Israelis Against Genocide and Starvation! Who are They?
Under the slogan “Standing Together Against Starvation”, the “Flour March” (also called Hakimah in Hebrew) made its way through the center of Tel Aviv last week — on Tuesday, July 22, 2025. Its organizers and participants carried sacks of flour and pictures of starving children in Gaza, along with written slogans and chants in both Hebrew and Arabic, protesting against the genocide and starvation in Gaza, and expressing solidarity with its people.
About 350 demonstrators — both Jews and Arabs — took part in the ‘Flour March,’ a reference to the starvation of Gaza’s people, in an attempt to break the wall of silence, and specifically from the city of Tel Aviv. Their aim was not to pressure Netanyahu’s government into striking a deal to return the remaining Israeli ‘captives’ in Gaza, but rather to protest against the genocidal war and starvation of Gazans, and to call for its end.
It would be misleading to interpret this protest as evidence that Israeli–Zionist society has the potential to produce a genuine ‘left,’ given that the Jewish entity is Zionist at its very core, and functions as a colonial–settler state in both its formation and trajectory, particularly against the backdrop of Jewish society’s recent shift toward right-wing Zionism and religious fascism. That Jewish Israelis took to the streets of Tel Aviv to protest the ongoing genocide in Gaza is a striking development, nonetheless. Their demonstration comes despite the near-total national-Zionist consensus supporting the genocide and the wave of collective hysteria that has gripped Israeli society since October 7, 2023. This act of defiance signals the possibility of broader grassroots mobilization among both Jewish and Arab communities inside Israel against the annihilation and the deliberate starvation of Gaza’s population.
This is particularly significant when we take into account the muted and ineffective response of Arab and Islamic actors’ complacency, amounting to complicity—regarding the atrocities that have been unfolding in the Gaza Strip for nearly 22 months. It was this context that drew media attention to the “Flour March” in Tel Aviv and placed it under the spotlight of both local and international public opinion. It should be remembered, however, that this protest marks a turning point within the Israeli public space only at the level of attitudes toward the genocide—shifting the discourse from “freeing the Israeli hostages” to “the necessity of ending the war.” It does not represent a turning point at the level of Israeli society and the state, nor in their political or Zionist structures. The movement “Standing Together” (Omdim Beyachad in Hebrew) was the official organizing body behind the “Flour March” demonstration.
Who is “Standing Together” (Omdim Beyachad)?
According to the movement’s official page, “Standing Together” (Omdim Beyachad) is a grassroots movement whose social activism traces back to late 2015, emerging in response to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s declaration: ‘We will live by the sword forever.’ The movement held its first founding council in the summer of 2017, which officially established it as a popular movement. Its founders and activists had mobilized in protest against the Israeli security forces’ policy of persecution and arrests targeting Palestinians, as well as the eviction operations in East Jerusalem—particularly in Sheikh Jarrah. The movement’s activists also expressed solidarity with the Great March of Return protests in the Gaza Strip, during which dozens of men and women from Gaza were killed.
The “Standing Together” movement represents a grassroots, field-based mobilization which, according to its official website, includes around 6,000 Jewish and Arab members. This figure may appear overstated, given that the turnout at the recent ‘Flour March’ protest suggested a smaller base of active supporters—despite the relative importance and size of that demonstration. Most of the movement’s members in its early years were Jewish, before Arab participation increased in recent years, particularly in the context of the ongoing genocidal onslaught on Gaza.
The movement advocates for Jewish–Arab cooperation, coexistence, and equality within the country. It sees itself as transcending the traditional Israeli “left” by opposing neoliberalism as represented by Israel’s centrist parties, while confronting the dominant Zionist–religious right within Israeli–Jewish society. The movement also supports social rights and freedoms, such as women’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and others.
The movement sees itself as filling a void left by the traditional Israeli “left,” especially after the Meretz leftist party shifted in recent years toward the political center in Israel. This occurred in the context of the rising dominance of the religious–Zionist right and its growing influence over the Israeli political scene, which created a political gap in what was once considered the “far left,” to the point that some Arab parties began competing for its historically Jewish voter base in recent Knesset elections.
Against this backdrop, some of the founders and activists of “Standing Together”—particularly the Jewish Israelis among them—represent a continuation of the traditional Israeli left. Some split from the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality (a party currently led by Knesset member Ayman Odeh), a historic movement whose structure and base are Arab, but which identifies as an Israeli party in coalition with the historic Israeli Communist Party. Others are independent activists. Former Jewish Knesset member Dov Khenin of the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality is considered one of the most prominent founders of “Standing Together” and has had a significant influence on shaping the movement’s political discourse, particularly amid its grassroots activism during the current war in Gaza.
The genocide in Gaza has propelled the “Standing Together” movement to the forefront of the Israeli scene over the past months, positioning it as a movement that advocates coexistence, peace, and equality between Jews and Arabs in the country, while opposing the war on Gaza as a conflict driven by Netanyahu’s right-wing government. One of the movement’s Arab activists, in an article titled “Why Standing Together?” published on the Donia Al-Watan website, highlighted a series of initiatives and activities undertaken by the movement related to the Gaza genocide, as well as other issues affecting the Arab community within Israel.
However, it is important to distinguish between Standing Together’s humanitarian actions during the ongoing war—without diminishing the significance of these efforts—and its role in the broader context of the conflict and its future trajectory. This raises the central question: how has the genocide propelled the movement to the forefront above all others?
