Israel’s protest revival: Balancing dissent and unity in wartime - analysis

Israel is seething, and it has been seething since October 7.

Truth be told, it was seething for months prior to October 7 - just think back to the judicial reform debate. But that was different. The seething then pitted two parts of the population against one another - those for the reform and those against it, with extremists on each side accusing the other of betraying and trying to destroy the country.

Then on October 7, and every day since, representatives of those two warring camps met and continue to meet inside IDF APCs and tanks, in makeshift barracks in Khan Yunis, and in tents along the northern border. There, they discovered they were not enemies.

Together, they fought, and continue to fight, heroically against the country’s true enemies, those in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran who want to destroy the entire Jewish state – including both those for judicial reform, and those against it.

The seething today is of a different sort.

Since October 7, the country is seething against the government responsible for the greatest single failure in the state’s history; against the military leadership responsible for leaving the country stark naked in the face of murderous barbarians; against the politicians who sowed divisions that invited Hamas’s outrageous attack; against the media for amplifying those extreme voices of division; against the world for its hypocrisy; against anyone and everyone for the country’s inability to free the hostages.

And the non-haredi population is seething against the haredim for an unwillingness to carry their share of this country’s colossal security burden.

Yet, for the first few months after October 7, the country kept all that anger in check, focusing its fury instead on battling Hamas and winning the most recent battle in its long War of Independence. The anger toward the government, military, and political leaders was not doused; it was put on hold, temporarily checked at the door.

In the last few weeks, that door has been opened, and the anger is coming back into the streets. It is not flooding the streets – like it did during the judicial overhaul upheaval – but it is coming back as a robust river. Once again, roads are being blocked; once again, police are battling protesters; once again, the term “day of disruption” is entering the national lexicon.

And this creates certain unique dilemmas and challenges.

Confronting the enemy while encountering internal divisions

The biggest dilemma is how to prevent massive protests at this time from giving succor and comfort to the enemy?

Those behind the demonstrations have no intention at all of giving Israel’s enemies – Yahya Sinwar in the bowels of Gaza or Hassan Nasrallah holed up in his bunker in Beirut – any satisfaction. That is the last thing on their minds.

Nevertheless, Sinwar and Nasrallah are certainly buoyed by the scenes of police battling protesters and tens of thousands of people at Saturday-night protests. It creates a perception of a society crumbling from within, which for both Sinwar and Nasrallah could encourage them to continue doing what they are doing because of a mistaken belief that it is leading to disintegration of Israeli solidarity.

It has been said that there are two things that kept Nasrallah and Iran from opening a full-fledged front against Israel on October 7: One was US President Joe Biden’s warning not to get involved and the immediate dispatch of an aircraft carrier strike force to back up his threats; the second was Israel’s jaw-dropping solidarity and the manner in which divisions evaporated instantaneously, and the country rallied speedily to take the battle back to the enemy.

Now, Nasrallah is seeing two developments: divisions reappearing, and Israel and the US squabbling publicly about the supply of arms. Both of these phenomena stand in stark contrast to what he witnessed on October 8, and both developments are likely to embolden him.

How to prevent him from drawing conclusions of a society crumbling from within? One way is to sharpen the message of these protests and to make it clear that these are not anti-war protests, that this is not the anti-Vietnam War movement in the US of the late 1960s and early ’70s, and that Israelis are not divided about the justification of this war.

What they are divided about is who should lead it, under what terms should it be temporarily halted, what its next stage should be, and what price should be paid for the releases of the hostages.

Granted, those are not minute differences, but what is unfolding on the streets now are not protesters against the war itself. These are not protests against the war’s rationale, the necessity to fight it or even how it is being waged. Efforts should be made to ensure that this is made clear.

Another dilemma is how to prevent these protests from being interpreted internally as an extension of the judicial reform battle. The challenge is how to prevent calls for elections now, or for universal conscription, from being seen as just an extension of the “anti-Bibi” (Netanyahu) protests that have been a permanent fixture of this country’s landscape now for nearly five years.

Talk to people today, and one thing repeated constantly by people from all different backgrounds is the need for a clean sweep: that the politics of old, and the politicians of old, and the military leaders responsible for the old security doctrines need to go, as does anyone who had their hands on the national steering wheel when Hamas attacked on October 7.

Talk to people, and you hear a thirst for new politicians, new generals, a new way of thinking about the region and Israel’s place in it – a new order.

Much of the anger is directed at Netanyahu and his unwillingness to take direct personal responsibility for what transpired, but not only against Netanyahu. It is also directed at all those supporting actors – both on the Right and Left, and in the army – who have molded and influenced the country’s direction over the last two decades.

The way to prevent these demonstrations from being seen domestically as just the latest permutation of an anti-Bibi psychosis is to change the “headliners” – change that cast of characters behind these demonstrations and speaking for them.

If the goal is to bring about a change of leadership, and to bring out masses of people to put pressure on the government so it goes to new elections, then the organizers should not want to have personalities such as former prime minister Ehud Barak, former defense minister Moshe Ya’alon, former Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) director Yuval Diskin, Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid, or author David Grossman as cheerleaders.

These individuals are so strongly associated with antipathy toward Netanyahu that they risk alienating potential supporters who don’t share their animus. Many people believe the government needs to change, not because they view Netanyahu as evil or accuse him of sacrificing hostages to retain power. Rather, they have legitimate concerns: Netanyahu’s inability to make strategic decisions due to political constraints, the belief that a government responsible for the October 7 failure cannot continue to serve, and the immorality of exempting haredim from military service while the backs of reservists and their families are breaking under an onerous burden.

Real, genuine, legitimate anger exists. It needs a channel. Protests and demonstrations are channels that democracies afford. But these protests need to be focused, they need to be smart, and they need not be counterproductive.