At least 17 people were arrested Saturday as Israeli police violently cracked down on an antiwar protest in Tel Aviv, where hundreds had gathered condemning the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. Israeli peace activist Alon-Lee Green, who helped organize the protest and was among those arrested, says the Israeli public’s initial support for the war has rapidly declined in recent weeks, as the quick, decisive engagement that was promised has not come to fruition. “I think the Israeli public is waking up. A lot of people are angry. It’s been three years now of constant war. People are tired. People want different realities for their families.” Speaking from a courthouse where he is filing for a restraining order against right-wing extremists who have harassed him at his home, Green calls for an end to Israel’s “forever war” and says that both Israeli law enforcement and right-wing groups have violated peace activists’ constitutional right to protest.

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show in Israel, where at least 17 people were arrested Saturday as Israeli police violently cracked down on an antiwar protest in Tel Aviv, where hundreds had gathered condemning the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. The arrests came despite an order by Israel’s top court that allowed the demonstration to proceed. Israeli police still moved to break up the protest, claiming Iranian missile threats. Protests also took place in Haifa and Jerusalem.

Haaretz reported a missile launched by Yemen’s Houthis triggered a siren in Tel Aviv around the time of Saturday’s demonstration, but police reportedly refused to take the arrested protesters to an underground bomb shelter.

Alon-Lee Green, co-director of the Israeli-Palestinian grassroots group Standing Together and an organizer of Saturday’s antiwar protest in Tel Aviv, was among those taken into custody. He’ll join us a minute, but first, this is the video footage of his arrest.

ALON-LEE GREEN: [translated] Keep opposing and resisting this war. We will continue to oppose this war. Every Israeli must oppose and resist this war, against the war in Iran and the war in Lebanon. It’s war that hurts the people of Israel. It hurts our rights — the dead, the children, the closed business.

AMY GOODMAN: Alon-Lee Green was arrested at the antiwar protest in Tel Aviv and released approximately seven hours later. He joins us now on Democracy Now!

We’re speaking to you first, Alon-Lee, because you have to appear in court right after this interview. First of all, explain why hundreds of Israelis, not only in Tel Aviv, also in Haifa and Jerusalem, are protesting this past weekend, why you were out there, why you got arrested.

ALON-LEE GREEN: Hi, Amy. Thank you so much for having me.

It’s actually thousands of Israelis have gone out to the streets this week, and it’s a protest that is growing in Israel. People know that this war will not bring us any safety, that this war is only causing harm to the people of the Middle East, to the Lebanese, to the Palestinians, to the Iranians and also to the Israelis. We pay a price, a price of destroyed families, people that are dying, houses that are being demolished. It is a reality of war.

And this war is a war that was initiated by Trump and Netanyahu. And we resist this war because it’s a forever war. Israel is moving from Gaza to Lebanon to the West Bank to Iran, and then it goes back to the same fronts. And they tell us that this is for our security. But, you know, in reality, we all pay a price, and we all lose from this war.

AMY GOODMAN: Protesters held up photos, Alon-Lee, of children who’ve been killed in Iran, in Lebanon, in Israel, in Gaza and the West Bank. Can you talk about the connections between Israel’s war on Iran and attacks on Lebanon, as well as Israel’s settler violence in the West Bank and the continued killing of Palestinians in Gaza?

ALON-LEE GREEN: I think all these different fronts, all these different scenes are merging into one forever war that our government and governments have tried to keep alive in order to stay in power, in order to incite the people in our society against imagined enemies. They believe that if they will kill people in Gaza and then allow settlers to murder people in the West Bank and then attack in Iran and attack in Lebanon, the Israeli public will stay silent and that they will think that this is not a time for protesting. But I think the Israeli public is waking up. A lot of people are angry. It’s been three years now of constant war. People are tired. People want different realities for their families. People lose their sons and daughters that are sent to kill and get killed in the army.

