“Jews Say No More”

by Gili Getz

(Lightly adapted from the speech given on August 4th’s “Jews Say No More” rally in New York City)

Jews say, “No More!” Israeli Jews also say, “No More!”

My name is Gili Getz, and I’m grateful of this Jewish coalition all of that came together this evening.

Israelis for Peace, alongside Friends of Standing Together — New York, have been protesting every Sunday in Union Square—against the mass indiscriminate killing and bombing of the people in Gaza, for a hostage deal to bring them all home alive and against the Occupation and settler and state violence in the West Bank. הכל קשור להכול:  They are all interconnected. Please, join us if you can every Sunday at 5pm. Every voice matters.

We protest and hold vigils in full solidarity with Palestinian and Israelis who are speaking up, protesting, marching and writing against the war, starvation, the occupation and for a hostage deal; who are being beaten, and arrested, and terrorized, and vilified for speaking for humanity; and whose lives and futures are being destroyed by supremacist ideologies of hate and violence.

This Sunday was particularly hard. My dear friend and a friend to many in our community who deeply touched our lives, a Palestinian teacher, writer and peace activist from the village Umm Al-Khair—Awdah Hathaleen—was murdered last week by a well known settler terrorist in cold blood, on video, in broad daylight with absolute impunity as part of an ongoing ethnic cleaning of Massafer Yata. Awdah was a kind, brilliant leader. And abeatiful human being who modeled joint nonviolent struggle. He was murdered, his village is being terrorized, and his family is denied the dignity of a proper burial. We join the demand of his family to allow a proper funeral. And justice.

His murder, like his life under occupation, epitomizes a system of apartheid in which people like Awdah are stripped of their basic rights and basic dignity: a system of dehumanization.

This is the very system that produced Ben Gvir and Smotritch, who are preventing a hostage deal and call for even more killing and destruction despite overwhelming support by both the Israeli public and the security establishment calling for an end to the war and a hostage deal — including recently nineteen former Israeli security chiefs from Mossad, Shin Bet and military leaders, and police.

This war is no longer about security. It’s not even about revenge. It’s about annihilation, genocide (as named by another former Israeli General) and the formation of a dictatorship from the river to the sea, the destruction of democratic structures  and oppression of all Palestinians and Israeli Jews who oppose the regime.

Both Israeli hostages and soldiers as well as eighteen thousand Palestinians children are paying with their lives for this dark vision that will keep no one safe or free.

We demand Trump and the world force immediate hostage deal. The hostages are being sacrificed—tortured by Hamas and dying in Gaza— in order to prolong Netanyahu’s political survival. It’s horrifying to see the videos of Evyatar and Rom starved by Hamas. It is horrifying to see a million women and children in Gaza being starved by the Netanyahu-made famine, and shot to death when trying to simply get food.

The mass dehumanization of an entire population is a direct assault on our Jewish values, our shared humanity, and on the memory of the Holocaust. We are witnessing the collapse of the very institutions that were built after the Holocaust to prevent genocide. As a Jew, I know where mass dehumanization leads. I know it led to the Holocaust, I know it led to October 7th when Hamas butchered our people. I know it’s now being used to justify the genocide of the people of Gaza and murdering of my friends in the went bank. Of the hostages and soldiers being sacrificed for Netanyh.

I want to call from here to those in our Jewish community who know all this. Who know that we are witnessing and complicit in what historian David Mayers called  “the most profound Jewish moral failing of our time” – but have not spoke up or joined us in protest. I know hasbara culture is demanding we deny, minimize, and justify atrocities done in the name of Jewish safety. It’s exploiting the fear of rising antisemitism and the trauma of October 7th in order to convince us to give up part of our own humanity; to shame, intimidate and bully so we are forced to desecrate our most cherished values of betzelem Elohim; to betray Hashem.  But to save hostages and end the atrocities we need you to speak up. We need an overwhelming campaign of pressure to save them those who can still be saved. And to save our souls.

We need you to say, “No More.” To refuse. Refuse to be silent to normalize and justify and take part in these crimes and destruction, in the Netanyahu-made famine that will haunt us for generations to come.

We must act: Now. Anywhere we are – in any way we can.

It doesn’t have to be this way. There is another way. Another world is possible. Where from the river to the sea everyone is safe equal and free: in Israel/Palestine, here in New York City, and across the world.

Gili Getz is a Board Vice President of Partners for Progressive Israel.