We protested the war peacefully in Haifa. Police used violence – because we’re Palestinians

Anti-war protests in Haifa in 2024

Mohammed Abdel Qader writes in Haaretz on 15 April 2025:

A nonviolent demonstration against the genocide in the Gaza Strip was held on Thursday. The participants were a few dozen demonstrators from Palestinian organizations that operate inside Israel and are apprehensive about identifying themselves publicly for fear of persecution by the government.

The demonstration set out from Haifa, a city of refuge for Palestinian intellectuals and the Palestinian left. Haifa is known to allow more latitude for cooperative struggle than other Israeli cities. Yet even though this demonstration was nonviolent, it was violently dispersed within a few minutes and resulted in widespread arrests.

Such gatherings are not foreign to Haifa’s streets in general or to Prisoners’ Square in particular – or, to give the venue its ironic official name, Armenian Genocide Square. And this one could have ended as the organizers had planned, without any fuss. After all, everyone knows that a demonstration like this won’t lead to an immediate cease-fire in Gaza or a massive wave of soldiers refusing to serve in the war. Anyone who is still participating in this perpetual war after 18 months will continue to do so despite demonstrations like this one.

I can’t separate the great force used to suppress this demonstration from the organizers’ identity. Demonstrations organized by local groups aren’t unusual in Haifa. Beginning a few days after October 7, 2023, many demonstrations have been held there calling for an end to the genocide taking place in Gaza. The only substantive difference between this demonstration and previous ones was the identity of the organizers – Palestinians.

The organizers, who, as noted, belong to Palestinian organizations, had been “hibernating” for more than six months. This was their first demonstration since waking from their hibernation. In practice, all the demonstrations in Haifa over the past six months against the genocide in Gaza were organized primarily by Jewish activists.

The reality in which the legitimacy of a demonstration derives from the ethnic identity of its organizers is a consequence of the view that Arabs are worth less. It’s as if their rights and their insistence on advocating for the morality in which they believe cannot exist independently. Instead, Arabs must always have a Jew, generally a leftist, beside them to grant them legitimacy because Jews are always above them in the hierarchy.

A year and a half has passed since the war began. The police and other law enforcement agencies have seized on the “state of emergency” to gnaw away at fundamental rights whose existence was doubtful even before the war. This “state of emergency” crosses political lines. Even people who call for ending the war cannot deny that the country is in a state of emergency.

This was evident in the Supreme Court hearing on petitions challenging the dismissal of the head of the Shin Bet security service. The claim that a state of emergency existed was made by every lawyer and justice in the courtroom. But what state of emergency are they talking about? The war taking place in Gaza is currently a war in which only one side is fighting.

No demonstration, no matter how big, can end the Israeli assaults on Gaza, which the Israeli public has welcomed and even encouraged. The oppression that we, the Palestinians, have experienced since the massacre in southern Israel on October 7 and the war, which continues to this day, that erupted in its wake shows that the prevailing worldview opposes any identification with Palestinian nationalism.

Even though this demonstration was dispersed, other demonstrations will be held. And even if the identity of the demonstrators changes, the message will always remain the same: Stop the genocide in Gaza and stop this eternal war.

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