With a proposed ceasefire on the table, brokered by Egypt and apparently agreed upon by Hamas, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is intent, still, on more war, and more killing in Gaza. Last week, his government approved the battle plan of an extremely reluctant army chief to head into a full takeover of Gaza City. This move will likely lead to more hostage deaths. And Monday morning, Israel bombed a Gaza hospital twice, killing 20 people, including first responders and five journalists who raced to the scene.
Street protests, led by the hostage families, are compounding. According to Israeli news reports, only about a half or less of reservists are showing up when called to fight. It’s the clearest sign yet of the deep divide between the government and the Israeli people. All polls show that an overwhelming majority of Israelis want an agreement and an end to the war, all except for a hard-right faction that happens to rule the government. (One far-right minister said after the new offensive was announced that unless Israel’s pronounced goal was to eradicate Hamas, rather than save the hostages, her small but pivotal party would leave the coalition, though centrist Benny Gantz has offered to step in to the coalition to get to a yes for a hostage release and ceasefire, which Netanyahu is so far dismissing.)
The soldiers are reluctant warriors at best right now. During my last week in Israel this summer, there were seven reported suicides by active-duty soldiers. There have been more than 18 reported suicides in 2025. Gaza is a hell for the Palestinians who live there; it is also a moonscape of horror for those sent to fight there.
It is almost impossible to convey in words the sadness that engulfs most Israelis; it hangs over the country like a heavy netting, as Netanyahu plays whack-a-mole with his public. The contempt in which he holds the Israeli people is matched only by the contempt—and then some—in which he holds the Palestinian people and, for that matter, Israel’s longtime global allies. Right now, the only person outside of his inner family-dominated circle who matters whatsoever is Donald Trump. So far, Trump, despite a few rhetorical warnings, is allowing Bibi free rein.
The presence of the hostage families is everywhere in Israel, impossible to ignore, yet Netanyahu does just that. The community where I lived for part of the summer had an installation at the entrance—50 yellow chairs (the hostage campaign’s color), with a daily ticker written by hand on poster board of how many hundreds of days it’s been for their captivity (as of this writing, 688 days), and their oversized photos. Similar displays are everywhere—on office buildings, freeway billboards, bridge overpasses.
Most evenings, the families protest in front of the Defense Ministry; sometimes, they try to halt traffic with their bodies. The country knows these parents, siblings, partners, like they are rock stars. They are revered by their fellow citizens; reviled by their government. It is a haunting and shocking situation, one that puts the very future of Israel in peril as it rips apart the social fabric of a society dependent on social solidarity.
Last week began with a massive national strike that culminated in a rally to end the war that included around 500,000 people. Another day of action is planned for this week. Historian and peace activist Fania Oz-Salzberger, with whom I spoke after the day of action, told me: “It was an enormous show of strength, albeit one that for now Netanyahu will probably ignore.… It is a message we are sending to each other and to the world.”
She continued: “It is first and foremost a message to the families of the hostages and the bereaved families and the survivors that are surrounded by millions of their co-citizens in support and help.… Israel, liberal Israel, secular Israel, rational Israel, is essentially talking to itself, which is not a bad thing. We can see how strong we are, how numerous we are.”
At this point, nearly every sector of Israeli society outside of the hard right base of Netanyahu and the ultra-Orthodox is organized against the government. There are statements by artists, academics, business leaders, youth leaders, trade unionists, and more to make a deal to bring home all the hostages and end the war.
“What people must understand today, and American liberals ought to understand it even better than others, is that this is not a normal government of Israel,” Oz-Salzberger said. “This is a rogue government, led by a rogue prime minister. I always said this is a Latin American situation, except that it’s also a North American situation these days.”
That’s why Oz-Salzberger thinks that American liberals and progressives should “start supporting Israeli civil society rather than the government … A growing number of Israeli liberals, of middle-of-the-road Israelis, of decent Israelis are saying the same: not in my name. What’s going on in Gaza now, even the hardest-to-awaken Israelis are seeing.
“So, if you are a friend of Israel abroad … I tell my American friends, Jewish and non-Jewish, if you are a friend, a true friend of Israel, you must become an enemy of the current government of Israel. I’ve never said that about previous Netanyahu governments. Never voted for him but always considered him totally legitimate. Not anymore.”
