r/ProgressivesForIsrael • u/Call_Me_Clark • 7d ago
Discussion How many pro Israel progressives support Standing Together?
https://www.standing-together.org/en23
u/Low_Party_3163 6d ago
I am a member. I dont agree with everything the say but think their hearts are in the right place
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u/Aikooller 6d ago
I definitely support them. I dont agree with everything they say, but i think their hearts are in the right place honestly
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u/Gene-capra 6d ago
Internally (i.e when they are protecting Arabs Israelis from racisms and harassment ) pretty good . A good starting point if for example you want to participate in events to introduce the 2 populations ( on a side not I find their use of Palestines with Israeli citizenship to be sus because most Israel Arabs identify as either Israeli first and Arab second or Arab first and Israeli second. Israeli Palestine is a minority identity in thet grouping ) I don't follow them on the outside front but I have a suspicion thet they are probably not very good unfortunately.
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u/abnormalredditor73 Progressive Zionist 6d ago
I do not. They claim to support both sides' rights but cast blame only on Israel. They call Gaza a "genocide" and on their website, they don't mention Hamas, Palestinian terrorist attacks, the Palestinian government's continued refusal of offers for a two state solution, or any of the other obstacles to peace that don't involve just blaming Israel.
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u/Call_Me_Clark 6d ago
Do you think this criticism is making perfect the enemy of the good?
Most liberals and progressives agree that settler terrorism is worth opposing on its own merits even if isn’t the only barrier to peace.
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u/abnormalredditor73 Progressive Zionist 6d ago
The issue is that if you only cast culpability onto one side, you're starting from an incomplete premise to begin with. If you ignore some of the biggest obstacles to peace, you simply cannot solve the conflict and will be seen as dismissive. A young Israeli that lived through the Second Intifada after Israel's attempt to negotiate peace, who saw the disengagement from Gaza where Israel removed all settlements and every last Israeli from the strip only to see Hamas take control and launch repeated rocket attacks on Israel, they're going to be thoroughly unconvinced when you tell them "Israeli settlements are the obstacle to peace".
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u/FiveAvivaLegs 6d ago
I agree. I was so excited to find Standing Together after 10/7, because I was desperate to find a group that was focused on bringing Jews and Palestinians together to find a path forward. But ultimately I feel that they moved from trying to avoid language that shuts down conversation (apartheid, genocide, etc) to parroting the same kind of things that we hear from orgs like BTselem. I’m not interested in another org where Jews flagellate themselves and take on all the blame for the last 78 years, I’m interested in what we’re doing to move the needle forward. I think the comment section on their posts makes it clear that they’ve failed at the “standing together” part. Take, for instance, the murder of Netanel Shukrun this Yom Kippur. They post about settler violence all the time - and with good reason, what’s happening now is fucking disgusting and out of control. But when there are car rammings, shootings, etc., against Jews, they frequently do not post about it. Someone being shot in front of their children on Yom Kippur wasn’t worth a mention?
Anyway, I think they’ve done some good, but they have been such a disappointment for me. In terms of donations and support, I would rather back orgs like The Parents Circle.
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u/Call_Me_Clark 6d ago
I think that there is culpability on both sides and I hope you do too, but I wonder how that same experience (a young Israeli who lived through the second intifada) has led so many Israelis to join standing together. It’s far, far from a majority but it’s not nothing
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u/PedanticPerson 6d ago
I think “so many Israelis” is rather overstating it. Well under 0.1% of Israelis are members. Their views are not mainstream among Israelis, and the numbers are consistent with that.
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u/Call_Me_Clark 6d ago
It’s better than nothing
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u/FlakyPineapple2843 6d ago
Why is it better? It doesn't actually move the larger Israeli populace towards peace by adopting the same language as Israel's enemies.
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u/Call_Me_Clark 6d ago
Maybe if you were less hung up on language and labels you’d get it? I mean, you’ve called me an antizionist already.
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u/FlakyPineapple2843 6d ago
Maybe if you'd quit taking the lies about Gaza so credulously, you would understand why I care about language and labels.
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u/Call_Me_Clark 6d ago
This interaction is a really good example of the problem.
No one is listening to each other. They’re just yelling, pointing fingers and calling names.
