The human rights community

I use the term human rights community here to refer to the Israeli non-governmental organizations (NGOs) who worked for the human rights of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, and for an end to the war. These organizations constitute a tiny subset of Israeli society. To give some perspective: there are some 20,000 non-governmental organizations active in Israel. About 5% of these, some 1,000 organizations, are advocacy groups, but the overwhelming majority do not address issues related to the Israel-Palestine conflict. The New Israel Fund, which serves as the financial conduit for almost all Israeli social change organizations, enables donor-advised grants to some 80 organizations within the fields of human rights, peace, and resistance to the occupation. However, most of these groups do not work on the Gaza Strip. This article summarizes the work of 15 different groups, who together conducted the bulk of the work to aid Gaza Palestinians during the war.

Some of these groups are classic human rights organizations, employing a framework based on international human rights law, and International Humanitarian Law (the laws of war). This includes the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Gisha, and HaMoked. Others, like Breaking the Silence and Combatants for Peace, also address human rights issues, but do so through a peace, non-violence, or anti-occupation framework.

Like the rest of Israeli society, the human rights community was shocked and horrified by Hamas’ mass attack on Oct 7. In fact, the human rights community was disproportionately affected, given the demographic make-up of the communities that were targeted (many secular kibbutzim, founded by leftwing Labor-Zionist movements). The Executive Directors of two human rights organizations are themselves survivors of the October 7 attack. Many organizations had board members, volunteers, and family and friends of staff who were killed or taken hostage on October 7.

And like all Israelis, the staff of the human rights organizations had to contend with rocket and missile fire directed at their towns: Hamas rockets from Gaza in the first months of the war; Hezbollah missiles from Lebanon and Houthi missiles from Yemen throughout the war; and ballistic missiles from Iran in the summer of 2025. Organizations also had to safeguard their Palestinian staff in Gaza, and staff in the West Bank at risk of violence from the Israeli military and extremist settlers.

The challenges of a hostile climate

The horror of the October 7 attack and the two-year hostage crisis constituted a national trauma with pervasive, long-lasting effects.

Even before October 7, broad segments of the Israeli Jewish public had negative views regarding Palestinians, and viewed the human rights community as unpatriotic and even as “aiding the enemy.”¹ Social psychologists explain these views as part of an “ethos of conflict” that societies in an intractable conflict inevitably develop. Two components of this ethos of conflict are particularly relevant to our discussion. The first is “opponent delegitimation,” i.e. denying the humanity and morality of the opposing side in the conflict (the Palestinians in our case), providing a kind of psychological permit to harm them. This dehumanization intensified following the October 7 attack. In a survey conducted in August 2025, 76% of Jewish Israelis completely (42%) or partially (34%) agreed that “there are no innocent people in Gaza.”²

The second component of the ethos of conflict relevant to this discussion is “the monopolization of patriotism” to demand unquestioning loyalty to Israeli society and to the aims of the conflict.³ This sentiment also increased during the war. Israelis who questioned military conduct in Gaza were seen as disloyal, resulting in tremendous hostility towards the human rights organizations that defended Palestinians.

The government and its allies fanned the flames of this hostility. Throughout the war, the government continued its efforts to legislate restrictions on the human rights community, proposing 15 different laws, including severe limitations on organizations’ funding, and criminal sanctions for working with the International Criminal Court. While these laws were not passed, they were a source of serious concern for the NGO community, and served to delegitimize and discredit the organizations. In speeches and media interviews, members of the government branded the human rights community as “subversive,” as “foreign agents,” and as “defenders of terrorists operating under the guise of human rights organizations.”

Perhaps the site where organizations encountered the most hostility was at the High Court of Justice. The Court itself had been under attack from the government throughout the previous year, with the proposed “judicial overhaul” (or “judicial coup” in the words of the opposition), a package of legislation designed to politicize and weaken the judiciary. Wide-scale public protest for the first ten months of 2023 succeeded in preventing much of this legislation from passing. However, the Court was weak and beleaguered as a result.

Prior to the war, ultranationalist groups would come to the Court to organize provocative and threatening activities against the human rights organizations. This continued and intensified during the war. Human rights lawyers required a security escort to leave the court after high profile hearings, with people spitting on them and wishing that they had been killed on October 7. During the war, ultranationalist groups also organized provocations and threats against the Court itself and the judges, disrupting hearings and holding threatening demonstrations outside the homes of the justices.

