On the floor and bleeding outside a cabinet meeting in Jerusalem on Sunday evening, 24-year-old Pheobe Bruce found herself at her first Israeli protest. As she looked up, a police officer grabbed her wooden hostage flag and snapped it in two.
“Snapping the yellow flag felt more violent than the pushing because he was trying to destroy the symbol of the movement,” Bruce said. “His eyes filled with rage.”
By Monday afternoon, the American Israeli still couldn’t rid herself of the smell of skunk spray, a fowl liquid used by the Israeli police to disperse crowds. Bruce has lived in Israel for four years and is one of hundreds of thousands of Israelis taking to the streets to demand that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agree to a deal to release any remaining hostages.
Pheobe Bruce's yellow hostage flag was snapped by Israeli police at a protest in Jerusalem on Sunday (Photo: Bruce)
In the wake of the grim discovery of six hostages executed in Gaza, Israelis have come together with chants of despair and defiance, demanding decisive action from a government they accuse of abandoning its own people.
“Hersh had become a symbol for Americans living in Israel; there was a lot of hope attached to him,” Bruce said of 23-year-old American Israeli hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, whose body was found last week. “I had to protest. I had to express my disappointment with the government.
“The Israeli people are raising their voice and saying we want the war to stop, we want a hostage deal.”
For some, this call meant a general strike. On Monday, Israel’s main trade union, Histadrut, shut down much of the public sector, with airports, universities, schools, shops and government ministries closed for a few hours.
Israeli police and security forces disperse anti-government demonstrators gathering near the Israeli Prime Minister's residence in Jerusalem on September 2 (Photo: Getty)
Aviv Bertele, 44, who owns an ulpan in Tel Aviv, closed his school on Sunday afternoon so employees and students could participate in the demonstration. “Any private or public business owner who did not shut down early is a hypocrite because we cannot be sad about people who did not come back [from Gaza] and keep our lives going as normal.”
He criticised the strike for not going far enough: “Half of the country is still running,” Bertele said, noting that a court order ended the strike earlier than planned. He believes Israel faces an existential reckoning and that taking to the streets is the only option.
“So many people have come to the streets because what makes Israel different from any country around the world is that we value one life, and we are always willing to pay a very heavy price to bring people home,” he said, referencing Israeli hostage Gilad Shalit, who was swapped for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners in 2011.
Bertele argues that the current administration has undermined this value: “I blame the government and the Prime Minister.
“We have to show young people going into the army that we will do everything in our power to protect them. I refuse to live in a country that doesn’t cherish individual life, where my brothers and sisters are captured and are not returned, dead or alive.
“People will not want to join an army when they might not come back. At any price, the deal must be done today.”
Aviv Bertele at a protest in Tel Aviv on Sunday evening (Photo: Bertele)
Shira Meiri, 28, protested because “it got to a point that you could not sit anymore in your own place, it was like a fire inside.” The news of the six young people killed was a turning point, she said.
“When you don’t have words, you have to go out and protest,” she said. While she has been attending protests throughout the war, Sunday’s demonstration was the first time it was so crowded that she struggled to travel from her home in northern Israel to Tel Aviv.
“All of the stations were full,” she said. “There were people with shirts and flags in station after station. It was enormous.
“In my dreams, the government will change and there will be a deal, but right now I just hope that they will stop the war and bring those people back home. A lot of people don’t believe it will happen, but it’s the only thing we can do.”
Meiri recalled the last words of slain hostage Eden Yerushalmi to Israeli emergency services – “Please find me” – saying, “We all feel like that girl.
“Her voice became a slogan. A young woman asked her country to find her. She was 24, I am 28, we all felt her in our soul, and they found her, but she was murdered.”
Describing why she protests, Meiri spoke of feeling that “you scream and scream and scream and no one hears you… People are broken and sad... we all feel like hostages.”
Shira Meiri at a protest in Tel Aviv on Monday evening (Photo: Meiri)
Sadness and anger unite the protesters, with some walking through the streets of Israel’s cities visibly weeping.
Matan Rudner, 26, a tour guide and a history student at Hebrew University, is furious. “You could not write more of a nightmare fiction about Israel that is being written every day: that’s why I go into the streets.”
Rudner feels the country’s leadership is failing, noting that Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir did not serve in the military himself. “The goals of the war are being dictated to us from a government that is not fully active in fighting the war to a population that is.”
He is equally critical of Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. “The accusation from Smotrich that the protests have played into Hamas’s hands is reprehensible and factually incorrect,” Rudner said.
“We care about this country and we are here to fight for it, that’s what Jews and Israelis have done for thousands of years and we are not stopping now. Fighting for the people and the country that you love is the most patriotic thing you can do.”
Though he is sceptical about the protests' ability to force change, he remains committed and hopeful.
Matan Rudner attending a protest with his father, Steven Rudner (Photo: Rudner)
Quoting the saying from Ethics of the Fathers, “You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it,” Rudner said: “I need to always be sure I did what I could, and I was a responsible Jew. I could not live with myself if I saw my country fall apart and just said ‘Oh shame’.”
From seven-year-olds chanting on megaphones to scout groups and grandmothers, the protests are diverse and widespread.
Professor Uri Ashery, 59, joined the demonstrations a week after October 7, standing with the families of hostages outside Hakirya in Tel Aviv.
“On Friday morning, the government had a meeting where they decided to stay in the Philadelphi Route in Gaza for military reasons, basically saying the hostages are not their top interest. And then the news of six deaths. It raised so much anger.”
Ashery is clear: “The blood of the hostages is the responsibility of the Israeli government... the only reason six young people were murdered by Hamas is that the Israeli government did not sign a deal two months ago.”
He is hopeful that the deaths will provoke change.
A neuroscience professor at Tel Aviv University, he has led marches from the university to central junctions and intends to continue his activism. “We have been on strike today, and I think the strike should continue; it should end when the government signs a deal to release the hostages. This is humanitarian; it is not political. Our people are dead because there is no deal.”
The professor has camped out overnight near Rothschild Boulevard to demonstrate solidarity. “Sleeping there one night is enough for you to see it is inhumane to be outside in August,” he said, referring to the scorching summer heat.
Protesters attend a rally demanding that Netanyahu justies the delay in signing the ceasefire deal due to the addition of new conditions (Photo: Getty)
The scale of Sunday’s protests, estimated to have drawn as many as 700,000 people, has shown him the potential power of collective action.
“Most of these people are tax-paying workers – they have economic power. If all these 700,000 decide not to go to work, it would have an effect,” Ashery said.
He is encouraged by the participation of young people, noting a generational shift in activism. “The kids are the future; I am not young anymore. Most of the people on the streets have been older, but Sunday was a leap in the generation that came out. About 25 per cent of the people protesting were kids – high schoolers, and scouts. This is the future of Israel.”
As Bruce prepared to join her second demonstration outside Netanyahu’s residence, Ashery returned to his protest tent, briefly stopping at home to wash away the dust. They are just two among hundreds of thousands of Israelis who have taken to the streets, united by a shared sense of urgency, anger and pain.
For Bruce, Ashery, Rudner, and countless others, the fight is far from over. As long as the government remains unyielding and the hostages remain in captivity, they will continue to hope, grieve and scream into the night.
