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MASS ISRAELI PROTESTS AS 6 MORE HOSTAGES KILLED, NETANYAHU REFUSES
CEASEFIRE TERMS, U.S. SENDS ARMS  
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Amy Goodman intervews Yonatan Zeigen and Gideon Levy
September 3, 2024
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_ “Our politicians won’t listen to anything, because they’re
driven out of self-interest,” says Israeli peace activist Yonatan
Zeigen, whose mother Vivian Silver was killed in the October 7 Hamas
attack on Kibbutz Be’eri. _

A protester in Tel Aviv, Israel, on Sept. 1 carries a poster reading
in Hebrew "Netanyahu's Legacy" at a mass demonstration condemning
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his handling of the hostages
being held by Hamas in Gaza., David Silverman/Getty Images

 

Hundreds of thousands of Israelis protested this weekend to demand a
ceasefire following the deaths of six more hostages in Gaza, but Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to reject the terms of a deal
that would remove Israeli troops from southern Gaza. This comes after
nearly 11 months of Israel’s war on Gaza, which has killed over
40,000 Palestinians in the territory, according to local health
authorities. “Our politicians won’t listen to anything, because
they’re driven out of self-interest,” says Israeli peace activist
Yonatan Zeigen, whose mother Vivian Silver was killed in the October 7
Hamas attack on Kibbutz Be’eri. Despite the feeling of solidarity on
the streets, Zeigen says there is a sense of “hopelessness” in the
mass protests in Israel. We also speak with _Haaretz_ columnist Gideon
Levy, who says the outrage in Israel is still mostly confined to
critics of Netanyahu and has not yet penetrated his base of support,
and that the United States has a major role in the continued violence
and Netanyahu’s refusal to agree to a ceasefire. “If President
Biden would have really liked to put an end to this war, he could have
done it within days by stopping or at least conditioning … the
supply of arms and ammunition to Israel. He didn’t do it,” Levy
notes.

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: The Israeli army’s discovery of six dead Israeli
hostages in tunnels in Rafah, in southern Gaza, has spurred some of
the largest protests Israel has seen since October 7. Israel says the
hostages were killed by Hamas; Hamas says they were killed by Israeli
airstrikes, not far from where a seventh hostage was found alive last
week.

On Sunday and Monday, grief and anger spilled onto the streets as
hundreds of thousands of Israelis in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and other
cities, along with hostage families, demanded Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu accept a ceasefire deal with Hamas to secure the release of
all remaining hostages. This is demonstrator Michal Caspi, whose
nephew Alon Ohel was taken hostage October 7th.

MICHAL CASPI: So many people came. I met people that never came
before. They came for the first time. I think after what happened
yesterday morning, when we hear about the six bodies that came back, I
think everybody feel like they have to do something. And I think
it’s one of the reasons that so many people came out from home and
came to say their words, that they want all the abducted to come back
home.

AMY GOODMAN: A rare general strike was called by Histadrut. It was
held across Israel on Monday.

Meanwhile, thousands of mourners gathered at the funeral of the
Israeli American hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, whose body was among
those retrieved from southern Gaza. Hersh’s father Jon Polin said he
hoped his son’s death would not be in vain and instead lead to the
release of the remaining 101 hostages still held captive in Gaza.

JON POLIN: Hersh, we failed you. We all failed you. You would not have
failed you. You would have pushed harder for justice. You would have
worked to understand the other, to bridge differences. You would have
challenged more people to challenge their own thinking. And what you
would be pushing for now is to ensure that your death, the deaths of
all the soldiers and so many innocent civilians are not _lashav_, not
in vain.

AMY GOODMAN: Despite the protests calling for a ceasefire, Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushed back Monday, rejecting the
terms of a deal that would remove Israeli troops from southern Gaza.
Netanyahu begged for forgiveness for not bringing the six hostages
home alive.

PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: [translated] I told the families,
and I say it again this evening: I ask for your forgiveness for not
succeeding in bringing them back alive. We were close, but we didn’t
succeed. And I also say this evening, Israel will not accept this
massacre. Hamas will pay a very high price for that.

AMY GOODMAN: Even Netanyahu’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant is
disagreeing with Netanyahu saying he will not agree to a ceasefire
unless Israeli soldiers can stay in the Philadelphi Corridor.

For more, we go to Tel Aviv, where we’re joined by two guests.
Gideon Levy is an award-winning Israeli author and journalist,
columnist for the newspaper _Haaretz_, member of its editorial board.
And Yonatan Zeigen is an Israeli peace activist, trained mediator and
social worker, son of the renowned Canadian Israeli peace activist
Vivian Silver, who was killed on October 7th during the Hamas attack
on her kibbutz, Kibbutz Be’eri, where she lived. He has said his
mother had a plan for peace for Israel and the Palestinians before she
was killed.

