Standing Together

We're on the line to Helly Mischael.

She is in the Standing Together organization, a member of the leadership of the organization.

Helly, if I've got my information correct, was it 430,000 registered voters in the Arab sector did not cast their ballot in the last Knesset election four years ago or so? And tell me, first of all, what Standing Together is doing about that.

Yeah, David, you're very right.

So more than 400,000 citizens that don't have to register, we don't have to register to vote in the elections in Israel, um, but they chose to stay home, uh, on the election day and not have a say on, uh, the state and the future, um, of this country.

Mm-hmm

... for tho- for those parties as well.

So let's move on now with what Standing Together is doing specifically, I guess, to try to convince all of these people who don't vote.

Because knowing how hard it is to address that collective pain in a way that brings people together, that doesn't open you up to animus and hate, I don't blame anyone for deciding it's better to just say nothing at all.

But then I remembered the words of my friend and a constant source of inspiration in these moments, Alonely Green, who's one of the co-founders of Standing Together, that the real fight is not between us and between us other people, but between all people and the forms of extremism that seek to strip away our humanity.

And I actually owe it to my colleague Rabbi Yehiel Puopko.

He works for the JUF.

someone who would a leader said that would unify us rather than you know i don't again i don't gain anything from shouting at uh they might gain from it you know we let the arabs come to the kinesis and shout at us

ah yes right controlled opposition but speaking of grassroots action and speaking of unity i i wanted to ask you about standing together And if you don't want to answer this question, you don't have to.

But There they are.

I mean, putting aside the fact that they're running an electrical electoral campaign now, like we don't need to talk about that because we've already talked about the electoral stuff, but in terms of the on the ground grassroots unifying action, I, there has been, you know, a fair amount.

They do put their bodies on the line and protect Palestinians from marauding Zionist pogromists on Jerusalem Day.

How do you assess the value of that in terms of trying to make Israeli society a more livable, humane place within its very narrow limits? Do you have a feeling about them or a take? Because they're very polarizing out here.

The first time I actually felt confident, and this is sad, to say the word Palestine in front of Israelis was within a standing together, uh, event.

I was a freshman.

His stance promoted-- prompted criticism from s-some Democratic candidates, including Avi Tabush, Gilad Kariv, and Sumaya Bashir.

Standing Together.

The binational, uh, Palestinian-Jewish left-wing social movement, Standing Together, wrote, quotes, "The double standard is clear.

Ben-Gvir, an extremist and violent settler who has multiple convictions of incitement, racism, and supporting a terrorist organization, is not only allowed, um, to run for the-- for office and hold enormous power, but also to lead the efforts to disqualify Palestinian candidates.

If the law was applied consistently, p-uh, politicians who promote racism and supremacy like Ben-Gvir and Smotrich would be disqualified.

Let's be clear about what this is, a sustained effort to push Palestinian citizens out of political life and silence those who challenge Jewish supremacy, occupation, and forever war.

As a sta-- as a movement of Jews and Palestinians on the ground, we know the answer to their attempt to block Palestinian citizens from going out to vote is to continue to organize together for a different function-- future of this land and to continue mobilizing every single per-per-person in our society to go to the polls on twenty-seventh of October, because when we act together, we can change this reality." End quotes.

Standing Together has been, um, conducting a get out the vote campaign in Palestinian communities, counter-countering right-wing attempts at voter suppression and encouraging Palestinian participation.

And I wanted to point out a way that people can, if they want to, totally legally donate to a get out the vote effort that's going on in, in Israel-Palestine.

Um, Standing Together is a, uh, nonprofit made up of, uh, Palestinians and Israeli Jews in, in equal measure, and they are, uh, doing a, a totally legal get out the vote effort to, uh, encourage Palestinians and other disaffected people to get out and vote on October 27th.

Now, they cannot advocate for a party or ca-

What is this organization again?

It's called Standing Together.

I think they're probably the most important peace organization in Israel.

What's their website? I just, I was just looking at the jstreet.org website because they're-

I think they can help.

We see action by our government as the agency of change.

workers sanctions looking to workers sanctions such as dockers refusing to load munitions bound for israel and other war-mongering states it is a better starting-point such actions will be most effective if they dovetail and coordinate with internal resistance, such as movements like Standing Together, which seek to mobilize Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel against occupation and war.

That in turn requires much of the left to break from the idea that there is no progressive potential for struggles within Israeli society.

Some have expressed concerns that increased economic pressure on Israel may be counterproductive and end up boosting the autarkic nationalist seed state narratives of Netanyahu's wing of the Israeli right.

Not only do such approaches carry a risk of antisemitism, they are highly unlikely to help the Palestinians.

International sanctions which target the structural machinery of militarism and occupation may have some effect.

External pressure may help movements like Standing Together build anti-occupation sentiments within Israel by highlighting the economic irrationality of occupation as well as its moral obscenity.

But as the extensive sanctions regimes apply to Putin's Russia's shows, even the very far-reaching generalised sanctions rarely succeed in restraining a highly ideologically driven regime.

Zach Polanski is, of course, of Jewish descent, as he keeps telling us, and he goes out of his way to make sure that that doesn't stop people from understanding how anti-Israel he is.

But a recent controversy around this party and their conference is with the organization standing together Now, I believe we've talked about standing together, or at least its leader, Alon Legrin, in the past on this show.

But what's interesting here is they wanted to have a booth at the conference, and they were not allowed to.

Why? Because of BDS.

Because of the people who demand that you boycott all Israelis.

And standing together is an anti-Israel organization made up of... palestinians and jews israeli jews uh it's uh as as uh some of the some of the people who object to it within the bds movement say it's a normal normalization organization it's an organization that talks about israel as a legitimate state uh and and you know supports a two-state solution and of course Most pro-Palestinians do not support a two-state solution.

They support a one-state solution and that one state replacing the currently existing Jewish state.

So this is an interesting thing that's happening.