Standing
on the square, I agreed with all that was said about the hostages, the anguish
of their families, and the government that seems more interested in endless war
than in its duty to free them. But I was also dismayed. The war that began with
Hamas’s unthinkably cruel attack on Israel has morphed into inconceivable
brutality ordered by our government. And I was struck by the dissonance between
the march and the rally that followed, between the voices from the crowd
demanding to stop that horror and the speeches that largely avoided talking
about it.
Jerusalem
is a right-leaning city, and rallying for the hostages is a weekly ritual. This
time, I’d estimate, perhaps 2,000 people came out.
Two
nights earlier, I’d headed to Tel Aviv for a one-off demonstration, headlined
explicitly as “End the War, Bring Everyone Home.” The stress on
stopping the war, and the advertised
participation of soldiers’ parents, marked a shift in
mainstream protests from the hostages alone. Implicitly, “everyone”
included Israeli troops. The price of the war in the deaths of Israeli
soldiers, in long and traumatic reserve duty for many Israeli citizens, and in
the strain on the families of those in combat is growing as a political issue.
