‘We’ve Killed So Many Children – It’s Hard to Argue with That’: Tel Aviv Protesters in Silent Vigil

On Saturday, April 26, hundreds of demonstrators in downtown Tel Aviv stood together in complete silence, holding portraits of Gazan children who have been killed since Israel shattered the ceasefire on March 18. The vigil coincided with the weekly anti-government protests, and as thousands made their way to the scheduled rallies at Hostages Square and Begin Bridge, they passed by the quiet display.

Some people stopped and got closer – only then realising that the images were of Palestinian children. Others already recognised the display from previous weeks. A few protesters set aside their Israeli flags and joined the vigil, which did not include slogans or signs. Two women stopped in front of the demonstrators, teared up and embraced.

At first glance, the silent display of photos – a simple act to make space to mourn Gazan children – would seem unremarkable. But in light of the Israeli public’s general indifference to the destruction of Gaza, these vigils, which have been held since March 22, have managed to begin to crack the wall of apathy.

They also stand out against the backdrop of a near total absence of images from Gaza in Israeli media and the public space over the past year and a half. Last year, activists occasionally posted flyers of slain Gazans around Tel Aviv under the slogan “We must resist the genocide in Gaza.” But such posters were quickly torn down.

The idea for these silent protests took shape among several activists in Tel Aviv who were horrified by the scale of death and destruction after Israel renewed its assault on Gaza in March: in the first ten days alone, at least 322 children were killed.

“It started spontaneously,” said Amit Shilo, one of the organisers of the vigil. “It was a horrifying and heartbreaking week when Israel broke the ceasefire. My friend Alma Beck posted a story with one of the [hundreds of deceased Gazan] children, and I wrote to her, ‘Let’s take their pictures to the Saturday night protest.’”

The two of them printed 40 black-and-white photos at home from the Daily File, an independent initiative run by Israeli volunteers to compile data and documentary evidence of Israel’s war on Gaza and occupation of the West Bank. “We thought it would just be five of us standing for ten minutes until someone attacked us and we went home — but dozens showed up,” Shilo told 972.

Since that first vigil, they have held four more at Saturday night protests in downtown Tel Aviv. The display inspired similar actions in Kafr Qasim, Jaffa, Haifa, Karkur, and Tel Aviv University, as well as at Yad Vashem on Holocaust Remembrance Day. At an anti-war protest in Tel Aviv organized by the Jewish-Arab movement Standing Together, police initially banned the display but later backed down; in the end, thousands held up images of Gazan children.

The recent proliferation of such actions does not occur in a political vacuum. From the government’s decision to break the ceasefire and torpedo a hostage deal, to thousands of soldiers protesting army policy or refusing to show up for reserve duty, the war is losing its legitimacy in Israel – finally forcing more Israelis to acknowledge the atrocities being carried out in Gaza.

‘A simple truth that speaks for itself’

Since the beginning of the war, there has been a minority of Israeli Jewish activists who have protested against it. For their public opposition to the killing, destruction, and starvation of Gaza, many have been attacked or arrested. Even now, in Jerusalem and Haifa, police often disperse protests, detain demonstrators, and confiscate signs. Recently, the University of Haifa sanctioned the student chapter of Standing Together for holding a photo display, and in Be’er Sheva, right-wing activists snatched and tore up photos of Gazan children.

Still, these silent displays of mourning seem to generally provoke a different reaction from the Israeli public than typical left-wing demonstrations. “I think somehow we broke out of the mold,” Shilo explained. “There’s a simple truth here that speaks for itself. We’ve killed so many children – it’s hard to argue with that.” People often arrive at the action angry, but then they stop, stand still, and go quiet. “Silence is power. And the fact that it’s not [organized by] any specific organisation – people are really moved by that.” Apart from one incident about two weeks ago, when some participants in the photo display were attacked at the end of a protest on Begin Street, no violent reactions have been recorded.

In Jaffa, where there is a large Palestinian community, the vigil often takes on a much more personal significance. “I saw the first action in Tel Aviv and felt it would suit Jaffa too. It was the only action that would give legitimacy to the pain we are experiencing: to cry, to be sad,” Inas Osrouf Abu-Saif told 972. For two weeks, she organised a daily vigil on one of Jaffa’s main streets; now they have scaled back to once a week.

Many of Jaffa’s Palestinian residents, including Abu-Saif, have relatives in Gaza. “My family, on both sides, was bombed – we lost contact with them,” she said. “One woman received news that her family was under attack as we were standing together holding the photos.”

The response in Jaffa is largely supportive. “Cars passing by kept circling back to show they were part of [the demonstration]. We received many looks saying ‘We’re with you,’ but people were afraid to get out. The normally busy space became quiet and calm,” Abu-Saif said. She also emphasised that the action resonated with Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. “We received messages asking us to continue raising our voice.”

Some Palestinians who want to participate in the vigils have refrained from doing so out of fear that they will be photographed by undercover police or reported to their employers. “Mothers told me they received emails from their workplaces warning that if they take part in any kind of statement, they’ll be fired,” said Abu-Saif. “But we keep going – those who can’t stand with us send messages or stand nearby.”

Forcing the issue

Although it’s likely that many of the anti-government protestors were already aware of the massacres in Gaza, it was evident at Saturday’s action in Tel Aviv that this was the first time they were truly looking at the victims – and perhaps beginning to grasp the scale of the horror.

One man, who identified himself as a reservist soldier, said he was scheduled to report for duty the next day but had decided to refuse after seeing the display. From time to time, passersby asked for photos and joined the display. “In the first action, I really saw conversations happening. People were quite surprised, or their justification [for the war] just fell apart,” said Shilo.

Some of the more vocal hostage families have made their disapproval of the vigils explicit. Yehuda Cohen, the father of the kidnapped soldier Nimrod and a leading figure in the anti-war protests in Tel Aviv, addressed the photo display in his Saturday speech: “This is a protest for the release of the hostages. Anyone who wants to help is welcome, but for the hostages. This protest is not to  ‘end the occupation’ or for Palestinian children, only for the hostages sitting in the tunnels of Gaza.”

For the organisers, the photo displays have triggered a painful realisation that the Israeli public will not recognise the immorality of killing over 15,000 children on their own – they must take to the streets and remind them. “We all live our lives; I sit at the beach before the protest,” Shilo said. “It’s not that it depresses me that I have to remind people. What would break me is if I had to argue that there is simply no justification for killing children. It’s a kind of relief that we can talk about it, but also sad that I was ready to get beaten up for it.”

Conspicuously absent from the photos held at these vigils are the Palestinian fathers, mothers, and other adult relatives who were also killed in Israeli attacks – sometimes entire families wiped out in a single strike.

In a recent investigation  by NPR, journalists documented 132 members of the Abu Naser family who were killed in October 2024 when Israel launched a strike on a residential building in Beit Lahia, one of the most lethal in the course of the war. More than 40 percent of the dead were children, with the youngest victim a six-month-old baby named Sham, and ten nuclear families were erased from the civil registry.

NPR took the unprecedented step of publishing the project with a Hebrew translation, seemingly with the hope that this important documentation would also reach the Israeli public. Like those holding the photos, they too hope to challenge the Israeli government and media’s silencing, self-censorship, and denial. But as long as the war continues, their work will remain incomplete.

This article has been republished with permission from 972 Magazine. A version of this was first published in Hebrew on Local Call.