An Antiwar Movement Is Stirring in Israel

Opinion|An Antiwar Movement Is Stirring in Israel

I just spent a week in Israel and, while it may not look as if much has changed — the grinding Gaza war continues to grind — I felt something new there for the first time since Oct. 7, 2023. It is premature to call it a broad-based antiwar movement, which can happen only when all the Israeli hostages are returned. But I did see signals flashing that more Israelis, from the left to the center and to even parts of the right, are concluding that continuing this war is a disaster for Israel: morally, diplomatically or strategically.

From the political center, the former prime minister Ehud Olmert wrote an essay in the newspaper Haaretz in which he pulled no punches against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his coalition. “The government of Israel is currently waging a war without purpose, without goals or clear planning and with no chances of success,” Olmert argued. “What we are doing in Gaza now is a war of extermination: indiscriminate, limitless, cruel and criminal killing of civilians.” His conclusion: “Yes, Israel is committing war crimes.”

From the right, you have the likes of Amit Halevi, a member of Netanyahu’s own right-wing Likud party, who is staunchly pro-war but thinks its execution has been bungled. Halevi had his membership on the Knesset’s foreign affairs and defense committee suspended by Netanyahu’s coalition after he voted against a proposal to extend the government’s ability to issue emergency call-up orders for Israeli reservists. In an interview with the newspaper Yediot Ahronot following his dismissal, Halevi said: “This war is a deception. They lied to us about its achievements.” Israel has “been fighting a war for 20 months with failed plans” and it “is not succeeding in destroying Hamas.”

And from the left, Yair Golan, the leader of Israel’s liberal alliance, called the Democrats, stated in an interview with Israel Radio: “Israel is on the way to becoming a pariah state, like South Africa was, if we don’t return to acting like a sane country. A sane country does not fight against civilians, does not kill babies as a hobby, and does not set itself the aim of expelling populations.”

After the “hobby” comment drew an outcry, Golan, himself a Gaza war hero, clarified that he was not blaming the military, but rather the politicians who were extending the war for reasons that no longer have anything to do with Israel’s national security needs.

While Golan probably should have used a different word, so as not to give Israeli rightists an easy way to discredit him, the truth is this: Virtually no independent foreign journalists have been allowed to report firsthand from Gaza. When this war is over and Gaza is saturated with international reporters and photographers free to roam, the level of death and destruction is going to be fully reported and pictured — and that is going to be a very bad time for Israel and world Jewry.