Two speeches at the most recent Jerusalem demonstration in support of hostages lingered in the mind – long after the chants (which in Hebrew rhyme hauntingly) of “we want them back alive, not in coffins” had died away.
One was by Elana Kaminka, whose son Yanai, a soldier, was killed as he fought to protect residents of Zikim, a border kibbutz, from the Hamas invasion on 7 October. “Right now,” she said last weekend, “both the Palestinian and Israeli peoples are losing, big time. We’re not going anywhere and nor are they.
“And if someday we do win, it will be together, because we all deserve a better future. [Yanai] paid with his life for the government’s failures. Let’s not reach a point where the state of Israel pays with its life.”
The other was by Yahel Oren, representing four young women who worked as spotters and were kidnapped from the military base at Nahal Oz on 7 October by Palestinian militants who overran the base, killing 14 of their colleagues.
The fate of the spotters, whose job was to monitor activity across the border, is all the more poignant because their repeated warnings that Hamas was preparing something ominously unusual had been ignored by their superiors. “We want a deal that will bring our sisters back,” Oren said.
The first speech was applauded by many among the hundreds of demonstrators. Nevertheless, Kaminka’s linkage of the fate of Israelis with that of Palestinians is worth reporting because despite being a self-evident truth, it is unusual to hear it – even in demonstrations like the one I was at here in Jerusalem last weekend.
It does not, at present, reflect a consensus among Israelis – many of whose perceptions are fixated on the horrors of 7 October without consideration of what happened before or since. But Oren’s speech does now reflect public........