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Zulat President Zehava Galon: “End the War, Withdraw from Gaza, and Release all the Hostages all at once”

Following are the full remarks of Zulat President Zehava Galon, delivered at the Standing Together protest on April 24, 2025, at Habima Square:

“Good evening everyone,

I call from this stage to end the war, withdraw from Gaza, and release all the hostages, all of them, in one stroke.

Yesterday at the Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony, Prime Minister Netanyahu said that “military pressure on Hamas will continue. We will return all hostages and defeat Hamas.” Remember that in February 2024, he promised that “the absolute victory is a stone throw away”? It’s safe to say we haven’t reached it.

Remember that they promised, or rather threatened, that horrific plans of starvation and thirst would cause Hamas to release hostages? But they only caused Hamas to starve them.

Remember that they promised us “we don’t bomb where the hostages are”? And it turned out they do bomb. If there are hostages, if there aren’t hostages, if there are children, if there aren’t children. They bombed.

There is one and only one reason for fighting in Gaza: Netanyahu’s coalition. He is determined to hold onto his seat at any cost, even if the cost is killing hostages, killing innocent Palestinians, and our dead soldiers. For Netanyahu, his political survival is more important than human lives. We know that Israeli politics drives what happens in Gaza under the sanitized name “security.” Similarly, Israeli politics is the driving force behind what’s happening in the West Bank, when soldiers are sent on special operations in Jenin and Tulkarm, as a coalition favor to Smotrich.

We need to ask not only “what is the goal of fighting in Gaza” but also what is the goal of the endless occupation of the West Bank. We need to ask not only why tens of thousands of people were killed in Gaza, including 18,000 children, and why soldiers were sent to flatten Rafah, but also why soldiers are sent on prayer tours for settlers in the middle of Kfar Hares, or to serve as security for settler pogroms in Susya. At their core, these are the same questions.

And we also need to demand answers:

Who incited to murder, mass killing, and destruction of Gaza residents? Who enabled, and who carried out horrific acts, shocking actions, actions met with indifference from the Israeli public and staining us with disgrace and shame. For all these, Netanyahu and his ministers must be held accountable and stand trial.

And there is hope and an optimistic moment: what began with the pilots’ letter has expanded to 140,000 signatures on letters; pilots, officers and soldiers, parents, artists, doctors, students, and more. They present a new model of civil resistance. Israelis who refuse war, who refuse to accept lies as truth, because what’s happening in Gaza is not “fighting.” What’s happening is a failed attempt to save the coalition with Smotrich who, for Gaza real estate, explains to us that maybe “there will be no choice but to occupy Gaza” and that the hostages are not “the most important objective.”

Yet we must ask, how much longer will this take? How many Israelis and Palestinians will have to pay with blood because of the man whose strategy over the past decade has collapsed into well-arranged rows of corpses? How long until everyone understands that continuing the war serves only his continued rule?

The Kahanist right has a clear plan for the day after: it wants to destroy and occupy, expel and kill everyone in the Gaza Strip. Just as the right thinks Hamas is an asset, Hamas understands that the Israeli right is an asset for it. Neither can exist without conflict.

We will have no security as long as the death-eating coalition is in power. We must stop political fighting, fighting that serves people for whom conflict is their political fuel, not us, and not our security. Israel already ruled Gaza — there was no security. Not for Israelis and not for Palestinians. To exit this crisis, we need to present a different vision. Not of bombs on residential buildings, hospitals, and schools, not of shooting children, not of preventing food and humanitarian aid. Not getting normalizing statements that “there are no innocents in Gaza.” Victory and security will come only if we preserve our humanity, be human beings, and understand that humans also live in Gaza.

Only an alternative vision for our relations with the Palestinians, a vision where we are not fighting each other, and dying side by side. We live, rehabilitate, build, heal and strive for freedom and peace, for a two-state arrangement within the framework of a regional agreement. Only such a vision can extract us from the gates of hell that this government has opened upon us all.

Friends and colleagues,

I call from here to end the war, withdraw from Gaza, and release the hostages, all of them, in one stroke.”

Watch (Hebrew, no subtitles):

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Dr. Maha Sabbah Karkabi

 

Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. She holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from Tel Aviv University (2015), a postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for Gender Studies, SOAS, University of London (2015-2016), a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Sociology at Tel Aviv University (2016-2017), and a postdoctoral fellowship Ph.D. at the Humphrey Institute for Social Research, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (2018-2020).
Dr. Maha Karbahi’s areas of interest focus on the connection between social change, family behavior, and gender inequality in societies in the process of change and specifically in Palestinian Arab society in Israel. Her research draws attention to the study of family life and employment, using a combined “ethnic lens” and “gender lens” and paying attention to the perspective of Palestinian Arab women, a group characterized by intersections between multiple marginal locations, which over the years has remained hidden from the research eye. Dr. Karkabi-Sabah’s research is published in professional journals and chapters in scientific books that are considered pioneers in family research, work, and gender equality.

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Prof. Frances Raday

Professor Emeritus in the Lieberman Chair in Labor Law, in the Faculty of Law at the Hebrew University and serves as a full professor in the College of Management’s academic track, where she also serves as chair of the graduate program and as honorary president of the Concord Center for International Law Absorption. Radai was a member of a working group of the UN Human Rights Council on discrimination against women. In addition, she is a prominent and feminist human rights activist.

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Dr. Rawia Aburabia 

Faculty member of Sapir Academic College’s School of Law, received her PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her research deals with the interface between law, gender, minorities, and human rights. Has published in leading journals on the subject of the matrimonial laws pertaining to Muslim women in Israel. Her book Under the Law, Outside Justice: Polygamy, Gendered Citizenship, and Colonialism in Israeli Law is expected to be published as part of the Gender Series of Kibbutz Meuhad Publishing House.

Dr. Aburabia has extensive experience in international human rights and public law. She has worked as a jurist for the Association for Civil Right and has been invited as a specialist to address such international forums as the United Nations and the European Parliament on the subject of indigenous communities and minority rights. She has interned with Human Rights Watch in Washington DC, and has been a member of the executive board of Amnesty International. In 2018, she was selected by the magazine Globes as one of the 40 most promising young persons in Israel under the age of 40.

 

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Ron Kessler

With over two decades of experience in the field of digital content, Ron has participated in numerous political and social campaigns. He helped run the digital activity of senior public officials, and worked in various NGOs. Ron is a fundamentally optimistic man, who believes that Israel can be changed and so can people. Lives in Tel Aviv.