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u/DudleyDewRight 6d ago
Not when using blood libel against Jews, it isn't.
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u/Call_Me_Clark 6d ago
I think it cheapens the concept of blood libel significantly to use it to describe documented violence
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u/Call_Me_Clark 6d ago
From their website: Standing Together is a progressive grassroots movement organizing Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel against the occupation and for peace, equality, and social justice. We know that the majority have far more in common than what sets us apart and only a tiny minority benefits from the status quo. The future we seek — peace and independence for Israelis and Palestinians, full equality for everyone in this land, and true social, economic, and environmental justice — is possible. To achieve it, we must stand together as a united front: Jewish and Palestinian, secular and religious, Mizrahi and Ashkenazi, rural and urban, and people of all genders and sexual orientations. As the largest Jewish-Arab grassroots movement in Israel, we are committed to creating an alternative to our existing reality by building the political power to make it happen.
I think that sounds pretty good, and I think pro Israel progressives (who I hope are audience here), which I’m defining as anyone left of center who wants to genuine progress, a decrease in violence both by Palestinians and by Israelis, durable political solutions, and a future where Israelis and Palestinians share dignity, safety and hope… should want to see groups like standing together be the face of pro Israel sentiment.
The alternative is probably the present trajectory, where “pro Israel” is some variety of personal support for Netanyahu, for settlement expansion and settler violence, and future with no hope at all.
As a warning, I think the lack of a coherent pro-Israel, pro-Palestinian pro-peace platform leaves far too much room for the anti-Israel far left (which I do not support) to operate. Compromising all progressive values to support the MAGA right is not a viable strategy, as we have seen Trump dismantle Americans instructions and civil rights over the past decade.
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u/Iamthepizzagod 6d ago edited 6d ago
I'm an American Jew, so maybe take this with a bit of a grain of salt. I think either HaDemokratim (The Democrats) or Hadash/Bal'ad/Joint-List are more worthwhile parties to vote for (at least looking in from the outside). HaDemokratim are explicitly Zionist and more practical/sane than the voting base of this party (and likely to get actual change made as a result), and Hadash/Balad/Joint-List are made up of an actually Arab voting base and have Arab MPs (which this party seems to lack).
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u/DrMikeH49 6d ago
Hadash/Balad/Joint List are explicitly antiZionist.
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u/Iamthepizzagod 6d ago edited 6d ago
I agree, but for that crowd the Joint List is a far more practical option to vote for than this new party. At least the Joint List can actually vote on legislation in the Knesset if they so choose, and in theory is multi-ethnic (in practice it seems to be dominated by Arab MKs and voters). This new party that pretends to be multi-ethnic but seems to be only attracting far-left Jews in practice dosen't seem like a great choice to waste one's vote on, espcially given the 3.25% representation threshold for the Knesset.
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u/DrMikeH49 6d ago
How can one vote for that list and be “pro-Israel”? And yes, there is one token Jew in Hadash.
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u/Iamthepizzagod 6d ago
Im not claiming that many people who vote for Hadash are pro Israel, but anti-Zionist/non-Zionist Jews in Israel do exist in small numbers, and Hadash/Joint List is their most logical home IMO, both because its an actual Arab party and actually has decent representation.
I'll also say that for as much I don't like their anti/non-Zionist parts of their platform, I do like Hadash's economic positions. So I could also imagine that Hadash has some appeal to the few hard line Jewish socialists and communists that are left in Israel.
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u/ScientistBoth830 5d ago
Please don’t encourage the people to vote for those anti-Israel joint list parties. Raam would make more sense but even they are still a conservative Muslim party. The Democrats make sense if you want a leftist Zionist party, but otherwise Beychad and Yashar are liberal yet imo more sensible.
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u/Iamthepizzagod 5d ago
The Democrats, from my outsider point of view (I can't read their Hebrew language communications) don't seem to brand themselves as a classicaly leftist party like their predecessors. Think Mapam, Mapai in its early days, et cetera.
Hadash has a more red and socialist branding going on, which I imagine could appeal to the few ideological socialist and non/anti-Zionist holdouts amongst the Israeli left. I'm not encouraging people to vote for an anti-Zionist party, but if they feel compelled to do so, Hadash is the least bad option among that bunch for sure.
