Tel Aviv is usually a city of noise, but yesterday – for two minutes – silence was louder. At Habima Square, a group of twenty young people stood with cardboard signs and a desperate plea for peace. The war with Iran is very popular in Israel, but these youngsters do not support it. They claim that war is the last resort and there are alternatives which we have not examined, that the Iranian regime – while by all means not a showcase of democracy – is not radically different from other dictatorships in the region like Bahrain or the United Arab Emirates with which the Israeli government cooperates without hesitations, and that this is not a righteous battle to free Iran or to remove an vital threat but a cynic aggressive act to lower the price of oil (Trump’s motivation) and shift public attention away from Netanyahu’s trial (Netanyahu’s motivation). Even if you disagree with these claims, you cannot deny that these are valid arguments that should be given the stage.

The police saw things differently. They gave the protesters exactly two minutes to pack their stuff and leave; two minutes of silence after which the demonstration was aggressively dispersed. We’ll get to it in a moment, but let’s talk first about the protesters. None of them is household name in Israel, maybe because the Overton window of the agenda is too narrow to include non-violent solutions to the Israeli-Iranian conflict. Furthermore, one cannot deny that since October 7th 2023 we have been living in a never ending state of war with short breaks. War has become the natural State of Matter. Peace seems like UFO. Against this background, yesterday’s protesters seem detached. The signs they carried, their attire, and even their hairstyle looked like relics from anti-Vietnam war demonstrations of the 1960s. Only Joan Baez was missing to decorate the event with a medley of periodical hymns from Blowing in the Wind to We Shall Overcome. Of course, she did not show up. Instead of Joan Baez, came the inevitable Arab-Zionist Yoseph Haddad. His loud voice cut through the silent air uttering bilingual accusations and describing the protesters as terrorists. Yoseph finished his minor shouting role and left the stage for the police. They did not look like civil servants maintaining order; they looked like partisans who came to destroy a ceremony like soldiers who destroy a Palestinian refugee camp. Their official excuse was that because of the state emergency situation public gathering is not allowed, as Iranian missiles can fall at any moment. Clearly, this verbose does not hold water when the largest public shelter in Israel is located less than 100 meters away from the demonstration, and when the streets are full of kids dressed in Purim costumes. It was obvious that the police came only because of Ben-Gvir, the minister of national security, who made it clear that “wild protest” would be tolerated during war. As if one can imagine protest that is less wild than two minutes of silence

The dispersal of the protest was quick and efficient. The policemen, who outnumbered the protesters, tore the signs, pushed the demonstrators (who showed zero resistance) and took with them one captive. Itamar Greenberg, 20, is anonymous in Israel, but overseas he is the poster guy of Israel’s extreme left. Only few days ago he came back from a visit of France, where he was testifying in a trial of an anti-Zionist activist and explaining why, to him, anti-Semitism is not similar to anti-Zionism. In 2024 he was sitting for two months in a military prison for refusing to enlist. Here he was again handcuffed, dragged in public with his clothing in disarray, and put under arrest for the sixth time in only six months.

And the public? They walked by, hardly paying any attention, maybe because the lack of freedom of speech has become so normalized in Israel that it no longer seems exceptional. Actually, what do I want from the public when I myself did not join the picket line knowing that I might get arrested? I did take some pictures, so future generations will know that the second war with Iran, which is just as unnecessary as its predecessor, did not pass without any sign of protest. The memorial ceremony to democracy ended just in time to celebrate Purim.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)