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‘We will choose a new path’: How Israel’s peace activists are responding to the war in Gaza

BAQA AL-GHARBIYA, Israel (JTA) — On the morning of Oct. 7, Israeli human rights activist Ziv Stahl was visiting relatives in her childhood home of Kibbutz Kfar Aza.
As Hamas’ massacre on the Gaza border unfolded — with the terror group ultimately killing between 52 and 60 people from the small kibbutz community and kidnapping 17 — she waited in her family’s shelter alongside her niece’s partner, who had been wounded by Hamas gunfire earlier that morning. Until she was rescued from the secured room several long hours later, she feared for her own life and the fate of loved ones, some of whom — including her sister-in-law and childhood acquaintances — were killed that day.
About a week later, amid broad Israeli support for the escalating war, she wrote an essay calling for an end to “indiscriminate bombing in Gaza and the killing of civilians.”
“I have no idea how this will influence the rest of my life,” Stahl, the executive director of the legal rights organization Yesh Din, wrote in Haaretz. “If I will ever be able not to fear every small noise, not to imagine gunshots in the depths of the night. But one thing I feel more strongly than ever: we must stop this cycle of death. We must invest all of our power and energy in the end game, how to build a peaceful and secure future for all who live in this place.”
For Stahl and others in what is known as Israel’s “peace movement” or “shared society movement,” who have dedicated their lives to Israeli-Palestinian coexistence and a diplomatic accord between the two peoples, Oct. 7 has caused immense pain and presented a formidable challenge.
A number of peace activists were killed or taken hostage from the kibbutz communities that bore the brunt of the attack, plunging the movement into mourning. Added onto that, they must now reimagine what a peaceful future can one day look like as Israelis’ sense of security was shattered and the country has entered a long war in Gaza with a mounting civilian death toll.
“We are here tonight to say the simplest and clearest message: we demand on standing together Jews and Arabs, also and especially during these difficult times” Alon-Lee Green, a founding director of the Standing Together movement for a shared society, said earlier this month before a mixed crowd of several hundred Jewish and Arab Israelis who gathered for a rally in the Arab-Israeli city of Baqa al-Gharbiya.
“We will choose a new path that is different and opposite the path our government has taken us down the last few years,” he said. “A path for Israeli-Palestinian peace and safety from north to south and for those on the other side in Gaza.”
The group is holding rallies to trumpet that vision in cities across Israel. Green and Sally Abed, Standing Together’s head of development, recently drew crowds of hundreds of people in New York City, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere on a tour of U.S. cities.
But what the activists’ vision will lead to after the war ends, and what impact they will have, is still uncertain. A recent poll by Israeli Channel 12 found that 44% of respondents supported rebuilding Israeli settlements in Gaza, while 39% objected. A majority of respondents favored full Israeli control of the territory, reversing Israel’s 2005 withdrawal.
Imagining alternate visions for that “day after” in Israel is one of four new priorities the New Israel Fund, which supports a range of progressive nonprofits and causes, is funding in the wake of Oct. 7. The others are more immediate: offering direct relief to those impacted by the violence, protecting the civil rights of all Israelis and working toward a de-escalation of armed conflict. Alongside that, progressive groups including the NIF are in mourning, said Mickey Gitzin, the group’s Israeli director.
“So many of our own people, people that we knew, that we work with, are now either hostages in Gaza, or died during this time,” said Gitzin. He was referring to peace-activists like 74-year old Vivian Silver, who was declared dead last week when her remains were discovered more than a month after the attack, and 32-year old Hayim Katsman who was murdered in Holit, among others.
Alon-Lee Green, co-director of the Standing Together movement, speaks at an event in November 2023. (Eliyahu Freedman)
The NIF also has experience with something left-wing activists across Israel say they’re experiencing: active opposition from the government. The NIF has long drawn backlash from right-wing lawmakers for supporting groups that aid Palestinians, Arab Israelis, asylum seekers in Israel and other groups. In May, Ariel Kallner, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party in parliament, proposed an income tax rate of 65% on all non-governmental organizations, such as the NIF, that receive foreign funds — effectively killing their operations. The plan was dropped after it sparked sharp international reaction and fear that it would destroy Israeli civil society. A range of other legislators over the years have tried, and in some cases succeeded, to limit the activity of the NIF or its grantees.
