This Moment & The Struggle Ahead
The last few years on this land have been unbearably painful. The occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem has become more entrenched as settler terror reached record levels, and wars in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran have left all of us, Israelis and Palestinians, exhausted and in urgent need of a real alternative to the extremist government and this bloody reality.
Immediately after October 7, when Hamas massacred 1,200 Israelis and took dozens more hostage, our extremist government launched a brutal assault on Gaza that lasted for more than two years. It killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, created an impossible humanitarian crisis, and abandoned the hostages. Today, the Israeli army controls more than half of Gaza’s territory and occupies southern Lebanon. Amid this crisis, our government cemented a reality of forever war.
From Gaza to Lebanon to Iran and back again, our government expects us to run to bomb shelters at all hours of the day and night, or, in unrecognized Bedouin-Palestinian villages, to remain completely vulnerable to missile fire. It expects us to keep our children at home without functioning schools in wartime and to accept a rising cost of living. It is abandoning Palestinian citizens to soaring homicide rate and organized crime, and leaving entire communities without shelter. Clearly, the majority of us are losing and only a small minority of settler and political elites is benefitting. This is what we are determined to change.
As a progressive Jewish-Palestinian movement, our task now is now to secure an end to the forever wars and to build a shared struggle against the occupation and apartheid in the West Bank – to achieve a just Israeli-Palestinian peace. And the first step should be an agreement to establish an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel, creating two states in a shared homeland, with confederation institutions and open borders that allow both peoples to live with freedom and dignity.
It’s either forever war or Israeli-Palestinian peace as the first step to peace agreements with more countries in our region.
And despite the devastation of these years, we know that another way is possible. Together we have mobilized tens of thousands into the streets, organized hundreds of aid trucks for Gaza, protected Palestinians in the West Bank from settler violence, and continued to organize our society despite intimidation. It is time to choose a new path, one where Palestinians and Israelis alike are able to live in freedom, equality, and safety in their homeland.
Standing Together’s Response to the War
Fighting for a ceasefire deal and peace
While Standing Together has always campaigned for peace and ending the occupation, since October 7th we have drastically grown our efforts to create a mass peace movement in Israeli society - making it our central campaign. This includes:
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Community organizing: building networks of Jewish and Palestinian activists across 12 local chapters and 14 student chapters nationwide.
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nationwide Public mobilization: organizing massive demonstrations, marches, and acts of civil disobedience to call for a ceasefire and hostage deal; joining the mainstream protest movement as a purple bloc to spread our message further; building a new peace camp determined to end the war and release the hostages as well as end the occupation and fight for Israeli-Palestinian peace.
Digital and public campaigns to impact discourse
We engage in digital and public campaigns promoting solidarity and long-term peace, as well as the importance of opposing the killing of civilians in Gaza, the West Bank, and Israel. Our messaging is aimed at re-humanizing public discourse, retaining humanity, mourning all lives lost, and rejecting violence on social media in Hebrew, Arabic, and English. We purchase billboards newspaper ads, speak with media outlets and create petitions and content on social media in Hebrew, Arabic, and English to reach millions in Israel and abroad.
Campaign to collect aid for Gaza and oppose the starvation
In August 2024, Standing Together embarked on a campaign to collect food and humanitarian aid supplies for residents of Gaza from several Arab-Palestinian towns across Israel. In addition to providing aid to Gaza, the campaign mobilized Palestinians and Jews in Israel and strengthened Jewish-Arab partnership in the fight against the war. Palestinian citizens have faced extreme political persecution since the start of the war, and this campaign provided a mechanism by which Palestinian and Jewish citizens could safely participate in grassroots actions that have a practical impact on the lives of people in Gaza, as well as stand up against the Israeli government’s collective punishment and starvation of Palestinians. The campaign has been overwhelmingly successful, mobilizing tens of thousands of Palestinians and Jews across the country, and providing 200 trucks worth of food and aid free of charge to people in Gaza. In January 2025 we raised funds to collect blankets, warm clothes, and shoes to help Palestinians in Gaza survive the cold winter, which were successfully transported into the Gaza Strip and provided much-needed relief.
De-escalation and solidarity within Israel
As soon as the war broke out we opened 12 solidarity networks across the country, where over 5,000 Jewish and Palestinian activists took part in a wide range of actions promoting solidarity and de-escalation. Some highlights include:
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A “Solidarity Watch” patrol, which accompanies people who are fearful of leaving their homes and serves as a public reminder of Jewish-Arab collaboration.
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Pooling efforts for humanitarian and mutual aid including cleaning bomb shelters and collecting food for people in need.
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Physical and virtual meetings to provide safe and open conversations with trained psychologists.
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Monitoring and reporting calls for violence, discrimination, and fake news in social and traditional media and reporting them to authorities.
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Pressuring local police and media to intervene in cases of intercommunal violence.
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Promoting positive messages and a discourse of solidarity on the ground.
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Training people for de-escalating potentially inflammatory conversations in shared spaces such as the workplace and at school.
Support for victims of discrimination and political persecution
We created an emergency support hotline, where over 300 volunteers provided support in Arabic and Hebrew to people experiencing racism, discrimination, dismissal from their jobs, or expulsion from universities. The support hotline connects people with relevant mental health and legal aid resources, as well as de-escalation techniques.
Campus organizing and student support
Standing Together is the strongest political force on Israeli campuses today, with 14 student chapters at various universities and colleges. The student chapters have been working to provide extra support for students affected by the war and political persecution, strengthen Jewish-Palestinian solidarity on campus, and organize students to strike and demonstrate on campus to call for a ceasefire and hostage deal.
Solidarity Guard
In May 2024 we launched the Solidarity Guard (formerly called the Humanitarian Guard), a protective presence initiative to protect Palestinians from settler attacks, as well as to stop settlers from looting aid on its way to Gaza. In the initiative’s first action, our activists went to Tarqumiyah checkpoint to guard the aid trucks and ensure that police stopped settlers from destroying the aid – this marked the first day in weeks that all trucks passed safely through the checkpoint. Until we launched the Solidarity Guard, Israeli police did not sufficiently prevent the attacks or arrest the attackers. Our presence ensured police would be at the scene and that the fact of extremists destroying aid received both local and international media attention, pushing many in Israeli society to fight against it. The Solidarity Guard is active in the West Bank as well as on the notorious Jerusalem Day to protect Palestinians from assaults by settlers.
