Organizers reported excitedly last night that “thousands” of Jewish and Arab Israelis had joined their march in Tel Aviv demanding an immediate ceasefire agreement, the release of the hostages and an end to the killing in Gaza. “The largest rally we had against this war and for Israeli-Palestinian peace,” Alon Lee Green wrote in posting a video of the march as it was taking place.
Lee Green is co-director of Standing Together, the “Jewish-Arab Movement for Peace, Equality & Social Justice in Israel” which organized the march together with Women Wage Peace, a soon-large grassroots organization founded after Israel’s 2014 war against Gaza fighting for a political agreement to end the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Speakers at the rally included brave Israelis whose family members had been killed or taken hostage on Oct. 7, yet who refuse to give up their commitment to peace.
The national Israeli daily Haaretz estimated that 2,000 people participated. It reported that some 30 Israeli civil organizations had joined the two initiating groups in the protest. The invitation read: “Before us, as people who live in Israel, we have two alternatives: either Israeli-Palestinian peace, the only thing that will bring peace, or perpetual war that guarantees one thing—many more years of war, suffering and killing.”