Now, the wartime environment has created a “chilling effect” on free speech, said leading Israeli human rights attorney Michael Sfard. He said that is especially true for Arab Israelis, who have been investigated, imprisoned, suspended and fired for expressing various forms of solidarity with or compassion toward the people of Gaza. “Freedom of expression was never so battered as it is now,” Sfard said.
In addition, incitement toward Palestinians, including Israeli Arabs, appears to be on the rise. Last month, a crowd in Netanya chanted “death to Arabs” outside an Arab Israel student dormitory. Sfard said that the last month since the war started has seen a “tidal wave of incitement” towards Israeli Arabs.
A large number of Arab Israelis have been investigated, charged and detained for various forms of expression. As of last week, according to the Israel Police, there were 192 open investigations and 57 indictments of Arab Israelis for protest-related offenses — which Sfard says is more than the number of investigations for similar cases in the last five years combined. Meanwhile, according to the Times of Israel, as of Nov. 6 there have been zero indictments of Jews for violence toward Arabs — though several investigations of Jewish Israelis have been opened, and eight have been arrested for violent activities toward Arabs.
“The fear in the Palestinian community in Israel is to speak and express ourselves regarding the pain of others, and in general the fear to speak about the complexity of being an Arab-Palestinian citizen of Israel at a time when there is a war in Gaza,” said Rula Daood, co-director of Standing Together, at the rally in Baqa al-Gharbiya. “It is a true fear, and on the Jewish side, there is an existential fear after the massacre of Oct. 7.”
Debates over Arab-Israeli discourse have even reached the country’s popular soccer league. This week, Maccabi Haifa signaled that it would release one of its star forwards, Dia Saba, after his wife published a post on Instagram in the days after Oct. 7 saying, “There are children in Gaza, and 800 children have already died in Gaza from our bombs. And even if they’re stuck between the murderousness of Hamas and our bombs in Israel, we must say that we need to do everything to prevent children from dying.” Both Saba and his wife apologized for the post.
Rabbi Arik Ascherman, an American-born activist and founder of the Israeli human rights organization Torat Tzedek, views the increase in incitement and the crackdown on protest as the product of an Israeli “wartime hysteria” that is akin to the atmosphere in the United States after the Pearl Harbor attack.
“Israelis today are not really able to distinguish between Palestinian terrorists and terrorized Palestinians,” he said, comparing the situation to “Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor when Japanese Americans were put in camps. With all the anger and fear that Americans had, nobody was willing to stand up for Japanese Americans.”
Nowadays, Ascherman spends much of his time helping Palestinian olive farmers in the West Bank but says that “many activists are afraid” to volunteer because of a spike in West Bank violence since Oct. 7. There are others, he said, who “after the terrible slaughter of Israelis don’t want to be helping Palestinians right now.” He hopes either the U.S. or Israeli government makes an active effort to keep Israeli-Palestinian violence from spiraling even further in the West Bank.
“Of course, we’ve seen the statements by President Biden, by Jake Sullivan,” he said, referring to comments by the president and national security adviser condemning settler violence. “But in terms of results, there is not yet any change on the ground.”
Another Jewish-Arab organization, the Abraham Initiatives, has increasingly focused on its education and anti-racism programming as a way to continue building a shared society in Israel.
“We see racism is rising right now and we want to give our educators the tools to talk to and acknowledge students’ pain without minimizing at the same time the racism and intolerance,” explained Moran Maimoni, who is the group’s co-director of public affairs.
The Arava Institute for Environmental Studies — which has a mix of international, Jewish-Israeli, Arab-Israeli and Palestinian students — has ramped up a schedule of dialogue sessions between students and has relaxed its attendance policy. Deputy Director Eliza Mayo said students and staff on the school’s campus near Eilat are also “constantly checking in with each other.”
“I think the main thing is that we try to always remember that we have a shared belief in each other’s humanity,” she said.
