Between the mask which conceals his face and his hat, which reaches down to his eyebrows, we can only see his eyes, busy scanning the crowd. Aviv, in his twenties, has the experience of far-left activists accustomed to adversity. In one hand, he holds his red and black libertarian standard. On the other hand, he distributes leaflets containing testimonies from Gaza residents on the war and destruction in the Palestinian enclave. In Israel at War, it is agreed by a large majority that this is not information, but provocation. Aviv is convinced otherwise.
There he enters the sea of blue and white Israeli flags of demonstrators, gathered on Kaplan Street, in Tel Aviv, this Saturday, March 2 in the evening, to demand the resignation of the government and the one who leads it, Benjamin Netanyahu. In this crowd of several thousand people, the Prime Minister is criticized for not having been able to protect the country against the risk of the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023. Which is not the same thing as putting causes the war to continue.
The Kaplan Street demonstrators belong to a political arc located between the center and the left of the political spectrum. Before the earthquake of October 7, a large number of them had already taken part in demonstrations against Benjamin Netanyahu, whom they accused of wanting to tip the country into a dictatorship through judicial reform. The question of the status of the Palestinian territories, from Gaza under Hamas administration to the occupied West Bank, did not figure in the concerns, even less in the slogans.
A little later this Saturday, they will applaud Yaïr Golan, who speaks on a podium on Kaplan Street. The reservist general, former deputy chief of staff, former deputy of the Meretz party (left), is mulling an attempt to take control of the Labor Party in May, during the next primaries. The party that had, for decades, dominated Israeli political life, is now only a shadow of itself. It is planned to merge it with Meretz to try to rebuild a left pole. The task promises to be arduous.
Aviv, for his part, distributes his leaflets in Arabic and Hebrew without slowing down. The demonstration is a bit chaotic. In addition to anti-Netanyahu, a group calls for not sacrificing Israeli hostages in Gaza. Squeezing into the middle, activists from the “anti-occupation bloc” believe that the occupation of the Palestinian territories, and the current war in Gaza, must end. “We have the most schizophrenic left in the worldlaments Aviv. They claim to have progressive values but are aligned with nationalist ideas. Peace with the Palestinians is not even something they can pronounce the name of. »
You have 69.41% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.