Middle East: “We are standing together.”

Amal, why did you join Standing Together?

Amal Ghawi: I joined Standing Together because I didn't feel safe to speak out anywhere after the war started. I couldn't find a place that called for peace and hope in those dark times. At Standing Together, I found that place. It's a place where people are equal, and that's a pretty radical idea these days. You're supposed to choose a side. Who do you stand for? Israelis or Palestinians? And we stand for everyone. We stand up for the people. Peace, social justice and equality are the most important things we talk about all the time.

How are these values linked, Itamar?

Itamar Avneri: We will never be truly equal if we don't ensure social justice and environmental justice. But we also have to remember that the situation in Israel and Palestine is very complicated. There is Israel and there are the Palestinian territories, which we hope will become an independent state, the state of Palestine. But there are also over two million Palestinians in Israel. So you can't really separate all these things. So if we have a vision for all people, as Amal says, then we have to work both for Israeli-Palestinian peace and for equality and social justice within Israel and for all people.

Can you tell us about the changes the movement has undergone since the beginning of the war?

Amal Ghawi: A lot has happened, and I think everyone feels it. We hear about the disasters that are happening in Gaza, and we also hear about the hostages who have been killed. It's too much pain to bear. But it is so important for me that we are active. I can say for myself: if I wasn't on the side of the people who are doing something, who are active, I would be depressed about what is happening around us. The only thing that helps us to keep going and change things is the doing itself. That's what makes the movement really special. When people join in, they connect with their own “why?” and get more hope. We've had huge demonstrations since the war started.

Our last campaign, which is still going on, the Gaza aid campaign, is the biggest demonstration. We like to call it a demonstration because people don't just come to donate sugar or food. They come because they feel that this campaign is a place to express “I am against what is happening, I am against this war, I am on the side of humanity, of the people, of the Palestinians, also in Gaza.”

Since the beginning of the war, the Palestinian community in Israel has been silenced by the system. More than 150 people have been arrested for publicly showing solidarity with the people of Gaza, ignoring the fact that we are also Palestinians and human beings and have a say in what happens.

What is your perspective, Itamar?

Itamar Avneri: Immediately after October 7, the goal was to save lives. But we knew one thing for sure. The ministers in our government, Itamar Ben-Gvir, Bezalel Smotrich: They would try to incite violence in the mixed cities in Israel. So we set up the Jewish-Palestinian solidarity vigils in the mixed cities to de-escalate the atmosphere, to remind people that these are joint cities in a joint country. And we succeeded, there was no violence inside Israel, which was surprising to me because there had been violence before. And then we started to call for a ceasefire agreement that would not only bring back the hostages, but also end the killing and the terrible war in Gaza. And that is exactly what we are trying to do now.

We are trying to convince our society that we must not only end this war. Because even if this war would end, we will have another war in a year, or something similar, if we don't change the political will. And so even now, when it is very difficult, we are talking about ending the occupation.

I think it's all part of this historic mission to save lives, now in Gaza, in the West Bank and also in Israel, but also to save future lives.

I'm also doing this because this is my home. I want to be able to imagine a future and then work towards it and build it. It's a very personal thing for me and I think for everyone at Standing Together.

We are not the majority yet, but there are more and more people who understand that this war is going nowhere and that we need to end it. In a way, I think there is a chance here to really change our reality in Israel and Palestine for the better.

Tens of thousands demonstrated several times last year with Standing Together for a ceasefire.

© Standing Together

Was there an action or a moment last year that particularly stuck in your memory?

Amal Ghawi: The obvious answer is the aid campaign for Gaza. In this campaign, I met hundreds of children and young people who wanted to participate and felt like important members of society. They felt responsible for the future. It was really touching and interesting to watch, and I was incredibly proud of it. You know, this movement was started in 2015 by very few people and got teenagers to volunteer and raise their voices. They came not only to help and organize, but also to show a sign of solidarity and literally stand together.