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Palestinian Activist Ahed Tamimi Says ‘We Are Fighting the Jews, Not Zionism’

Palestinian activist Ahed Tamimi attends the annual festival of Greek Communist Youth in Athens, Greece, Sept. 22, 2018. Photo: REUTERS/Costas Baltas
Palestinian activist Ahed Tamimi said on a podcast earlier this month that she is fighting Jews, not Zionism, and that she wishes for World War III.
“I was raised [to believe] that Judaism means occupation, and today, tomorrow, and a million years from now, I will continue to say that Judaism [should] be presented to the children of Palestine – children of my age and younger – as occupation, and that we are fighting the Jews, not Zionism,” Tamimi, now 24, said on “The Enlightenment Podcast” on YouTube on Aug. 8.
Tamimi’s comments were flagged by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), which reported on and translated her remarks.
Palestinian Activist Ahed Tamimi: We Are Fighting the Jews, Not Just Zionism; Westerners Patronize Us with Their Aid, They should Shut Up When We Talk; They Will Give Us Aid, Whether They Like It Or Not, and We Will Not Thank Them; I Wish for a Nuclear WWIII, So the Whole World… pic.twitter.com/NNn5Jf7TD6
— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) August 15, 2025
“The whole world needs to shut up, when a Palestinian is talking,” she said. “We are superior to the entire world, because we are the only ones in the world fighting injustice, at the expense of our lives, and the expense of our humanity.”
Tamimi continued, “Every night when I go to sleep, I put my head on the pillow, and I pray to God to protect the humanity left inside me, because I don’t want to become a killer. In this West of yours, if a mother screams at her child, he grows up to become a serial killer.”
“I have reached a point where I wish for a World War III. Whoever dies, dies, and whoever lives, lives. The important thing is that we will be over with this. I have reached this point,” she said. “Let the whole world be destroyed, I don’t care. Let them drop nuclear bombs, and destroy the whole world, so it won’t be just the Palestinians.”
These recent comments are the most recent in a long string of radical remarks by Tamimi. In November 2023, she wrote, in an Instagram post, “Come on settlers, we are waiting for you in all the West Bank cities from Hebron to Jenin – we will slaughter you and you will say that what Hitler did to you was a joke.”
Speaking about Israelis who live in the West Bank, she said, “We will drink your blood and eat your skull. Come on, we are waiting for you.”
Tamimi became famous internationally in 2017 when a video of her, then just 16 years old, slapping, kicking, and yelling at Israeli soldiers went viral as a symbol of both Palestinian resistance to Israel, and the asymmetric nature of the conflict. The soldiers did not retaliate but did later arrest her.
Tamimi was convicted on four counts of assaulting an IDF officer and soldier, incitement, and interference with IDF forces in March 2018, and was sentenced to eight months in prison and eight months of probation.
She was released a few months later, in July 2018. Since then, Tamimi has been hailed as a Palestinian human rights activist, received a book deal from Penguin Random House, and consistently received sympathetic coverage from Western news outlets.
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Trump Administration Reaffirms Opposition to Turkey Rejoining F-35 Program

A Lockheed Martin F-35 aircraft is seen at the ILA Air Show in Berlin, Germany, April 25, 2018. REUTERS/Axel Schmidt
The Trump administration has reaffirmed its opposition to Turkey’s rejoining the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, citing Ankara’s possession of Russian S-400 missile defense systems.
In a letter sent on Wednesday to US Rep. Chris Pappas (D-NH), a senior State Department official reiterated that Washington remains committed to enforcing the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), which penalizes countries with financial ties to Russia’s defense sector.
“The Trump administration is fully committed to protecting US defense and intelligence assets and complying with US law, including CAATSA,” the letter read
The message, signed by Paul Guaglianone of the Bureau of Legislative Affairs, stated that Washington’s position “has not changed” and that Turkey’s continued possession of the Russian-supplied S-400 remains incompatible with US law and defense requirements. The official stressed that the Trump administration was fully committed to protecting American defense and intelligence assets while maintaining its obligations under the National Defense Authorization Act.
Despite the strained relationship, the letter emphasized that Turkey remains a longstanding NATO ally. US officials framed the relationship as critical to the security interests of both countries and signaled a willingness to maintain dialogue with Ankara.