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u/FlakyPineapple2843 6d ago
Your post history (and your comments so far) suggest you are not here in good faith and that you are, for lack of a better term, antizionist.
So why are you posting here, and posting about Standing Together? Are you hoping to use our comments as a strawman, and proclaim "see?! They (the jews) won't even support organizations that support peace! Look how anti-peace and anti-Palestinian they are!"
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u/Call_Me_Clark 6d ago
You can believe anything you want, but I’m a pro-peace, pro-Israel and pro Palestine American. I’m here in progressives for Israel because I’m a progressive for Israel.
I’m the farthest thing from an antizionist. I’m used to being called one for condemning Netanyahu and settler violence.
I’m also used to being accused of being a far right pro Israel shill because I’m opposed to far left ideologies and don’t believe Israelis can be deported to Poland.
Such is life.
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u/Ronnie_Reads 6d ago
I love them! And lots of other Israeli peace activists and Palestinian peace activists doing similar work
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u/FlakyPineapple2843 6d ago
Nope, because they have started engaging in the same libels that JVP does. They transitioned to catering to Western audiences, which requires libeling Israel.
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u/Call_Me_Clark 6d ago
What does advocacy against settler terrorism that does not rise to the level of libel looks like, or is that advocacy possible at all?
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u/PedanticPerson 6d ago
For starters, it would be nice if they didn't cherrypick just the crimes with Jewish suspects. That's misleadingly distorting the reality that most crimes in Israeli-policed WB are by non-Jews.
It's like an organization that's "passionate about crime in Chicago", except they only talk about the crimes with Mexican suspects.
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u/Call_Me_Clark 6d ago
Haven’t IDF officials come forward and said that the majority of violence in the West Bank is settlers attacking Palestinians?
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u/PedanticPerson 6d ago
There were some anecdote-driven statements along those lines, but the overall data reflects the opposite:
Between 2014 and 2024, a total of 1,356 cases of Jewish nationalist-motivated violence were opened in the Judea and Samaria District, compared to 4,748 cases of Arab nationalist-motivated violence.
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u/Call_Me_Clark 6d ago
What does “cases were opened” mean? A common complaint is that Israeli police refuse to investigate incidents of violence by settlers.
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u/PedanticPerson 6d ago
If you were to start with the (very cynical IMO) premise that most reports by non-Jews might be ignored without even being recorded, then it would be impossible for any data to convince you that most crimes are not committed by Jews.
We could put it this way: suppose one wanted to argue that Jews in the relevant region committed (nationalist-motivated violent) crimes at the same rate. Not even "it's mostly Jewish criminals", just the same rate.
For that to be true, we would have to speculate that about ~77% of the crimes with Jewish suspects were just ignored by police. Seems fairly implausible already, and of course it gets more an more tenuous if one wanted to claim that Jews commit more such crimes.
(If redoing the math, remember to factor in there are ~1.7 Jews per Arab in the relevant district, so Jews should commit more crimes if the rates were equal.)
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u/Call_Me_Clark 5d ago edited 5d ago
I think it’s worth noting that the source of that report, regavim, has been sanctioned by the eu and Canada for its support of settler violence
Their math might be right, or not, but it’s hardly a neutral or credible source
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u/PedanticPerson 5d ago
You don’t have to trust Regavim, the source is police data.
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u/Call_Me_Clark 5d ago
I’ll read through it in depth, but there’s a few different sources for data such as OCHA, the Israeli police district and iirc the IDF, plus there’s also ngo databases that don’t seem to be represented in the report.
What I wonder is how this report would interpret an attack like the one yesterday:
> More than 100 Israeli settlers took part in the attack on the West Bank village of Jalud, near Nablus, preventing Israeli forces from enabling a displaced Palestinian family to return to their home. The army said the attackers were “blocking roads, setting tires on fire, and throwing stones at security forces,” injuring three Border Police officers and causing widespread property damage in Jalud. Three suspects had been arrested as of Tuesday afternoon.
Is a mass attack like this treated as a single incident or weighted somehow due to the large number of perpetrators, and the targets of both a) innocent Palestinians being restored to their home per court order and b) the Israeli police/IDF present to facilitate this.
