palestinian militant group Hamas launched its attack on October 7.
About a year ago, voters re-elected Benjamin Netanyahu as Prime Minister for a third term, who now leads the most right-wing government in Israel’s history.
He filled his cabinet with farright politicians – including one convicted of terrorism – who oppose a peaceful political settlement with the Palestinians and support the full annexation of the occupied West Bank.
Meretz, a left-wing party sympathetic to Israel’s peace and human rights movement, did not make the electoral threshold.
After October 7, official Israeli and social media were awash with militaristic propaganda.
An end to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has perhaps never felt so distant.
Peace and human rights campaigners spoke to The National about how their work changed that day and why their perspectives must be heard.
Dror Sadot, a spokeswoman for Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem, said October 7 was a terrible demonstration of what activists like her were anticipating.
“We were the people who knew the situation and how bad it was,” she said.
“The status quo or Gaza being ‘quiet’ [before October 7] did not mean things were actually calm, it just meant that Israel’s apartheid was continuing.”
Her work has become harder since the attacks but pales when compared to what her colleagues in Gaza are going through, Ms Sadot said. “As a Jewish Israeli I feel safe, even though it’s harder to speak out and protest,” she said. “The ones who are really in danger are the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
“We’ve been condemned by the public and officials. It’s part of the job and doesn’t surprise us but the volume is definitely higher than we can ever remember.
“It doesn’t stop us and it’s really the least of our problems.
“We have three researchers in Gaza with families who have lost relatives. We have friends and family that were harmed by the Hamas attacks.
“People are hurting but we’re staying loyal to human rights. It is our job and what guides us.”
Dror Etkes, an expert on illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, said he confronts danger that was not there before October 7.
Settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank has since increased as the military turned its attention to the Gaza Strip.
Settlers, who have now been drafted to protect their communities, are accused of human rights violations, including attacking Palestinians and forcing entire communities off their land.
He has been detained twice. “They were different experiences to previous interactions with the Israeli military, with soldiers who weren’t settlers,” he said. “It’s clear these new guys have an agenda and are way more hostile.”
Matan Rosenstrauch, a peace campaigner who works at the UK-based Balfour Project, said the horror of October 7 and Israel’s response has taken a huge toll on the peace movement.
A few days after the Hamas attacks, he shared a post from an Arab Israeli on social media that said not all Palestinians supported Hamas.
A relative told him to remove the post down or he would “lose his family”.
“It shows how sensitive you have to be, especially when some of your family members have survived these atrocities,” Mr Rosenstrauch said.
His father survived Hamas’s attack on Kibbutz Beeri, when more than 130 people were killed.
Many of the communities near the Gaza border were some of southern Israel’s most left-leaning constituencies, including Beeri and Nir Oz.
Peace campaigners like Yocheved Lifshitz and her husband were among those killed or kidnapped.
“A friend asked me whether if I had lost my father, would my position be different? It’s hard to say, but if you take people like Maoz Inon, who lost both his parents, or Neta Heiman from Women Wage Peace who had her mother kidnapped and returned, they haven’t changed,” Mr Rosenstrauch said.
“We on the left always said the status quo is not sustainable, although we never imagined something as bad this. It is the result of putting your head in the sand.
“My dad, his fellow survivors and the people who were murdered are victims of a government that tried to make us believe that the status quo is sustainable and the only option.”
People are hurting but we’re staying loyal to human rights. It is our job and what guides us DROR SADOT
B’Tselem