Relief Efforts Amid Gaza’s Crisis
In August 2024, the Standing Together (Omdim Beyachad) movement organized a humanitarian relief campaign within Israel, collecting donations and aid for the residents of the Gaza Strip affected by the genocide. At that time, the movement was the only organization legally authorized by the Israeli government to coordinate relief efforts and gather humanitarian aid for Gaza. This was carried out in cooperation with international humanitarian organizations, particularly American ones.
Although there are no precise, documented statistics on the total volume of aid collected, the movement reported having gathered the equivalent of 150 truckloads of food, medical supplies, and children’s necessities. Some of this aid reached Gaza, while a significant portion remained in storage after the Israeli military intensified its blockade on the Strip.
Meanwhile, any Arab organization within Palestinian society in Israel attempting similar initiatives would be considered in violation of the law, exposing them to legal and security prosecution. This helps explain why “Standing Together” has come to the forefront of grassroots civil activism during the war: on one hand, due to the movement’s ability to operate within a legal framework, and on the other, because it has been able to navigate the restrictions imposed by the current Israeli government on Arab society and its organizations, using this space to act where others cannot.
In recent months, the number of Arab members joining “Standing Together” has increased—although no official statistics are available on the exact figures. This growth is largely due to the safe space the movement provides for popular and collective action, a space that no longer exists within other local or national Arab frameworks, nor is it tolerated by Israeli security forces under Ben-Gvir. Consequently, “Standing Together” leverages the vacuum created by these restrictions and the fear they generate to attract Arab youth from its left-wing base, rather than to draw Jewish Israelis from the right toward its ranks amid the war. This dynamic foreshadows a future challenge for Arab parties and organizations in Israel, which historically shielded all Jewish–Arab cooperation and coexistence movements behind the rhetorical question: “What have Arab parties done for their communities?”
“Standing Together” has evolved into a powerful voice within the international arena, and it is arguably the most prominent Israeli grassroots movement on the American stage under its Standing Together discourse—especially when considering the political and financial support it receives from U.S.-based organizations affiliated with the Democratic sector in the United States. In particular, the New Israel Fund, a non-governmental organization founded in 1979, seeks to achieve a vision of a state that guarantees full social and political equality for all its residents, regardless of religion, ethnicity, or gender, while promoting liberal democratic values. Since its founding, it has provided support to over 950 Israeli organizations, totalling more than $350 million.
Arab parties within Israel have also received such support in non-election periods in recent years, as part of a broader American agenda to create a Jewish–Arab front against religious Zionism in Israel. The initiatives and activities of “Standing Together” bespeak the financial resources available to the movement, to the extent that some of its activists are employed by it—an arrangement that does not diminish or undermine its grassroots fieldwork. Nevertheless, this support exists within a broader political agenda that goes beyond purely humanitarian aims, and it is important to bear that in mind.
In its external discourse, the movement presents itself as a project for joint Jewish–Arab cooperation and peace amid the escalation of “racism and extremism in their societies.” In a video uploaded to YouTube in Hebrew and translated into Arabic last summer, Dov Khenin—one of the most prominent figures guiding Standing Together’s narrative, activities and messaging—speaks about the necessity for Jewish society to be exposed to the Palestinian perspective, particularly that connected to Gaza and the ongoing genocide. At the same time, Khenin describes Hamas as “the enemy of the Israeli–Palestinian peace idea,” not merely because it is a religious–fundamentalist movement, he explains, but because politically, Hamas envisions “a complete Palestine from the river to the sea,” leaving no space for the other people—meaning Jews. Khenin notes, however, that this interpretation does not align fully with Hamas’s charter in recent years.
Khenin and his allies recognize that the main obstacle to the establishment of a Palestinian state is Israel with all its political forces—not solely the religious Zionist parties. In recent years, the West Bank has effectively become a settler state, where Hamas holds no authority or role; under the framework of Palestinian security cooperation with Israel, settlement expansion and the Judaization of the West Bank continue.
In Conclusion
The conflict in and over Palestine is not, as Jewish–Arab cooperation movements have consistently emphasized, merely a struggle between extremists or religious actors. This highlights the core dilemma facing the joint Jewish–Arab cooperative current—especially the left—which has historically struggled against the Zionist project, not due to the nature of its resistance, whatever form it took, but because of structural and political constraints.
Any movement seeking to unite Jews and Arabs in a single front and shared path against Israeli government policies must begin with a serious and bold critical reading of the Zionist project, its structures of power, and its instruments of control and dominance favouring Jews over Palestinian Arabs; without such analysis, it cannot move beyond Zionism to create a political alternative that enables coexistence and justice for both peoples.
Every Israeli voice aligned with Gaza’s tragedy—outside the apparatus that mobilizes for its destruction—should be taken seriously, especially after more than 22 months of Gaza’s annihilation amid Arab–Islamic failure and inaction. “Standing Together” undoubtedly harbours political ambitions, even if it has not yet become an official political party. Some voices within the movement insist on preserving it as a grassroots initiative for Jewish–Arab cooperation against all right-wing religious–Zionist policies. Yet the movement’s persistent efforts to fill any available gap—such as working within Israeli universities and organizing Jewish–Arab student cooperation—signal aspirations for a future political role within Israel.
NOTE: This text is adabted from original Arabic article.