In 2017, despite several US warnings, Ankara purchased the Russian S-400 surface-to-air missile system, leading to Turkey’s expulsion from the multibillion-dollar fighter jet program in 2019.
“The United States seeks to cooperate with Turkey on common priorities and to engage in dialogue to resolve disagreements,” Guaglianone wrote, while maintaining that Washington has “expressed our disapproval of Ankara’s acquisition of the S-400 and clearly conveyed steps that would need to be taken” in the sanctions review process.
The letter came after a bipartisan coalition of more than 40 US lawmakers pressed Secretary of State Marco Rubio earlier this month to prevent Turkey from rejoining the F-35 program, citing ongoing national security concerns and violations of US law. Members of Congress warned that lifting existing sanctions or readmitting Turkey to the US F-35 fifth-generation fighter program would “jeopardize the integrity of F-35 systems” and risk exposing sensitive US military technology to Russia.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan claimed during a NATO summit in June that Ankara and Washington had begun discussing Turkey’s readmission into the program.
Under Section 1245 of the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act, the Pentagon is prohibited from transferring F-35 jets or related technology to Turkey unless Ankara no longer possesses the Russian-made S-400 system and provides assurances it will not acquire such equipment in the future. Because Turkey continues to retain the S-400, US officials are legally barred from approving its participation in the F-35 program.
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Israel Responds to Norway Donating Profits From World Cup Qualifying Matchup to Aid Gaza

Alexander Sørloth of Norway scores the 1-2 goal during the FIFA World Cup Qualifier football match between Israel and Norway on March 25, 2025, in Debrecen. Photo: VEGARD GRØTT/Bildbyran/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
The Israel Football Association has issued a statement in response to a decision by its Norwegian counterpart to give profits from their mutual World Cup qualifiying match to support humanitarian efforts in the Gaza Strip.
Norway will host Israel on Oct. 11 at the Ullevaal Stadion in Oslo, in the next round of the European qualifiers for the 2026 FIFA World Cup. On Tuesday, the Norwegian Football Association said it “cannot remain indifferent” to humanitarian suffering in Gaza amid the Israel-Hamas war, and announced that it will donate profits from the Oct. 11 game to aid humanitarian causes supporting Gaza.
“Neither we nor other organizations can remain indifferent to the humanitarian suffering and disproportionate attacks that the civilian population in Gaza has been exposed to for a long time,” said Norwegian Football Federation President Lise Klaveness. “Israel is part of FIFA’s and UEFA’s competitions and we have to deal with that. But we want to give the profit to a humanitarian organization that saves lives in Gaza every day and that contributes with active emergency aid on the ground.”
The Norwegian Football Association said it will reveal at a later date which humanitarian organization it will donate to. The association added that it is working with local police and UEFA to ensure the safety of players and fans at the Oct. 11 match in Oslo and will be taking “some extra security measures,” such as limiting capacity at the game. Tickets go on sale next week.
The Israeli Football Association responded on Wednesday in a statement to Telegraph Sport. It urged the Norwegian association to “make sure the money is not transferred to terrorist organizations or to whale hunting,” for which Norway has been criticized internationally. Israel also said it “would be nice” if the Norwegian Football Association would condemn the Hamas-led terrorist attack on Oct. 7, 2023.
“We do not usually advise associations regarding the use of match revenue, even if it is obtained thanks to a match against our proud national team, but we will deviate from our custom this time: it would be nice if some of the amount were directed to try to finding a condemnation by the Norwegian FA of the Oct. 7 massacre that claimed the lives of hundreds of Israeli citizens and children, or action in favor of the release of 50 hostages – and please, make sure that the money is not transferred to terrorist organizations or to whale hunting,” the Israeli Football Association said in a statement. It also said it aims to gain 3 points at the October match.
Israel has been unable to host matches on its home soil for international competitions because of security concerns related to the Israel-Hamas war. It competed in a qualifying match against Norway in Hungary in March, which Norway won 4-2.
The Italian Soccer Coaches’ Association (AIAC) is demanding that Israel be suspended from international competitions ahead of Italy’s upcoming World Cup qualifiers against the Jewish state that are set for September and October. Italy is set to play Israel in Debrecen, Hungary, on Sept. 8, before hosting Israel in Udine on Oct. 14.