And I believe that this is also an opportunity for the left wing in Israel to connect the struggle to the interests of the Palestinians, of the Lebanese, of the people of the Middle East, to the interest of the Israeli people, because the prices that people are paying is not the same price. I know that as an Israeli citizen, I’m not paying the price of a Palestinian in Gaza or Palestinian in the West Bank. But the suffering of people in different degrees is still a suffering. And holding the pictures of those children lost their lives in Gaza, in the West Bank, in Lebanon, in Iran and also in Israel is a way to show that everyone is losing in a war. The only people that are benefiting something are people like Trump and Netanyahu, maybe some oil companies that are making a lot of profit from these wars.

AMY GOODMAN: Is the antiwar movement in Israel growing?

ALON-LEE GREEN: Yeah. It started with a few dozens of people in the first week, and now we are a few thousands of people. In the first week, there were 90% of support among the Israeli Jewish population of the war, and now it declined to 60-something support within five weeks. It’s rapidly declining.

And I think people understand that it’s not like — you know, it’s not like what the government is trying to sell us. They told us it’s going to be a quick war; we will achieve, you know, the democracy or, I don’t know, securing the government of Iran falling down. And we see this is not the truth, not only that they are not winning, but also, if you claim you fight for the Iranian people, why do you attack their oil? Why do you attack their infrastructure, the economy? Why do you kill so many people in Iran? Why do you make 4 million Iranians refugees? I think those lies are slowly, slowly being stripped away.

AMY GOODMAN: Are more Israelis refusing to serve in the army?

ALON-LEE GREEN: Well, in this war, we didn’t see yet a case of a refusenik saying that they will not serve in the Iranian war. But you could see a lot of people that are in the reserve army saying that that’s it. They’re not getting going into Lebanon. They’re not going back to Gaza. They’re refusing. Our movement called on reserveniks and soldiers to be holding a morality of keeping humans’ lives, families, children in Gaza, in the West Bank, in Lebanon.

I think that we need to remember that it’s a tough atmosphere to be an Israeli that is resisting the war. I’m standing here in the court right now. In front of me, there’s a group of right-wing mob activists that came here to arrest me, and they are trying to get my attention. And people came to my home. We get arrested. It’s not easy to do what we do, but we’re trying to create the atmosphere of making it possible, making it normal, making it mainstream to be saying that it’s the patriotic thing to do, to resist occupation, to support Israeli-Palestinian peace, to support the end of this forever war in Lebanon or Iran or the West Bank. And I think we are gaining and growing.

AMY GOODMAN: Since you brought this up, that you’re standing right now in court right before you go in, in fact, this is a separate case than you being arrested this weekend. And I’m wondering if you can explain what happened last week when you were followed home by a group of right-wing activists, and why you are in court today.

ALON-LEE GREEN: Yes. One other arm of the state to persecute us and to try and silence us is not only the police that is being violent and dispersing us in a very aggressive way. It’s also organized right-wing groups that is chasing us, finding out our addresses, coming to our homes, attacking us, bringing all of a sudden, in the middle of the night, a few dozen people behind your apartment’s door, coming and blocking your car, finding you in the middle of the street. And this is a reality that is growing. They get the back of the police. They are never being arrested. They’re never being — having to pay for their actions. So, I’m trying to get a restraining order from court against a few of them. And this is maybe one of the only tools that we have, apart from organizing and protecting ourselves.

AMY GOODMAN: I also wanted to ask you about what happened on Saturday when you were arrested. You have the protesters being told that you can’t protest because of public security. Yet when the sirens went off, you were held in a police bus, and while everyone else ran into shelters, you were not able to go, because the police didn’t let you out of the bus?

ALON-LEE GREEN: We weren’t allowed. They claimed that they’re arresting us because we’re violating the emergency measurements of the Home Front Command and we’re jeopardizing ourselves. But then, we were on the police bus. We were arrested. I was handcuffed. And then, you know, we all heard the sirens, and we told the police, “Allow us to go to the shelters. We are above the biggest shelter in Tel Aviv. Allow us to go off the bus and get into the shelter.” And they said, “It’s your problem you decided to protest in the middle of the war.” And we started shouting at them and demanding to be protected from a missile that can hit us. And they really refused.

