Rula Daood and Alon-Lee Green, the Israeli national directors of the Standing Together movement, were included in the Time 100 Next list for 2024 due to their extensive pacifist activities, such as the national campaign “The North Demands Peace – Deal Now.” As part of this campaign, the organization’s activists hung billboards in northern Israel with the statement “The North Demands Peace” in Arabic and Hebrew. Ironically, or perhaps tragically, one of the billboards placed at the Maxim intersection in Haifa was near a site damaged by a Hezbollah rocket last October. This area also witnessed the horrific terror suicide bombing at Maxim restaurant, co-owned by Arabs and Jews, in 2003, which killed 21 Jews and Arabs and injured 51 others.
The push for a diplomatic solution with Hezbollah for a ceasefire at any cost, without restrictions or the possibility of Israeli action for violations, indicates a lack of security awareness among Standing Together activists. Last November, northern residents, local authorities, and community forums expressed firm opposition to the proposed ceasefire agreement with Lebanon, fearing future violations by Hezbollah and the potential for a terrible massacre. This fear was reinforced when an IDF spokesman revealed Hezbollah’s plans to conquer the Galilee. Although the ceasefire was eventually signed, Hezbollah violated it within five days.
Besides calling for a ceasefire in the north, Standing Together does not address the circumstances that led to the Sword of Iron war. While they importantly call for the return of hostages to Israel, they mislead the public by claiming that “the government and media in Israel are ignoring war crimes in Gaza and claiming everything is fine.” They assert that Israel is waging a war of extermination in Gaza and that “we must not get used to killing and starving innocent Palestinians in Gaza, hundreds of rocket launches daily, or abandoning cities in the north and south.”
At a demonstration, one of the national directors held signs showing Israeli and Palestinian death tolls since the war’s beginning, citing 44,249 Palestinian deaths without specifying how many were Hamas terrorists. This figure, from the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, is unsupported. According to UN data from last May, a third of those killed in Gaza were women and children. A University of Pennsylvania expert’s study suggests the ratio of killed militants to civilians is around 1:1, according to the UN’s assessment. The ratio in urban combat zones around the world is 1:9, meaning nine civilians killed for every combatant killed — and that Israel is doing far more than any other military to avoid and reduce civilian deaths.
Regarding claims of starvation in Gaza, COGAT has facilitated the entry of over a million tons of aid on 57,545 trucks since the war began. From January to July 2024, the average daily food consumption in Gaza was about 3,004 calories per person, compared to 3,540 in Europe and North America, and 2,600 in African countries. Standing Together fails to blame Hamas for systematically stealing humanitarian aid from the residents of Gaza.
Originally supported by a German organization that backs the BDS movement and opposes the IHRA‘s working definition of antisemitism, Standing Together now promotes efforts embraced by the international delegitimization campaigns against Israel. They claim the destruction of Jabalia was for revenge and ethnic cleansing, ignoring the IDF’s continued discovery of weapons and terrorists since the military campaign renewed there on October 5, 2024.
The widespread recognition of organizations like Standing Together in Israel and internationally is concerning. While supposedly promoting coexistence and peace, they spread disinformation that could lead to sanctions harming both Israeli Arabs and Palestinians in the West Bank. Their focus on blaming Israel while neglecting to name Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran as the real culprits blurs the line between victim and attacker, undermining their legitimacy as a coexistence organization.
This article was originally published in the Algemeiner.