Itamar Avneri: Three weeks after October 7, I was in Ramle, a small, mixed Jewish-Arab town just outside Tel Aviv, at a meeting of the Jewish-Palestinian Solidarity Guard. There were 30 people, about half Palestinian, half Jewish, all citizens of Israel. Two women cried, cried and cried during the whole conversation.

Finally we asked them: “Why are you crying? What happened?”. The first of them was Palestinian, and she was crying because she had just learned the day before that five of her family members in Gaza had been killed by Israeli bombings.

She was traumatized and grieving, but she had decided to come to the meeting anyway. She would have had every reason in the world not to be there. She had all the reasons in the world to hate not only the Israeli government, which I also hate, but all Jewish Israelis, and not to believe in a common future. But she decided to come.

The other woman was Jewish and was crying because five days earlier a rocket from the Gaza Strip had hit her house and she no longer had a wall, her house was simply open. She also had every reason not to come. She had every reason to say: I hate all Palestinians. But she decided to come.

And I sat there and thought: My God, if these two women can make it, we can all make it.

Are you also criticized or even threatened because of your commitment and how do you deal with this?

Itamar Avneri: It's really not easy, we have a lot of arguments within my family. I receive death threats, insults and other things on social media. But at Standing Together I meet people who, like me, believe in peace and equality, and in working together. I think that's the secret to not being alone.

Amal Ghawi: It is absurd that the call for peace and the call for life is seen as something bad, while people are calling for more and more war and death. We are the ones who are criticized because we want people to live. I am also confronted with comments, some from the Israeli side: “We'll take away your citizenship” or “If you're talking about the people of Gaza, why don't you go and live there?” The comments that really hurt me at first came from people from the Arab world. People who don't understand the situation here and then call me a normalizer, someone who doesn't stand by her people, just because I really don't want anyone to die.

How do I deal with that? Well, I'm a footballer. A player once said, “Don't let anyone who isn't in your shoes tell you how to tie them”. So I'm not going to let anyone who isn't in my shoes tell me how to tie them. You know, I'm here. I live in this reality, and I just don't want my sisters and other sisters in the world to die.

The majority of people in Israel seem to ignore what's happening in Gaza, they don't join your call for a ceasefire.

Amal Ghawi: I think at the beginning of the war, the media didn't report at all about what was happening in Gaza. But we have social media and more and more people are seeing what's going on.

The fact is that the government itself is saying: “Oh, look what Hamas is doing to these people, we are sending trucks, but Hamas is not giving it (the aid) to the people”. It's always playing with the information and the government is blaming someone else. When you see all the videos of the genocide being committed against the people of Gaza, all the killing and starvation, the diseases... it's overwhelming.  I think that any person with a heart can say that it's not okay, that what's happening is beyond what you can bear.

Itamar Avneri: The overwhelming majority of Jewish people in Israel have no idea what is going on in Gaza. Our Hebrew media do not report on what is happening in Gaza. And when people learn facts about the situation in Gaza, they react with denial. Amal mentioned the campaign against the famine. A lot of the comments we are getting on social media at the moment are: “What are you talking about? There is so much food in Gaza”, ‘They are doing very well, nothing has happened’. It's really hard to get people in Jewish-Israeli society to talk about the war and the ceasefire. And I think it will be very difficult for my society to take note of what we did in Gaza after the war is over. It will be disastrous for our society.

You are coming to Germany in December, what message are you bringing with you?

Itamar Avneri: Whenever I talk to people from abroad, I ask them to put pressure on their government to put pressure on our government, maybe even to sanction it, but also to talk to the Jewish-Israeli public. I would like your chancellor to say to Israeli society, “Listen, we will do everything we can to get your government to stop this attack on Gaza, and we are doing it in solidarity with the people of Gaza, but also in solidarity with you”.

Amal Ghawi: I want to convey to people what is happening here from the perspective of a Palestinian woman living in Israel. What am I confronted with? How do I see things? I want to say that it's not black or white, you can be for both sides, you can be against death on both sides. And I think that's the message I'm trying to get across.

The interview was conducted by Danielle Ferreira from forumZFD's Jerusalem team and Christoph Bongard.