Eventually, after the siren ended — we had maybe seconds before a hit — they allowed us to go to a lobby of a building full of glass windows, which is not a secure situation, and they told us to lie on the ground and to be maybe protected. This is a risk of our lives. This is something that is breaking also the law. No one is allowed to prevent you to be in shelter while there’s a siren. And the police is breaking the law in Israel.

AMY GOODMAN: On Sunday, Knesset member Ayman Odeh, chair of the Hadash-Ta’al, wrote on social media, quote, “The police’s conduct yesterday at the anti-war demonstration, alongside a blatant violation of the High Court of Justice’s ruling, is yet further proof that we are in the midst of a historic crossroads. This is an existential struggle for the future here, for freedom of expression, for democratic values, and for the right to live with dignity, security, and equality; and above all, to stop living by the sword and to strive for true peace. … I strengthen and stand in solidarity with the thousands of citizens who went out yesterday to demonstrate despite everything, and who stood firm in the face of the fascists. Next week, we will already be tens of thousands. For the more they suppress and silence us, the more we will multiply and the more we will break through.” If you can explain, Alon-Lee, what the Hadash-Ta’al party is, who Alex [sic] Odeh is, and what — and his reference to the High Court saying you could protest?

ALON-LEE GREEN: Ayman Odeh is the head of Hadash-Ta’al party in the Knesset, which represent the Palestinian minority in Israel. There are around four political parties that represent the Palestinians in Israel, which comprise 20% of the entire population, the entire citizens of Israel. And he’s the leader of the left-wing party among these parties.

And he refers to a discussion in the — a hearing in the Supreme Court of Israel asking the question whether it’s legal to have the right to demonstrate even though there’s war. We come to the Supreme Court, and we tell them, “There’s always war in Israel. You say it can last for months, for years. Does it mean that we never have the right to protest against the war?” So we brought it as a constitutional question to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court is now in discussion. It will rule on Thursday around the question whether it’s still legal and we still have the right to protest, even though there are special security and emergency measurements of the Home Front Command in Israel. They said to the police that they are not allowed to disperse us until there’s a discussion, until there’s a ruling. But the police acted on the demand of the minister, Ben-Gvir, who demanded to see arrests.

AMY GOODMAN: You know, I confused Ayman Odeh’s name with Alex Odeh, the 41-year-old Palestinian American activist and poet who was killed decades ago, in 1985, in Los Angeles by a pipe bomb that exploded as he entered his Santa Ana, California, office. The FBI classified the bombing of his office — it was the office of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee — as a domestic terrorist attack linked to, quote, “Jewish extremists.”

I want to turn to Ofer Cassif as we leave, because you have to go into court, a member of the Israeli Knesset, like Ayman Odeh, with the Hadash-Ta’al coalition. He says he was assaulted by police during the dispersal of Saturday’s antiwar protest. This is Ofer Cassif speaking out against the war on Democracy Now! last month.

OFER CASSIF: [But the real interest of] those governments, of those imperialists and their partners, is — the real reason is simply to do whatever they can in order to achieve their own economic and political interests at the expense of the peoples, including the people of Iran and the people of Israel. Unfortunately, neither of them is really interested in our well-being or in the people of Iran or the American people in their own welfare and good, so — and that’s the main issue. This is an imperialist aggression against the Iranian people. It’s not against the regime. They want us to believe it’s against the regime. It is against the people of Iran eventually. And history proves that.

And we, in the anti-occupation, anti-genocide, peace movement in Israel, we know that. It’s very difficult now at the moment to take to the streets and to demonstrate, because of the missiles and also because of the limitations posed by the government under the guise of emergency situation. But we know what is at stake. We know that the real interests of the governments are against the interest of the peoples, and we do whatever we can in order to protest and to stop this bloodshed.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that was Ofer Cassif, member of the Israeli Knesset and the leftist Hadash-Ta’al party. He also was at the protest and says he was assaulted. Alon-Lee Green, I want to thank you for being with us, co-director of the Israeli-Palestinian grassroots group Standing Together, organizer of Saturday’s antiwar protest in Israel, arrested at the antiwar protest in Tel Aviv. He is now in court on another case.