‘Not in our name’: Hundreds rail against war, government at Tel Aviv protest

Some 500 people gather for a weekly anti-government demonstration on Tel Aviv’s Habima Square.

Attendance is sparser than usual this week as prominent anti-government activists went to protest in Ness Ziona after a right-wing mob there assaulted Arab lawmaker Ayman Odeh last week while chanting “death to Arabs.”

Speakers at the protest rail against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government for rejecting a state commission of inquiry into failures leading up to the Hamas onslaught of October 7, 2023; attempting to codify a blanket exemption from military service for the Haredi community; and allegedly letting party politics permeate the police. They call for an end to the Gaza war and the return of the hostages.

The protest’s MC, Attorney Rotem Perlman Farhi, head of the “Free in our Land” protest group, also offers rare criticism of the war’s effect on residents of the Strip, where the UN and humanitarian groups reported skyrocketing starvation this week.

“It’s important for us to clarify again and again that the starvation and killing are not in our name,” she says.

Former police commissioner Moshe Karadi accuses National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir of effectively making the Israel Police a branch of his Otzma Yehudit party.

“I call from here to the officers and commanders of the Israel Police: Your only duty is to obey the law. You have no duty to obey a minister and the ideology of Otzma Yehudit,” he says, railing against Netanyahu for having handed over the police portfolio to a “man with a criminal record.”

Natalia Casarotti, whose son Keshet was killed fleeing the Nova music festival during the October 7 onslaught, says, “This war has long since lost its purpose. This war doesn’t protect us; it continues to stab us. It must end.”

At every mention of the war, left-wing protesters on the sidelines of the protest call on soldiers not to serve in Gaza, chanting: “Refuse! Refuse!”

After the speeches, protesters join attendees of other rallies in a march toward the US Embassy Branch Office.