The protests in Israel are not what they want you to think.

Israelis have always been politically engaged. Demonstrations are part of the country’s DNA. But one of Israel’s enduring truths is that the silent majority is often drowned out by the street.

An Israeli protestor’s shirt says in Hebrew, “Without democracy there is no academia.” But the governing coalition they’re protesting was elected democratically. (photo: Yoav Aziz/Unsplash)

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On Sunday, Israel saw what some are calling the largest protests since the war began nearly two years ago.

Estimates claim over one million Israelis took to the streets, with half a million in Tel Aviv alone. The demonstrations coincided with a nationwide strike supported by universities, local governments, businesses, and tech firms — though notably, Israel’s largest labor union, the Histadrut, refused to join.

These images are powerful, but they also distort reality. The protests are not what their organizers — or their international amplifiers — want you to think. And they were not spontaneous. They were timed to coincide with the government’s decision to conquer Gaza City, a turning point in the war. The protests weren’t just about anguish for the hostages; they were also designed to influence battlefield decisions.

That’s a dangerous precedent. War cannot be conducted by plebiscite. No state can run a war by holding a rally to decide geopolitical strategy. Yet that is the logical outcome if mass protests are allowed to substitute for sober strategy.

And even if we accept the most generous figure — one million protesters — that represents roughly 10 percent of Israel’s population. Which means 90 percent of Israelis did not protest. Ten percent is not “the people.” It is a boisterous minority.

Israelis have always been politically engaged. Demonstrations are part of the country’s DNA. But one of Israel’s enduring truths is that the silent majority is often drowned out by the street. That does not make the street more correct; it just makes it louder.

Here are five more things you need to know:

1) The hostages are a political tool.

The most painful aspect of this war is the hostages still in Hamas captivity. Every Israeli wants them home. But the Far-Left has hijacked the hostages’ plight and turned it into a political battering ram.

The rallies are framed as “for the hostages,” but the signs, chants, and speeches quickly pivot to a political agenda that most Israelis do not share: weakening the war effort, undermining the government, and reviving failed Oslo Accords-era fantasies about Palestinian intentions.

Those fantasies — the idea that the Palestinians were ready for statehood, that longtime Palestinian leader and mega-terrorist Yasser Arafat could suddenly transform into a peace partner, that giving up land would buy security — were tested in blood and failure. The Oslo Accords process led not to reconciliation, but to suicide bombings in the heart of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, the entrenchment of Hamas in Gaza, and the indoctrination of an entire generation of Palestinian youth to hate Jews.

The promise was “peace,” but the result was more terrorism, more funerals, and more evidence that compromise with jihadist movements does not yield coexistence, only escalation. And yes, the Palestinian movement is a jihadist movement. Arafat was a jihadist. His successor Mahmoud Abbas is a more polite one. And, of course, Hamas is one too. Nevermind Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the other main event in Gaza.

When protesters chant as if returning to Oslo’s illusions is the answer, they are not offering Israelis a future; they are trying to drag the nation back into the nightmare of the Second Intifada. To pretend otherwise is disingenuous.

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2) Every Israeli wants the hostages home.

There is no disagreement on the goal. The disagreement is over the means. Some believe that only military pressure will break Hamas. Others argue for a negotiated deal, even if it means freeing thousands of convicted terrorists and allowing Hamas to remain in power in Gaza.

History provides guidance. The release of over 1,000 terrorists in the 2011 Gilad Shalit deal emboldened Hamas and many of those released later returned to terrorism. Conversely, Hezbollah did not release Israeli captives until it was militarily cornered in Lebanon. In other words: Jihadist groups negotiate only when they are under unbearable military pressure. To ignore that lesson is to repeat deadly mistakes.

The Far-Left insists that Israel has a moral obligation to return every hostage, even if it means releasing thousands of terrorists who will inevitably kill again. But this is a trap Hamas designed deliberately: weaponize compassion, and force Israel into suicide by morality.

True morality isn’t one-dimensional; it must balance the duty to bring hostages home with the duty to protect millions of other Israelis from more massacres and kidnappings. Releasing hardened killers for temporary relief is not morality; it is short-termism that guarantees more death later.