Ironically, the government and its ultranationalist allies attacked the Court as a leftist institution that sided with Palestinians against Israeli interests. This in spite of the very poor record of the Court when it comes to defending Palestinian rights.

Organizations conducted extensive risk analysis and developed safety protocols in response to this hostile public climate. They also engaged in selective visibility, reducing public engagement and refraining from publicizing certain aspects of their work out of fear of the backlash.

In addition to the immense challenges of advocating for Palestinians within Israeli society, the Israeli human rights community had to navigate global challenges as well. The international climate was highly polarized. At the extremes, support for Israel’s narrative included categorical and uncritical support for Israel’s mass killing, displacement and destruction in Gaza, while solidarity and support for the Palestinians included belittling, ignoring or even justifying Hamas crimes. The Israeli human rights community had to engage with both sides of this polarization.

The human rights toolbox

Amidst all these difficulties, the Israeli human rights community worked to alleviate suffering in the Gaza Strip, to halt war crimes and violations of human rights, and to hold perpetrators accountable. I have grouped our work into six modes of operation that constituted our “human rights toolbox.”

1. Framing
Human rights organizations not only provide information; they shape the way we think about that information. The labeling of an act as a violation of human rights is a framing process. Beyond the application of a legal definition, it is also a “management of meaning” in sociological terms.⁴

The Israeli community engaged in such framing activities immediately after October 7, with categorical condemnation of the Hamas massacres and hostage-taking as grave crimes. This was important given the efforts of some international actors to minimize or justify these crimes. In those first statements, the organizations also warned about the brutality of Israel’s expected response. Some organizations also engaged in additional framing activities, such as Breaking the Silence’s framing of the Hamas attack and Israel’s catastrophic security failure in the context of Israeli policy of “managing the conflict.”⁵

Throughout the war, organizations used their social media platforms and media interviews to create shared understandings and interpretations of events. “Naming and shaming” is a central component of human rights advocacy around the world. Organizations that had lawyers visiting Palestinian prisoners and detainees warned of systematic torture in the prisons. Organizations labeled components of Israeli conduct in Gaza as war crimes, including indiscriminate airstrikes on residential areas (B’Tselem); systematic targeting of Gaza’s healthcare system (PHR-I); mass evacuation orders from northern Gaza (5 organizations jointly); and starvation of the population and the weaponization of humanitarian access (Gisha). Two organizations – B’Tselem and PHR-I – issued reports concluding that Israel perpetrated genocide in the Gaza Strip.⁶

These framing activities were the starting point for the advocacy and public engagement.

2. Documentation
Israeli organizations had access to unique forms of information. Israeli attorneys were the only actors able to enter the prisons, taking affidavits from prisoners and detainees about the conditions and their treatment. Organizations collected information from official Israeli sources, such as responses to petitions submitted to the court, court judgements and Knesset hearings. Breaking the Silence took testimonies from soldiers; Physicians for Human Rights-Israel received information from medical personnel working in detention centers. These information sources supplemented traditional documentation methods, such as taking testimonies from Palestinian victims.

Organizations conducted documentation, research and analysis of various manifestations of the war:

• Israel’s restrictions on humanitarian aid to Gaza;
• The inhumane conditions and torture in the prisons, including exposing the harsh reality in the Sde Teiman military detention facility;
• The phenomena of enforced disappearances and using Palestinian civilians as human shields;
• Civilian deaths and mass destruction in the Gaza Strip

Some organizations issued comprehensive reports. Others provided their documentation directly to the media and to other target audiences.

3. Litigation
Israeli human rights organizations filed hundreds of principled and individual petitions throughout the war, both to Israel’s High Court of Justice (HCJ) and to lower courts. The bulk of this litigation addressed issues related to Palestinian prisoners and detainees held by Israeli forces, including enforced disappearances; detention without trial; lack of access to attorneys; torture and inhumane conditions; and denial of access to the International Committee of the Red Cross. Some petitions addressed government and military policy in Gaza. Perhaps the most important of these was a petition led by Gisha against the severe restrictions on humanitarian aid. Most of the principled petitions were filed jointly by multiple organizations.

The Justices were extremely hostile to petitions brought on behalf of Palestinians from Gaza. In the words of former Chief Justice Aharon Barak, “the judges do not sit in an ivory tower. They live amongst their people.” So we must assume that they too were affected by the societal trauma of October 7, and the resultant dehumanization of Palestinians. The climate of incitement against the Court, the accusations that they were too “leftwing,” likely compounded their unwillingness to accept the petitions of the human rights organizations and rule against the government and the military. Many petitions were summarily dismissed without even holding a hearing, a rare occurrence prior to the war.

