Hundreds gather for protest in Tel Aviv against Gaza war

A protest against the war in Gaza took place outside Tel Aviv’s cinematheque tonight, drawing a crowd estimated by organizers to number some 300 people.

The announcement for the peace rally, titled “Only Peace Will Bring Security” in Hebrew and Arabic, was signed by 19 left-wing organizations, including the Israeli-Palestinian socialist outfit Standing Together, and Women Wage Peace, an Israeli peace movement whose founder, Vivian Silver, was murdered in Kibbutz Be’eri during Hamas’s October 7 onslaught.

Both organizations appeared to account for many of those present, as did another of the announcement’s signatories, Looking the Occupation in the Eyes, which holds a regular protest on Thursdays at the nearby Kaplan junction.

Some signs wielded by crowd members feature the rally’s title, but others featured more controversial calls to end the Gaza “genocide” or “massacre” and end the “apartheid” in the West Bank.

Speeches were preceded by a moment of silence “for all those killed from all sides.”

Former Labor lawmaker Stav Shaffir spoke at the event, followed by Ilana Kaminka, a peace activist whose son Yanai Kaminka, also a peace activist, was killed while defending the Zikim base in southern Israel on October 7.

“When people ask me how I can say these things after what happened [on October 7], I tell them: I have three more kids at home, and if I don’t want them to end up like Yanai, I need to change the Israeli public’s worldview,” said Kaminka in her address.

Other speakers included Dr. Rula Hardal, Palestinian co-chair of A Land For All, an Israeli-Palestinian two-state solution advocacy group, and Dr. Suheil Diab, former deputy mayor of Nazareth, where he now runs the local chapter of Standing Together, a co-existence organization.

Hardal, who spoke of “years of occupation, oppression, and dispossession” suffered by Palestinians, was interrupted by a middle-aged woman near the stage who yelled: “I am from the Gaza border communities, [Hamas] murdered my friends! Are you not ashamed to lie to these people?”

The woman was drowned out by a chorus of “only peace will bring security.”

Diab’s speech was also briefly interrupted when a man yelled at a couple at the crowd’s outskirts, berating them for “showing mercy toward the enemy,” as they later put it. The assailant was taken away by police.

After Diab’s speech, another young man rushed onstage and shouted into the microphone, in British English: “Kill them all! Death to Hamas!” before being removed by security.