Ha'aretz December 12, 2025
[no paywall]
see wikipedia article Standing Together (movement) founded by Rula Daood and Alon-Lee Green
<big><big>With thousands of members, a quarter-million social media followers, and a spot on TIME's list of emerging leaders, 'Standing Together' co-founder Alon Lee-Green is charting a new course for Israel's fractured political opposition</big></big>
This May, during a protest on the Gaza border, Alon Lee-Green was arrested along with eight other activists from Standing Together, the large grassroots Jewish-Arab coexistence movement. Both his hands and feet cuffed, he was taken for questioning at the Ashkelon police station.
"This isn't the first time I've been arrested," he says. "Usually they release you after the interrogation. This time they transferred us to a detention center and then brought us before a judge. The judge was religious-nationalist; he said road blockages had to stop [though we] were arrested [where there is no road]. He ordered a week-long remand, and we realized something was [different this time] when they didn't take us back to the detention center but to Shikma Prison. Among us were two women who were placed in isolation ...under the harshest conditions. We, the men, were separated. [We] saw the differences [in] food received by the Israeli inmates and the Palestinian inmates held on the other side of the prison. They were West Bank residents, disheveled and in ragged clothing, arrested while trying to cross into Israel.
"The funny part was that they recognized … our purple Standing Together shirts and said hello. [I was put] in a cell with three members of a crime family."
How did they welcome you?
...they grabbed the court protocol from my hand, read it, and realized I'd been arrested at a demonstration. I told them it was a protest calling for a deal on Gaza, for stopping the war and for the release of the hostages. One of them said, 'Good for you,' and that we needed to stand with the hostages' families. Another insisted we were disrupting the work of 'Bibi the genius' and that the and that the protests only strengthened Hamas."...
This is a fascinating article, with powerful images and fascinating text, free to read at the link.
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Ha'aretz December 14, 2025 [no paywall]
'There Is No Alternative': German Antisemitism [opponent Dervis Hizarci] Is a Devout Muslim
Since October 7, Dervis Hizarci, longtime chairman of the Kreuzberg Initiative against Antisemitism, has been overcome with despair, watching many of the bridges he helped build over the years begin to crumble. Caught between Muslim and Jewish friends, he vows nonetheless not to give up...
...For a religious Muslim, Hizarci has found a unique calling in life. Over the past 10 years, he has served as chairman of the Kreuzberg Initiative against Antisemitism (KiGA), which focuses on combating Jew hate among German minorities, specifically the Muslim community. The appointment reflected the widespread recognition he had earned in Germany for his work in promoting inter-religious dialogue and combating prejudice…
...[But since October 2023] "it feels like I can't do right by anyone...”
In the interview, he wondered if he’d ever have started on this path had he imagined there could be October 7 and the ripples that followed.
...The child of Turkish migrants, he was born and raised in Berlin's Neukölln neighborhood, known for its large Muslim population. He does not hesitate to share that he grew up believing many classic antisemitic tropes.
After 9/11, all of us in my neighborhood somehow became Muslims – not Germans, not Turks, but Muslims," he says. "And everyone around suspected us. Are we extremists? Are we terrorists?…. When you're in a situation where you feel that the whole world is against you, antisemitic conspiracies theories [offer] answers … So, like many people around me, I, too, believed that there was a Jewish conspiracy running the world, and that the Jews had declared war on Islam and we Muslims were the victims..."
...Only when Hizarci enrolled at Berlin's Free University, where he received certification as a political science and history teacher, did he meet Jewish people for the first time and begin rethinking some of the outrageous ideas he was fed growing up...
Read the full article free at the link. It’s not very long, but it is moving and illuminating about his own journey, the challenges of his line of work, and about the country in which he pursues this calling, All of it may suddenly feel very familiar to many of us, because of his candor and insight.
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Ha'aretz Dec 16, 2025 [no paywall]
'Much More Is Needed' As Storms Flood Gaza's Tent Camps, Israeli NGOs Race to Raise Money and Aid
as conditions in Gaza worsen for those displaced by the war, two Israeli NGOs are stepping up their aid efforts. 'We need to help others for only one reason: because we can, and because they need help,' says a director of one organization
As heavy rains and dropping temperatures in the Gaza Strip wreak havoc in the tent camps that have become home for many displaced Palestinians, Israeli NGOs are mobilizing to aid them.
Among those groups are
IsraAID, a humanitarian group that focuses on disaster response, which announced a flash appeal on Friday in the hopes of raising an additional $2 million to bring winter items into the Strip, and NATAN, an organization with a focus on healthcare, that has recently sent reusable, much-needed period products to Gaza.
IsraAID cited the major risk of disease outbreaks and hypothermia, as Gaza's healthcare infrastructure is strained beyond its limits and displaced communities lack sanitation.
...This isn't the first winter in Gaza since the war started, but the problems have compounded since …
While IsraAid is handling fundraising and logistics, it is working closely with international aid organizations approved by the Israeli government to ensure that the supplies are distributed to civilians in need.
Before October 7, IsraAID only responded to disasters outside of Israel and the Palestinian territories. With the outbreak of the war, it mobilized to help displaced Israelis – and also began a quiet campaign to aid Gazans. It partnered with about a dozen aid agencies on the ground in Gaza helping to coordinate between them and Israel. In August, Polizer spoke publicly for the first time about IsraAID's Gaza operations, which by that time had already been active for over a year.
Polizer told Haaretz that the organization has raised about $10 million in total for Gaza aid projects – more than half of which has already been spent….
[more]