The human rights organizations doggedly pursued litigation, in spite of the court’s hostility. When principled petitions were rejected, they filed individual petitions to lower courts. When the Court rejected a petition claiming the facts were no longer relevant, they revised and submitted a new petition. This strategy bore some success. Petitions succeeded in improving detention conditions, in establishing a mechanism for lawyers to visit Gaza detainees, and in assisting in individual cases.⁷ The broader picture, however, is of a court extremely reluctant to exercise judicial review in the context of the Gaza war.

4. International advocacy
The organizations conducted extensive international advocacy, briefing diplomatic missions in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Ramallah, and policymakers abroad in a “boomerang model” of human rights advocacy, where domestic human rights groups enlist transnational networks and foreign governments to apply pressure on their own government.

Thirteen Israeli human rights and anti-occupation organizations maintain a joint lobbyist in Brussels.⁸ Both individually and collectively, members of this Platform regularly briefed the European Union and its member-state representatives in Brussels. They also conducted advocacy trips to other European capitals and to Washington D.C. Organizations also engaged with international organizations, including UN agencies and the ICRC.

This advocacy informed and shaped international conversations. On the issue of humanitarian aid, for example, Gisha continuously briefed U.S. and European diplomats about developments in the Court case, and they in turn pressured Israeli authorities to change policies to allow additional aid to enter Gaza.

5. Public engagement and protest
Engagement with the Israeli public took place on several levels. Many organizations used their social media platforms to communicate their messages regarding the war to the Israeli public: framing, facts, and analysis. Some organizations conducted public events and webinars on the reality in the Gaza Strip.

Standing Together, a grassroots political movement, began organizing public demonstrations in late December 2023. In January 2024, they joined with Women Wage Peace and other groups to protest the war under the slogan: Only Peace Can Bring Security. In 2025, larger demonstrations took place under the slogan: Refuse War.

The fate of the hostages held by Hamas in Gaza was the central focus of public protest in Israeli society. The faces of the hostages were omnipresent on posters and billboards throughout Israeli cities: young women and men, children, elderly grandparents whose fate was unknown. The Hostage Families Forum organized weekly, and then daily protests, attended by tens of thousands of people, calling for a deal to return the hostages.

Yet in these largescale protests taking place across Israel, there was virtually no attention to the tremendous suffering of civilians in Gaza. This changed after the breakdown of the second ceasefire and the resumption of the war in March 2025. A few Israeli women began standing in Tel Aviv with small pictures of Palestinian children killed in Gaza.⁹ The initiative grew and expanded. Some organizations printed up bigger posters of the children to distribute at demonstrations. By summer 2025, a few thousand demonstrators held these posters in Saturday night hostage protests in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and other protest sites around the country. These posters with names and faces of babies, toddlers and elementary school children from the over 20,000 children killed in Gaza emerged as the defining expression of Israeli public protest against the Gaza war.

The details for the posters were taken from the “Involved Against Their Will” project of Adi Argov, one of the initiators of the Tel Aviv protest.¹⁰ The project memorializes children killed on and since October 7, 2023, both Palestinian and Israeli, and opens with a quote from James Baldwin: “The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe; and I am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this may be incapable of morality.”

6. Individual assistance
Human rights organizations provided paralegal and legal aid to individuals and families in Gaza. This work involved direct advocacy with military officials, government ministries, and prison service officials. Where direct advocacy failed, organizations turned to the courts.

The organizations were able to locate thousands of people in Israeli detention and inform their families. With the denial of information and access to the ICRC, and a ban on all family visits to Palestinians in the prisons, this was the only way families could learn the whereabouts of their loved ones. Lawyers visited hundreds of detainees and petitioned to improve their conditions. HaMoked and Gisha were also able to coordinate exit from Gaza for hundreds of people, primarily those with Israeli citizenship or residency; people requiring life-saving medical care; and students trying to reach studies abroad.

Discussion

Framing, documentation, litigation, advocacy, public engagement and individual assistance – these are the tools of human rights defenders around the world. However, the specific ways these tools were employed in the war were shaped by the constraints I have discussed above, and by the normative frameworks of the different organizations.

