'Very isolating': Israel's anti-war minority bucks national mood
The vast majority of Jewish Israelis support the ongoing campaign of strikes on Iran, according to national polls published since the joint US-Israel operation began on February 28.
A broad sweep of politicians from across the spectrum have also backed the military campaign, which has now expanded with Israeli forces fighting Hezbollah in Lebanon.
But over the weekend, a few dozen protesters holding placards reading "oppose the war" and "silence means consent" gathered in Tel Aviv -- the second such rally in a week.
"We are against this war because it's just another war in an endless amount of wars," said Iddo Elam, 19, an activist and conscientious objector to Israel's mandatory military service.
"Last June, in the last attack on Iran, we were also promised security and peace," said Elam, who served time in prison for refusing the conscription.
"It just goes to show that the reason to go to war is not our own wellbeing. It's not the wellbeing of the Iranian people. It's mostly the geopolitical reasons of Trump and Netanyahu," he added.
The group are generally left-wing activists who have objected to Israel's previous military campaigns and the occupation of the Palestinian territories.
Similar small-scale demonstrations were also held in Jerusalem and Haifa on Saturday.
A handful of right-wing activists staged a counter-protest at the Tel Aviv rally, which was swiftly dispersed by police.
"It's very isolating, very hard," Elam told AFP.
"A lot of people are sending us death threats, sending us wishing of ailment online because they do not agree with us," he said, adding that he had received abuse "a lot in the past week".
- 'No opposition' -
According to an opinion poll published Wednesday by the Israel Democracy Institute, 93 percent of Jewish Israelis back the strikes on Iran, with the survey finding a majority of support across the political spectrum.
"There's nobody in the Jewish political world in Israel, and very few people in the public too, who disagree that Iran is the biggest material security threat to the country," Dahlia Scheindlin, an Israeli pollster and political analyst, told AFP.
"Israelis are completely convinced of that," she added, explaining that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "has deeply undermined the entire idea of diplomacy with Iran, and in fact, for any conflict resolution".
Among Israel's Arab minority, however, support for the strikes stands at only 26 percent, according to the Israel Democracy Institute poll.
Scheindlin suggested this could be down to the Arab public viewing the renewed campaign as "another example of Israel dragging the country into war", which she said "never works out well for the Arab citizens".
Israeli politicians have overwhelmingly backed the campaign.
When Israel launched its attack, opposition leader Yair Lapid wrote on X that: "There is no coalition and no opposition, only one people and one IDF, with all of us behind them."
Similar statements were immediately made by most prominent politicians, ranging from right-wing former prime minister Naftali Bennett to Yair Golan, head of the left-wing Democrats party.
"Unfortunately the opposition in Israel is convinced that their role right now is not to ask any questions and to automatically support Netanyahu," Alon-Lee Green, the co-director of Israeli-Palestinian grassroots group Standing Together, told AFP.
His group is running an anti-war awareness campaign, including putting up posters in bomb shelters, holding conventions and organising webinars.
Green admitted that the anti-war movement was still a tiny minority in Israel, but was hopeful that soon more would join the cause.
"Our position is to stop this war and to not promise us more and more victories that are not achievable by bombs and guns and jets," he said.
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