Dressed in dark purple tops, a few dozen people gathered in central Tel Aviv last week to attempt something rare in Israel: to question the morality of a war in Gaza that the nation has long seen as being beyond doubt.
Rather than only repeat long-standing demands to end the fighting and free the hostages still held by Hamas, the demonstrators also pointed to the plight of Gazans and the utter devastation of the Palestinian enclave.
“It’s impossible, this continued killing,” said Shoham Smith, a children’s author with a blue streak in her hair, as she held up a poster of a dead Palestinian boy. Underneath the boy’s face was a message calling on Israeli Air Force pilots to “refuse” service.
Binyamin Netanyahu’s government is no stranger to protests. Tens of thousands take to the streets every Saturday to pressure the Israeli premier to do anything – including ending the war – to get the hostages back. About 60 per cent of Israelis support that position, polls show.
In recent weeks, something has changed.
Mainstream Israeli media channels are showing, albeit in brief clips, the human toll in Gaza. Some politicians are questioning whether Israel is still fighting a just war. And on the sidelines of hostage demonstrations, anti-war activists stand vigil for the dead of Palestine. Their numbers have grown from a handful to hundreds, and they marched with candles and pictures of dead children in silent procession on Saturday.
Smith’s left-wing group, Standing Together, embarked last week on a three-day, anti-war march from Tel Aviv southwards to the Gaza border – a protest that she thought would have been impossible in the early phase of the war. “They grabbed posters from our hands,” she said.
The shift is subtle. About three-quarters of Jewish Israelis still tell pollsters that Palestinian suffering should not be a significant factor when planning military operations in Gaza. However, after 20 months of war, the plight of civilians in Gaza – the other side – has at least slowly become a factor in the hardened, traumatised outlook of the Israeli mainstream.
For a growing number of dissenters, the morality of the entire military campaign is now coming under question
Former premier Ehud Olmert is among a clutch of politicians who have begun to address the taboo, knowing they would probably be condemned publicly for it. In a May op-ed in the leftwing Haaretz daily, he wrote that Israel was “committing war crimes” in Gaza, terming it a “war of annihilation” that included the “unrestrained, brutal and criminal killing of civilians”.
Before that, Yair Golan, a left-wing political leader and former deputy military chief, triggered a firestorm by warning that Israel was on the verge of “pariah” status because it “kill[s] babies as a hobby” in Gaza. He later clarified that his criticism was aimed at the far-right government’s rhetoric and policies, and not the actions of Israeli soldiers.
Such statements were unheard of beyond the fringes of the Israeli far-left for much of the war. The fate of the hostages, the attrition on troops, and international standing were usually cited as being more important – and less controversial – arguments with which to bring the fighting to a halt.
Yet, for a growing number of dissenters, the morality of the entire military campaign is now coming under question.
More than 1,300 retired senior military officers demanded an end last month to what they termed the “political war in Gaza”, which could threaten Israeli soldiers with “committing of war crimes”.
A similar petition issued by more than 2,500 artists, writers and peace activists last month criticised the ongoing “war of deception”, adding that a “war where over 15,600 children are killed is not moral”.
Until recently, it was rare to see images on Israeli media of Palestinian civilians injured or killed. Instead, the media would air videos of bombed-out buildings and razed neighbourhoods – usually devoid of people. Now even the mainstream Hebrew-language media has begun, at the margins, to break its own, self-imposed blackout of the human devastation.
Ynet, the largest online news portal, recently ran a translated Associated Press story at the top of its home page titled: “‘No hospital could help’: When the baby died of hunger. The stories the world sees from Gaza.” It carried an image of a crush of Gazans in line at a communal kitchen, holding empty pots.
Four days later, Israel’s most popular evening news programme on Channel 12 aired a story about the horrors shown in international coverage of the conflict. It led with an Israeli strike on Khan Younis last month in which nine children – aged between seven months and 12 years – from one family were killed.
Footage of the fiery aftermath was interspersed with pictures of the smiling siblings from before the war, followed by interviews with friends and colleagues of surviving family members.
The programme also aired part of a report by Lindsey Hilsum of the UK’s Channel 4 news that directly criticised the Israeli media: “It is perfectly possible for Israelis to choose not to know what is being done in their name, not to know about the suffering and the pain and the hunger in Gaza,” she said.
Amos Harel, the Haaretz military correspondent who has been critical of the domestic media coverage since the war’s early days, acknowledged “there has been some movement” in the coverage.
However, he added that the change was “not dramatic”.
“There are more people talking about [the toll on the Palestinian side] and it’s a more legitimate part of the conversation than before,” he said.
“But still, it’s usually framed in terms of the international consequences on Israel and the failure of Israeli diplomacy, and less about sympathy for Palestinian lives.”
The shift may also just be due to the sheer scale of Palestinian losses, he added, which continue to rise daily, weekly and monthly. “Reality stares you in the face ... the numbers are massive,” he said.
Nearly 55,000 Palestinian have been killed during the ongoing war, according to Palestinian health officials.
Despite the tentative mood shift, only a fifth of Jewish Israelis think military operations should “to a large extent” accommodate the impact on civilians in Gaza, according to a recent poll by the Israel Democracy Institute.
That is up from 13 per cent in the immediate aftermath of Hamas’ October 7th, 2023 attack, which was the worst loss of life in the country’s history. According to official figures, 1,200 people were killed and 250 taken hostage with 55 remaining captive.
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Neta Caspin, a doctoral student and anti-war activist, said her tolerance for the conflict reached its limit after six Israeli hostages in Hamas captivity were murdered in August 2024. Had the government agreed a ceasefire deal earlier, she and other protesters believe, their lives could have been saved.
Along with more than 300 other Israeli reservists who originally reported for duty after the October 7th attack, she has now signed a petition refusing to continue serving. For Neta it was “everything together” that finally pushed her to publicly break with the military.
“Innocent hostages are being killed and innocent civilians on the other side are being killed,” she said. “The army is supposed to be the last resort, as a tool to reach a [diplomatic] agreement. But for this government it’s the only recourse. I don’t believe in it.” – The Financial Times Limited 2025