We welcome you both to _Democracy Now!_ Yonatan, let’s begin with
you in Tel Aviv. Can you describe the scene of the hundreds of
thousands of Israelis, a number of them family members of hostages
still in Gaza, demanding that Netanyahu agree to a ceasefire deal?

YONATAN ZEIGEN: Well, being on the streets with so many people and
with that energy is very powerful, on the one hand. On the other,
it’s filled with despair, because you know that our politicians
won’t listen to anything, because they’re driven out of
self-interest. So, in that sense, you feel — you feel the energy,
you feel the solidarity, but also the hopelessness.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Yonatan, do you believe these latest deaths of
the six hostages were preventable. If so, why? And do you see that the
latest protests are some sort of a turning point in Israel?

YONATAN ZEIGEN: All of the deaths were preventable. October 7th was
preventable, as well. If we would have pursued peace years ago, if we
would seek partners, Palestinian partners, instead of strengthening
fundamentalists, if we would have not strengthened our own
fundamentalists and put them in government, then October 7th
wouldn’t have happened to begin with.

And since then, if we wouldn’t have gone into this atrocious war,
and if we would — sought diplomacy and the help of the international
community and go to the PA and Saudi Arabia and the United States and
asked, this is — “We’re willing to do 1, 2, 3 in order to
create a new reality here, and we ask for Hamas to be driven out,”
then we would have gotten that. And all of the deaths would have been
prevented, and the hostages would have been brought home.

Is it a turning point?

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I’d like to bring —

YONATAN ZEIGEN: Yeah?

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: No, go ahead. Go ahead.

YONATAN ZEIGEN: I started to say: Is it a turning point? One should
hope. But, you know, people relate — you know, they anchor
themselves in personal stories. And we woke up on Sunday to a very
harsh and heartbreaking story of the six hostages being killed. Will
it fuel a relentless protest that will be strong enough to bring a
government down or to make it change their policy? I’m not sure.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Gideon Levy, I’d like to pose that question to
you. Do you think that these protests are a turning point? They’re
certainly the largest since the October 7th attack.

GIDEON LEVY: I can’t agree more with Yonatan. I’ll be just more
harsh, as usual. I doubt it very much. It cannot be a turning point as
long as it is only this kind of protest. First of all, most of the
protest, if not all of it, has nothing to do with the political base
of Benjamin Netanyahu. And therefore, he did ignore it until now, and
he can continue to ignore it as long as it doesn’t penetrate to his
own base. And his own base, I must say, is still very solid, and the
protest did not penetrate there.

And secondly, we have to remember that this kind of protest cannot
last for long, because it’s a very partial protest. It’s only a
protest about the hostages. And the hostages is a huge subject. It’s
a huge tragedy. It’s a huge catastrophe. People lost everything.
People lost their lives, innocent people, wonderful people, like
Vivian and many, many others. But this protest ignores totally the
Palestinian victims. And as long as it ignores totally — but
really, totally — the 40,000 people, then killing of six gets
different proportions and cannot fuel a protest for a long time.

AMY GOODMAN: Gideon Levy, can you explain what the Philadelphi
Corridor is? And talk about the fact that Israel didn’t have it
before, what Netanyahu is — why he’s resisting removing soldiers
from there, even disagreeing — I mean, they’re both being
investigated for war crimes, both he and Yoav Gallant, his defense
minister — right? — at The Hague. But Gallant is even saying
that this is not necessary. And how — is this — the same question
that Juan asked Yonatan — a real turning point, this level of mass
protest, with the strikes called on top of it?

GIDEON LEVY: So, first, about the Philadelphi Corridor, we will not
bother your viewers too much, Amy, because nobody heard about the
Philadelphi Corridor as such a huge, painful subject until one, two
weeks ago. I’ll tell you more than this. I’m almost convinced that
if the issue of the Philadelphi Corridor will be solved, Netanyahu
will find a new thing to sabotage any kind of settlement. This man
does not believe — and I give him the credit that it is ideological
and maybe not only personal, but he doesn’t believe in any diplomacy
with the Palestinians. He never did. He never did believe in any kind
of settlement with the Palestinians, only living on his sword, only
living on our military power. This was his ideology, and it continues
now.

He will not end this war now, even if the Philadelphi Corridor
— for your viewers, it’s a piece of land which is on the border
between Egypt and the Gaza Strip. Netanyahu claims, rightly so, that
many arms were smuggled through the tunnels in the Philadelphi
Corridor. But I would like to remind the prime minister that the big
attack on Israel did not come from the Philadelphi Corridor. It came
from the most protected border between Israel and the Gaza Strip, the
most invested border, the most sophisticated border. So it’s really
ridiculous. It’s looking for excuses why to say no to stop the war.