Oz-Salzberger’s father was the noted novelist and left peace activist Amos Oz, who, she reminds me, used to say, “I’m not pro-Israel. I’m not pro-Palestine. I’m pro-peace.” That’s where, she thinks, the global progressive community should land. And, to her, that means not only promoting justice for the Palestinians, but peace for both peoples. If you are pro-Palestinian, she suggests, you must consider if “you would like the justice of the graveyard, which is what is going to happen, or the peace of compromise.”
But the current pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel activism is not the answer. “What you cannot do is erase and eradicate a nuclear power made of 7.1 million Jews and two million Arabs. How? How will you annihilate us … you must rethink not from an ideal, platonic ideal of ultimate justice, but from some very complex, very nuanced groundwork for allowing both people to live here. Bottom line, if you are not a friend of Israel, at least be a realistic friend of the Palestinians. Do not tell them that they will get it all.”
In the meantime, Oz-Salzberger has strong demands for world leaders: “I think every single minister in Netanyahu’s government, including Netanyahu himself, should be outcast from the international community. Just the way Australia has now done by revoking the visa of [Knesset Member] Simcha Rothman (a hard-right minister who is leading the legal coup and who advocates for return to settlement by Israelis in Gaza). [Homeland Security Minister Itamar] Ben Gvir and [Finance Minister Bezalel] Smotrich should be considered criminals. And then definitely Netanyahu.”
While the streets are bloated with anti-government protesters, the Knesset is a stronghold for Netanyahu. As Oz-Salzberger noted to me, he “hand-picked” all his parliamentarians so that there is nearly no chance of a break away that would topple his government.
Indeed, the left-wing opposition in the Knesset can be counted on one hand. Its leading figure is Gilad Kariv, of the Democrats Party, whom I profiled in 2023 for this magazine. Just before I saw him recently in Tel Aviv, he went with a delegation of liberal rabbis (he is himself a Reform rabbi), to pay respects in the family’s mourning tent for Awda Hathaleen, a consultant on the Oscar-winning film No Other Land, who was murdered on July 28 by an Israeli Jewish settler in Hebron who to this day has not been held accountable. There were three murders by settlers of Palestinians in the West Bank in the three and a half weeks I was in Israel. All have gone unpunished, including the killing of American Palestinian Saif Musallet on his family’s land. The family, with whom I met in Ramallah, told me that the State Department said that it expected Israel to investigate. So far, nothing.
Kariv characterizes Netanyahu as almost an observer in his own government: “Forces much more extreme are designing the reality.… It creates a dramatic risk to the hostages and to the IDF soldiers, and it definitely creates this unprecedented humanitarian crisis and terrible reality for the Palestinians.”
He continued: “It is quite clear that the more extreme right-wing forces in the government and in the coalition are using the public awareness to the war in Gaza and to the hostages, in order to promote extreme policies in the West Bank, in order to enable extreme settlers to set facts on the ground, even if it involves violent acts against the Palestinians. Those policies of the extreme far right components of the coalition are to create a de facto annexation.”
Kariv calls for the war to end, especially after this week’s bombing at the hospital in Khan Yunis. “The IDF itself has already announced that Hamas has been defeated as a military force,” he said after the bombing. “The continuation and expansion of the war will bring along countless more incidents of this kind. Israel cannot afford this, not morally, ethically, or diplomatically. The war must not be expanded. It must be brought to a swift end.”
Yet there is no sign that Netanyahu will end this war. I have been to Israel four times since October 7, 2023. Each time, I felt a palpable sadness, but nothing like this summer. A profoundly unpopular government is at war with its own people. It is corrupt, immoral, and taking Israel to a place of extremes, where there is might at the expense of morals; messianism at the expense of humanity and hope. Israel is more globally isolated than ever before; it will take years—maybe decades—to recover, if at all.
But there is significant pushback that is truly extraordinary, considering how profoundly exhausted the public is—it is massive and impressive and forthright. It deserves global support. Meanwhile, those in the government who are most extreme don’t even register in the electoral polls, and yet the damage they are doing, along with their leader Netanyahu, will mark Israel—and Israelis—for decades to come.
