Aron Lee Green, co-founder of the Palestinian and Jewish activist group Standing Together, sought to organize a protest Thursday against the country’s war with Iran. The first attempt was cracked down by police, but this was the second attempt, he said.
Anticipating opposition from authorities to the protests on grounds of public safety, they secured space in an underground theater that could also be used as a shelter. It wasn’t ideal, he said, but in times like this it was better than doing nothing.
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Police and right-wing demonstrators were on standby.
“They said they were coming to keep an eye on us,” Green said of the police presence. He thought the protesters were just there to jeer. “(The police) said they came to check our IDs and make sure we didn’t say anything prohibited. It was clear they came to intimidate us,” he said. “There’s nothing new about this. It’s ongoing.”
Green said many in Israeli society support a war with Iran in a manner similar to support for the genocidal war in Gaza after the Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel.
A poll conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI) earlier this month suggested overwhelming support for war, with 93% of Jewish respondents supporting an attack on Iran, an enemy that Israelis have long said they intend to destroy.
“It’s strange,” Green said from Tel Aviv, pointing out the contradiction of an opposition party supporting a war started by a political opponent. For example, Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid said he would no longer support a no-confidence motion against the government amid a “just war.”
“Aside from the Palestinian political parties, all opposition groups are united behind the war,” Green said. “On the one hand, they claim to be for the war, but against (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu. At the same time, (they) fail to acknowledge that it is the war that is helping support Netanyahu. This is a complete failure of politics.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu framed the war Thursday in characteristically groundbreaking terms, telling a news conference that the conflict with Iran would be “recorded in Israel’s history” and that it was being fought for “future generations” and even “the future of humanity.”
thirst for war
Chatham House’s Yossi Mekelberg told Al Jazeera that gathering around the flag is to be expected in the first few days of a war, even if what many in Israel have come to think of the repressive and threatening nature of the Iranian regime makes it easier.
“In many ways, this is the psychology of war,” he says. “It helps that all political parties in Israel are expressing uncritical support for a war against a country that has been arming Hezbollah (in Lebanon) and the Houthis in Yemen and has been demanding Israel’s death for decades. People can understand that,” he said, adding that details about negotiations, sanctions and the validity of the nuclear deal, which the US withdrew from in 2018, were lost in the rush to war.
Analysts say critical examination of the war and a clear understanding of how it ended is largely absent from public debate, preferring instead to focus on the long-standing reasons that led to the war.
Ayala Paniewski, a London-based Israeli academic and media analyst, told Al Jazeera: “There is a huge divide between how this war is portrayed in Israel and elsewhere.” “There was little criticism of the war in Israeli mainstream media, and after October 7 it became even easier to convince Israelis that if they did not attack first, someone else would.”
For Panievski, military force has come to be seen as the only answer to Israelis’ concerns about security, and Netanyahu’s media takeover has accelerated that process, she said. “He and his government have been unpopular for years, but unfortunately this war is popular,” she said.
“The word ‘regime change’ also does not evoke the same trauma and fear that it does for Americans and British people,” she said of the disasters that have characterized previous Western regime change attempts in Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan.
“People aren’t interested in reflection and analysis,” Mekelberg says.
“Iran is (perceived as) the aggressor, and always has been, so this could make even an attack look like self-defense,” he said, adding that the killing of thousands of people in Iran in January had increased the perception in Israel of a “heroic” war aimed, in part, to support Iranian opposition.
In Tel Aviv, Green wasn’t so sure. Although he has no love for the Tehran government, neither he nor other members of Standing Together believed that going to war against Iran was the best way to liberate the people. Nor was he convinced that the Israeli public’s support for a war with no clear end in sight was warranted.
“They told us in June that they completely destroyed Iranian missiles and their ability to attack us, and we are here,” he said of the 12-day war between Israel and Iran in June 2025. “They said they destroyed Hezbollah last year, but yesterday they fired over 200 rockets into Israel.
“People are starting to have doubts and criticism, and there will be more of it,” he said.
