Israeli Peace Movement

Bruce writes

This morning I was watching NBC TV's Meet the Press Sunday Morning news show. Tim Russert had a live report from a correspondent in Israel. Russert asked the reporter if there was opposition to Israel's bombing of Lebanon and the reporter replied, "No, there is 100% support inside Israel for this military action."

This of course is an outright lie and the reporter knows it. Israel has a strong and long established peace movement. Within hours of the Israeli bombing of Lebanon protestors gathered outside of the Israeli "Defense" Ministry to protest the action. They are now planning a large national demonstration to protest the war. NBC knows all this.

And the rest is Gagnon-ish polemic.

But .. an Israeli peace movement? It sounds .. odd at first blush but a democratic country can support any number of foolish interesting notions.

Wikipedia cites two peace groups. Their politics are as convuluted and - to my American bias - as wacky as anything in that mad part of the world. Assuming that Bruce is talking about political movements but not organized parties we have

Peace Now

Peace Now is the largest extra-parliamentary movement in Israel, the country’s oldest peace movement and the only peace group to have a broad public base.

Sounds like the right kind of group to be holding a large demonstration. Nothing on their news page about it. Maybe their web guy was called up by the army.


Gush Shalom

Gush Shalom (Translated from Hebrew, the name means "The Peace Bloc")
is the hard core of the Israeli peace movement.

Often described as "resolute", "militant", "radical" or "consistent", it is known for its unwavering stand in times of crisis, such as the al-Aksa intifada.

For years now, Gush Shalom has played a leading role in determining the moral and political agenda of the peace forces in Israel, as well as in breaking the so-called "national consensus" based on misinformation.

Gush Shalom is an extra-parliamentary organization, independent of any party or other political grouping. Some of its activists do belong to political parties, but the Gush is not aligned to any particular party.

They even have the picture Bruce posted. They even have text that Bruce could have written

The reaction of passers-by was much less hostile then anticipated. Some drivers shouted curses at the activists, but quite a number honked in agreement. Most drivers seemed to be fatalistic.

How hard would it have been for Bruce to post a link to Gush Shalom?