And as about your question about turning point, it depends on the
coming days. I mean, if the coming days will gain momentum, it might
become a turning point. But I have my doubts, because, as I said
before, the protests in Israel, until now, is limited to a very
specific part of the population. It makes a lot of impression from the
outside to see those hundreds of thousands of people gathering in Tel
Aviv, but they are not the face of Israel, for sure not the majority
of Israelis.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to turn to one of the protesters in Tel Aviv
this weekend, Itai Sela, a retired Israeli army veteran with two sons
in the Israeli army.

ITAI SELA: The government of Israel is a threat to the world peace.
It’s a dictatorship, run by one-man show. And Israel has 200 nuclear
armaments. And the way Netanyahu is a world chaos agent, like Donald
Trump, he’s a threat to the world peace. … He doesn’t care about
the hostages.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Yonatan Zeigen, you were in the streets of Tel Aviv,
as well. You and your brother have lost your beloved mother, beloved
by so many, not only in Israel, but around the world, as a longtime
peace activist. Vivian Silver died on October 7th when Hamas raided
her kibbutz. You talk about a plan she had before she was killed. Do
you agree with Gideon that the hundreds of thousands of Israelis are
only focused on the hostages, calling for a ceasefire, or that there
is some recognition of the horror that is taking place in Gaza, as
well now as the West Bank?

YONATAN ZEIGEN: There is some, but it’s not enough. When I come to
the streets, I stand with the bloc against the occupation or the
people who want to end the war. But we are very, very few there,
because there is no link in Israeli society between what was before
October 7th and what — and the war since and what is happening in
the West Bank. They don’t make the link between that and between our
situation, our dire situation here, with the hostages and in general,
the dire straits of our country. And it’s sad, because we have to
make that link. It’s a blind spot of ours.

But a root of our problems is the lack of diplomacy for so long, the
continuation of the expansion project of the settler movement, the
occupation, a ruthless use of force in the siege of Gaza. This is the
root of our problem. Our security issues and October 7th were symptoms
of that. And as long as we don’t treat that problem together, —
you know, we need a signal from the international community, as well,
in order for us to understand that this is a problem needs solving.
But as long as we don’t do that, then we are doomed.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And I’d like to ask Gideon Levy: Do you think at
this point that the only thing that can stop Netanyahu is a decision
by the Biden administration to cut off arms to Israel?

GIDEON LEVY: Yes, but I don’t see this decision being made. We are
dealing with science fiction, I’m afraid. The Biden administration
played a very weird role in this war. On one hand, their heart was in
the right place. I’m sure President Biden cared a lot about the
suffer of Gaza, about the humanitarian situation. He was shocked, as
many others in the world, from what Israel is doing there. But in the
same time, he supplied all the weapons and ammunitions to commit all
those crimes.

So, I really don’t know. If you want someone to stop a war, do you
supply him with more arms and more ammunition? I don’t know this
kind of logic. If President Biden would have really liked to put an
end to this war, he could have done it within days by stopping or at
least conditioning — conditioning — the supply of arms and
ammunition to Israel. He didn’t do it. He was far of doing it. And
therefore, all the other requests, the condemnations, remarks are
totally hollow.

AMY GOODMAN: Let’s put that in our last question to Yonatan Zeigen:
The significance of the U.S. in leading to a ceasefire, and what
President Biden has done, what he should do at this point?

YONATAN ZEIGEN: I think the United States and the international
community, in general, plays a crucial role. They were actively
enabling our status quo here before, and they are actively enabling
the war now. And it’s rooted in the web of interests that was spun
for years. And I think the administration has to create a new web of
interests that does not rely on weapons and military, but on economy
and tourism and trade routes. And I expected the Biden administration
and the international community to establish a new international
alliance that has authority to give us incentives, and to inflict
sanctions if we continue on the wrong path, and to join hands with
players on the ground, civil society in Israel and Palestine, to
create a new roadmap and to incentivize political actors on both sides
to understand that we need to tell a new story in the Middle East, one
of peace and not of war.

AMY GOODMAN: Yonatan Zeigen, Israeli peace activist, a social worker,
mediator, son of the renowned Canadian Israeli peace activist Vivian
Silver, who was killed on October 7th in the Hamas attack on Kibbutz
Be’eri, where she lived. And Gideon Levy, Israeli journalist and
_Haaretz_ columnist, member of the _Haaretz_ editorial board — both
speaking to us from Tel Aviv.

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* Isreali Protests; Hostages; Ceasefire; US Role in Middle East;
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