Sarah Goldberg’s speech from our 7 July rally
Sarah Goldberg, an organiser with Standing Together’s Haifa chapter, spoke at our 7 July rally in Parliament Square. The text of her speech is below.
I’m Sarah, I’m one of the two Haifa organisers for Standing Together. I can’t add anything to what Hamze and Magen have said about the importance of our struggle, and of hope. But I’m not going to start out with telling you how bad things are, how many people have been killed in Gaza, how many hostages’ lives are hanging in the balance, about the dangers of hunger in disease in Gaza, the plight of evacuees from the North and the South in Israel.
I’m not going to start talking about these things because I am in your UK Supporters of Standing Together WhatsApp group and I know that you know. I am so impressed by your community, and it gives me hope that there are people like you around the world raising their voices for peace, who work to end the suffering of people in Gaza and in Israel, who understand that 7 million Jews and 7 million Palestinians aren’t going anywhere.
I’ll bet that you have friends who tell you that you can’t feel sad about the suffering of Jews and of Palestinians, or that now isn’t the time to talk about both. Anyways, I’m here to tell you that you are right and they are wrong. That peace and security for anybody will only come when there’s peace and security for everybody, and a movement for peace won’t tell you to pick who should be a winner and who should be a loser. A joint movement for peace also won’t pretend that Jewish Israelis and Palestinians start equally powerful, with equal resources.
Besides saying that you are right, I wanted to give you some idea of what I have seen on the ground as an organiser and activist for Standing Together, and of the direction things are going. To understand where things are going let’s start with where things began. In the days and weeks and months after 7 October, public voices for a ceasefire were very rare, and when they were voices of Palestinians in Israel, they were silenced. Until Standing Together organised an event in December, collective voices calling for a ceasefire were non-existent. Police would not give permission for a march, or even a vigil in any public space so Standing Together held it in the grounds of the Haifa offices, on private property. This was the first time I saw people calling for a ceasefire. Even though it was a position I felt strongly about, holding a sign calling for ceasefire felt frightening. Letting someone take a photograph of me holding that sign and upload it to social media felt terrifying. The silencing of voices against the war, whether self-imposed or not, meant that going to that gathering and expressing those thoughts felt dangerous and transgressive.
That event, and a series of Standing Together protests in increasingly public and central locations gave people an opportunity to express their support for a ceasefire. It let us see that others shared our feelings. And it let the broader public who perhaps didn’t yet share our positions at least see that it was possible to oppose the war. During the course of these protests we could feel the conversation with the public shifting. People who in October fully supported the war, by November supported the hostage deal. At first the public seemed totally unconcerned with civilian casualties in Gaza, and although there is work to be done, people are starting to respond to the astronomical number of deaths.
Slowly it became acceptable for the general public to support a ceasefire, and to express a belief in the humanity of people in Gaza. Standing Together expressed these positions from the beginning. And Standing Together goes to share these messages to spaces full of people who don’t already agree, to people in different parts of the political spectrum. When people question us, it means we’re in the right place. When people hear from us something that challenges them, there is a chance they will shift their perspective.
I can tell you that this works. I saw that when the weekly anti-government protests, the Kaplan protests returned in 2024, most people there wrinkled their noses at Standing Together protesters holding signs calling for ceasefire, for peace. Now they line up to take our signs. They understand that the war is bad for Israelis as well as Palestinians, that the ceasefire deal we have been calling for the whole time is the only way to get back the hostages, and that a protest about the government must be a protest about the war which kills tens of thousands of people in Gaza without keeping people in Israel safe.
At the same time as it has been strengthening the call for a ceasefire, Standing Together has continued to build a movement of Palestinians and Jews. In the time of war this is not simple, is also seen as transgressive, and is totally necessary. Since that war people living in Israel have been afraid, and leaders acted to stir that fear with racism and hate. Those leaders talked about unity but what they meant was Jewish power, Jewish domination.
At a time when Palestinians and Jews felt nervous even asking each other “how are you?”, Standing Together organised a peace conference for Jews and Palestinians. 700 people from around the country came to Haifa just for the opportunity to sit in a room with Jews and Palestinians together. The second half of the conference was dedicated to discussion, and what I heard was that this is the first moment since 7 October that people felt hope. Jews and Palestinians sitting in a room together is not enough to create change, but change won’t happen if this doesn’t happen first.
Embarking on a joint struggle means taking action when Palestinian voices for peace are silenced. Palestinians including students, teachers, professors, and doctors have been silenced for expressing opposition to the war – have been kicked off campus, fired, and even arrested. Standing Together has supported these individuals, and Standing Together activists testified in Knesset against attempts to silence voices, often Palestinian voices, against the war on college campuses. The world in which Jews and Palestinians can live together in peace can only be brought about by a joint struggle of Jews and Palestinians, and in a world in which people don’t need to pick who they want to be a winner and who they want to be a loser.
Besides creating a demand for change and creating the space for a joint Jewish Palestinian struggle, in the Humanitarian Guard Standing Together activists put their bodies on the line to protect human life, to make sure that Jews and Palestinians can live and flourish, and that the extreme right does not limit our ability to express our views. In May the Humanitarian Guard was formed to protect trucks with food aid that extremist protesters had blocked for months from entering into Gaza – with no interference from the police.
By showing up we forced the police to show up too, and stop the settlers from destroying the food aid. The Humanitarian Guard ensured that day after day of shipments of tonnes and tonnes of food entered into Gaza – and after a week the extremist protesters announced in their own WhatsApp group that they were pausing their now unsuccessful efforts. The aid has entered into Gaza without problems since.
The Humanitarian Guard went back into action in June for the flag march, a day every year when extremist settlers rampage through Jerusalem and specifically through the Muslim quarter of the Old City, chanting for the death of Arabs, damaging property and attacking any Palestinians who do not hide away. This year the Humanitarian Guard stood in the Old City to prevent the violence and de-escalate confrontations, and when the police kicked us out of the Old City, we returned without our purple vests and removed racist graffiti and stickers.
So where does this bring us? Right now there is a possible deal on the table, Standing Together activists are putting all the pressure we can, mobilising all the people we can so it will pass. But what is next? A ceasefire implies something temporary. If this war shows us anything, it shows us that there is no such thing as a stable conflict. That we can go to war with Gaza, with anyone, over and over again and it does not make Israelis safer. For 30 years Israeli leaders have told their people that a peace deal is what losers sign when they can’t win a war. They have told us that war keeps us safe and peace is dangerous. And they have committed acts of violence against Palestinians in Gaza, in the West Bank and within Israel, destroyed homes and communities, silenced dissenters, with the excuse that we are at war, while also claiming that any change would be too dangerous and we should be satisfied with the status quo.
And the Israeli people have bought it, and no longer demand peace. Almost no political leaders seriously talk about peace. There are not discussions about how to achieve it and what it would look like. Now, when it is clear how terrible the alternative is, is the time to raise the demand for peace, to force public figures either to support peace or to explain why the alternative is better. There is a ceasefire on the table now, negotiators will return next week to continue their talks. There were thousands of people on the streets yesterday in Israel and around the world demanding a ceasefire now, a deal now, a deal that will save lives of Israelis and Palestinians. And now, now when we have seen the alternative, is the time to give all that we can for peace, a real peace.
Thank you for your support, thanks for fighting the fight, thanks for keeping up hope and giving us hope at home.