While the courts remained open to petitions on Palestinians’ rights, their extreme hostility affected which petitions were brought. The bulk of the litigation was devoted to the situation of Palestinian prisoners and detainees. These were very clear human rights violations (and violations of Israel’s own laws), which should have been easy for the court to address. The fact that even many of these petitions were rejected discouraged the organizations from filing more complicated petitions, such as challenges to the conduct of the hostilities in Gaza.

There was also relatively little documentation and research into the mass casualties in Gaza. With no field research staff on the ground, it was difficult to investigate these incidents.

As a result of these factors, the human rights organizations were not able to address some of the most widespread and horrific suffering in the war. The public protest focused on the killing of children filled this vacuum. These protests were driven by a normative framework that some activists called Political Motherhood, which differs from the human rights framework.¹¹ The tactic of public protest is also not subject to the limitations of litigation and research. However, this strategy also has its limitations; due to the extremely hostile public climate, it took 18 months before these protests emerged.

Conclusion

The October 7 attacks took place without warning, catching Israelis completely by surprise. Veteran activists understood that the scale and horror of October 7 would result in an extremely harsh Israeli response, but few imagined in October 2023 a war that would last for years (and is in fact still ongoing). So with no time to prepare for the massive escalation, organizations largely responded with the strategies that had proven effective in the reality before the war. This raises the question of whether there was there an alternative: was there a potentially more effective set of tactics than those employed by the human rights community during the war?

Had it been a matter of the erosion of one tool or another, organizations could have shifted their strategy – say building an Israeli constituency against the war rather than petitioning the court. However, in a reality where all the tools were less effective than they had been in the past, the organizations may have had no real alternative to continuing with their existing tactics.

The position of Israeli human rights defenders was further complicated by the immense polarization within the international community. In their efforts to mobilize foreign government officials and the global human rights community, Israeli human rights defenders had to navigate uncritical defense of Israeli crimes from certain audiences, and denial of Hamas crimes from others.

The Israeli reality during two years of war is not the usual situation to evaluate the work of a human rights community. People under rocket and missile fire, grieving and fearful for their own safety and that of their loved ones, Jews and Arabs, worked together to document atrocities taking place amidst an armed conflict, to aid victims from the other side of the conflict, and to try to stop or mitigate those atrocities. While we were powerless to halt mass killings and immense destruction, our efforts informed and shaped the international agenda, created a public record for future accountability efforts, and alleviated suffering for tens of thousands of people.

The war in Gaza continues, albeit in a different form. So too does the crucial work of the Israeli human rights community. All of the obstacles remain: the hostility of the public, the weakness and even cowardice of the courts, and the attacks by the government and its ultranationalist allies. For these reasons, the engagement of the international community is crucial: to protect civilians and to hold all actors accountable for crimes committed. The human rights community needs allies who share our commitment to universal human rights, in order to advance a future where Palestinians and Israelis alike can live in safety and dignity, with full respect for their rights.

^{1. Julia Chaitin et al., “Jewish-Israeli Attitudes toward HROs and Patriotism,” Ethnopolitics 20, no. 5 (2019): 501–22.↩}

^{2. aChord Center – Social psychology for social change, Positions of the Israeli public regarding the war in Gaza, Israel’s image abroad and the Haredi draft, August 2025.↩}

^{3. Daniel Bar-Tal, Intractable Conflicts: Socio-Psychological Foundations and Dynamics (Cambridge University Press, 2013).↩}

^{4. R. D. Benford and D. A. Snow, “Framing Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and Assessment,” Annual Review of Sociology 26, no. 1 (2000): 611–39.↩}

^{5. Breaking the Silence, Israel’s policy on Gaza and why it’s failing, October 8, 2023.↩}

^{6. B’Tselem, Our Genocide, July 2025. Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, Destruction of Conditions of Life: A health analysis of the Gaza genocide, July 2025. ↩}

^{7. HaMoked Annual Activity Report 2024, https://hamoked.org/files/2025/annual_report_2024_v1.pdf. ↩}

^{8. The Platform: Israeli NGOs for Human Rights, https://www.theplatformil.org/↩}

^{9. “Israel’s anti-war protests avoid Gaza. These women are changing that.” Washington Post, April 25, 2025
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/04/21/gaza-anti-war-protests-israeli-women/
↩}

^{10. https://www.thedailyfile.org/he/forcibly-involved ↩}

^{11. Ruddick, Maternal Thinking: Toward a Politics of Peace.↩}