The news of the execution of the six hostages—among them the American citizen Hersh Goldberg-Polin—by Hamas terrorists has devastated an already-devastated public in Israel and around the globe. We are, all of us, heartbroken. And we are angry. We knew that each delay in a ceasefire deal—extended the fighting which has trapped so many Gazan civilians in the crossfire—and endangered the hostages. We knew that the clock was running out for them. And we knew that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could have pursued a deal to bring them home—but he chose to sabotage the negotiations instead. 

And so Israelis started protesting. September 1 saw the largest protests in Israel since the height of the pro-democracy, anti-judicial overhaul protests last year. In cities and towns across the country, some 700,000 people took to  the streets. They were angry, and they were unified. And the eyes of the world were on them. 

The space right outside of the Defense Ministry headquarters in Tel Aviv took center stage. This is where Einav Zangauker, the mother of the hostage Matan Zangauker who is known in Israel as the “Mother Lioness” first set up her protest tent, and where, on Sunday, she was met by so many other hostage families and activists—and just regular people. This is what she said at the protest on Sunday: “My son is still alive, but every day is like a game of Russian roulette that Netanyahu is playing until all the hostages have died. We won’t let him!” NIF gave Einav our top prize a few months ago—the “Truth to Power Prize”, which comes with a NIS 100,000 purse. 

Protestors blocked the Ayalon highway in Tel Aviv for hours, long into the night as the police sprayed them with water cannons, sometimes filled with what is known as “skunk water”. This heinous chemical concoction has been used to disperse protests for years in the West Bank and East Jerusalem—and now it is being used in the heart of Tel Aviv. If we’ve said it once we’ve said it 1,000 times: the anti-democratic methods of the occupation will inevitably spill into Israel proper, and be used on Israeli citizens. That’s exactly what is happening. 

At the protest, the Histadrut (Israel’s largest labor union) chairman Arnon Bar-David called for a general strike. “This afternoon,” he said, “I made the decision to halt the Israeli economy from tomorrow morning onward…We refuse to remain indifferent to the fact that our country has become one of abandonment!” (A court injunction later cut short the general strike. But the court action does not take away from the significance of the Histadrut’s decision.) 

The outcry was great—and it is still reverberating. Not least because, to Israelis, it looked like Netanyahu’s security cabinet’s decision to remain in what is known as the “Philadelphi Corridor,” is the very thing that sealed the fate of these hostages. The Philadelphi Corridor is the 14 kilometer Gaza-Egypt border that Netanyahu claimed (all of a sudden, and in contradiction to the view of Israel’s security establishment) was “cardinal” to Israel’s security, and could not be relinquished, even if it meant a hostage deal. None other than his own Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, reportedly shouted at the Prime Minister that this move would result in the death of the hostages. 

Israelis increasingly see that Netanyahu’s wartime decisions are grounded in his personal political calculus. If his far-right coalition partners bolt—the same ones who champion the settlement enterprise and the judicial coup—Netanyahu faces early elections and a commission of inquiry into his failures that contributed to October 7.   Yossi Verter, veteran Haaretz political reporter, wrote that the cabinet meeting “may go down in history as the tragic turning point that sealed the fate of the 107 men and women held hostage by Hamas.” The writing was on the wall, he said. Netanyahu’s statement that Israel would stay in the Philadelphi corridor, Verter said, “really meant: ‘I stay in the Prime Minister’s Office’.”

October 7 continues to batter our souls. In many ways, the past 11 months feel like an extension of that awful day. With hostages deaths, soldiers and civilians killed daily, a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, rising tensions throughout the region, and the continuing attempts of the ruling coalition in Israel to erode Israel’s democracy and de facto annex the West Bank, the situation is deteriorating. Israelis are not safe from the threats outside of Israel’s borders or the threats from within them. 

The urgency of this moment cannot be overstated. The coming months will determine Israel’s fate: whether Israel’s leaders will end the war and attempt to resolve the conflict permanently or whether Israel will be trapped in endless bloodshed. 

Israelis increasingly understand this crossroads. Will the growing protest movement succeed in pushing for a deal? Will they surmount the government’s anti-democratic aspirations? Or will the country regress even further toward illiberal democracy—or worse, an authoritarian regime in a constant state of war? 

Amidst this turmoil, we at NIF and our partners on the ground do not have the luxury of despair. 

In eulogizing his son, Hersh, Jon Polin, told the gathered crowd and so many watching from home and abroad that one of the most fitting posts he saw about Hersh was one that said “Yehi Zichro Mahapecha”—may his memory be a revolution. To this I say, let us help it become one. 

Amen.