And yet, the protesters act as if they have a monopoly on the desire for the hostages to return. They march as though only they care about the hostages, dismissing anyone who disagrees with their strategy as heartless or indifferent. This is false and deeply insulting. The truth is that every Israeli, across the political spectrum, is tormented by the hostages’ suffering and desperate for their return. The real divide is not over whether to bring them home, but how to do so without guaranteeing more kidnappings and more funerals in the future.

The Far-Left position here, like many of their other positions, lacks foresight and critical thinking. Their argument boils down to: “Return the hostages now, and then we’ll figure it out.” But what comes after? What prevents Hamas from regrouping and rearming and carrying out more kidnappings? What deters the next round of abductions if thousands of terrorists are released in exchange for today’s hostages? To pursue immediate relief without a plan for tomorrow is not compassion; it is negligence dressed up as morality. It trades short-term satisfaction for long-term disaster.

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3) Misconceptions — Then and Now

The Far-Left argues that October 7th was the government’s failure, rooted in a catastrophic misconception: that Hamas had been “contained” and did not want war. They are right; this was a devastatingly false assumption.

But here is the Far-Left’s blind spot: They are clinging to a new misconception just as dangerous as the old one. Even after the massacres of October 7th, the kidnappings, the tunnels under hospitals, and Hamas’ openly declared genocidal aims, they still believe that most of “the poor Palestinians” are “just like us” and “want to live in peace.”

This is wishful thinking at best, self-delusion at worst. The evidence since the 1930s — that’s nine decades for those counting — has been explicit: Israel’s very existence is unacceptable. Even the so-called “moderate” Palestinian Authority in the West Bank glorifies terrorists and raises children to hate Jews.

To hold the government accountable for its failed assumptions while clinging to failed assumptions of your own is not only hypocrisy; it is pure stupidity.

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4) The International Amplification Effect

Part of the reason these protests seem larger than life is because of how the foreign press frames them. Photos of crowded squares in Tel Aviv are presented as if the entire nation has turned against the war. In reality, polls consistently show that a majority of Israelis still support dismantling Hamas militarily and view a negotiated “peace process” as a trap.

The protests are thus magnified abroad far beyond their domestic weight. For anti-Israel governments, NGOs, and editorial boards, they become proof that Israel itself rejects the war. It is a distortion, but one that sticks in the global imagination. The minority is exported as the majority.

What’s more, Israel’s enemies thrive on division. Hamas and Tehran do not need to win militarily if they can watch Israel unravel politically. The protests hand them a propaganda victory: “See? Even Israelis reject the war effort.”

This narrative emboldens the enemy and weakens deterrence. At a time when Israel needs unity to project strength, internal division sends the opposite signal. The protesters may believe they are acting patriotically, but their actions play directly into Hamas’ psychological warfare.

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5) The Irony of the Israeli Left’s ‘Democracy’ Argument

Protesters constantly chant the word “democracy.” But Israel is already one of the most robust democracies on earth. The current Israeli government was elected democratically.

But here’s what democracy does not mean: “rule of the loudest demonstration.” It means elections, representation, accountability, and majority consent.

Ironically, by trying to use mass street pressure to override government policy during wartime, the protesters undermine the very democratic norms they claim to defend. If the public disagrees with the government, the ballot box — not the barricade — is the proper venue.

And maybe the Israeli Left would have a chance at winning a general election if it actually updated its stale, irrelevant beliefs. (The last time the Israeli Left won a general election was in 1999.)

For decades, it has clung to outdated slogans and illusions: belief in Palestinian moderation, in concessions that magically produce peace — long after reality proved otherwise. While the Left remains stuck in the politics of the 1990s, the rest of the country has been shaped by rockets, terror tunnels, suicide bombings, and now the atrocities of October 7th. Most Israelis do not live in theory; they live in reality.

What’s more, most Israelis are proud to be Jews and want to live in a Jewish state whose first duty is to protect Jews. That is not extremism; it is the most basic expectation of any nation: to safeguard its people. A Jewish state that cannot defend Jewish lives is meaningless. And yet the Far-Left continues to act as though Jewish self-defense is an obstacle to progress rather than the very foundation of Israel’s existence.

Until the Left recognizes that the Jewish state exists not as an abstract experiment in liberal ideals, but as the world’s only guarantee of Jewish survival, it will remain irrelevant at the ballot box and distrusted by the majority of Israelis who live with the consequences of its failed ideas.

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