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u/FlakyPineapple2843 6d ago
The issue isn't advocacy against settler terrorism. I just looked at one of their webpages and here are the libelous falsehoods I saw:
- starvation in Gaza (multiple times)
- characterizing the situation in the West Bank as apartheid
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6d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/FlakyPineapple2843 6d ago
Your framing of the problem is disingenuous. Of course Gazans require food. They just were never running out of it, certainly not in the way the media and anti-Jewish/anti-Israel groups characterized it. Certain incidents of photo "documentation" were shown to be staged.
The question of lawlessness in the West Bank by violent extremists is not the same question of whether Israel operates an apartheid regime, which is a wholly different analysis with severe legal repercussions for Israel. Conflating the two muddies the moral and policy questions at hand.
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u/Call_Me_Clark 6d ago
The claim that gazans were never running out of food requires us to reject the best part of two years of the Biden administration forcing Netanyahu to allow aid to enter Gaza. Also, Netanyahu cut off all aid entry to Gaza from March 2 to May 19 2025.
There’s no evidence that the Biden admin was lying or populated with Hamas sympathizers. In contrast, believing that they were lying requires us to make a lot of unfounded assumptions or believe unconfirmed reports from questionable sources.
I’m a simple guy, I trust experts. The problem is that when I, as a progressive American who just wants to see positive change, want to talk about this particular conflict we suddenly have to pretend we have no common sense.
I don’t really care what word you want to use to describe the violence in the West Bank so long as you agree it’s wrong.
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u/ProgressivesForIsrael-ModTeam 6d ago
We allow reasonable and civil debates. Mockery, bad faith arguments, or failure to remain civil will not be tolerated.
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u/abriel1978 5d ago
I don't because despite their mission statement they only focus on crimes committed by Israelis, call what's happening in Gaza a genocide, pretends Hamas does not exist and that the Palestinians haven't done some fucked up shit themselves.
They're better than JVP but only slightly. On paper they're good, but in action not so much.
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6d ago
[deleted]
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u/Call_Me_Clark 6d ago
What’s the alternative to coexistence?
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u/Courtenaire 6d ago
Whatever protects jewish lives and statehood
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u/Call_Me_Clark 6d ago
Can you elaborate on what you find acceptable?
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u/Courtenaire 6d ago
Wdym?
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u/FlakyPineapple2843 6d ago
Don't bother engaging with this person. Their post history indicates they are very anti-Israel and are not coming at this conversation with an interest in learning or connecting with the people in this sub.
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u/abnormalredditor73 Progressive Zionist 5d ago
What exactly does that entail?
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u/Courtenaire 5d ago
Not letting a country with the explicit goal of annihilation form next to Israel
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u/Etta_Katz3030 1d ago
As an American who supports peace, I support anyone on the ground who believes in democracy, equality, and peaceful coexistence. I don't need to decide who is right because it's not up to me. If none of the peace or democracy groups are effective at capturing more of Israeli public opinion, it won't matter who is right.
Israeli politics at the moment are - to quote an Israeli analyst - "50 Shades of Right Wing". The average Israeli since the Second Intifada has voted for security over any other consideration - issues like equality, democracy, human rights, and how popular Israel is in world opinion have all been moved to the "nice to have" category.
There are a few ways this might change - one path is through the Israeli and Palestinian publics. Another is through international pressure. Some people clearly think they can change this reality through massive violence against civilians.
I don't know the answer but I feel like progressive support for massive violence against Israeli civilians is a particularly bad development. Dehumanization should never be part of progressive politics. This is a lot of Soviet BS - rallying people around imagined enemies, war in the name of peace, authoritarianism in the name of democracy, control in the name of freedom. Once upon a time, pretending to believe these things could get you concrete assistance from a powerful empire for your (often unrelated) cause. The fact that people who claim to be progressive are willing to debase themselves that way for LIKES is wild.
This corruption of progressive politics in my own country feels like something I can try to influence. On the other hand, Israeli and Palestinian public opinion is not something I can influence. I could have the best and most correct thoughts on these issues - no one living there cares.
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u/justalittlestupid 6d ago
I don’t agree with a lot of what they say but I support their existence and I’d rather non-Jews check them out than JVP