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From our special correspondent in Israel – The Brothers and Sisters in Arms group was active in the street protests against Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu’s controversial justice reforms that rocked Israel for months on end earlier this year. But after the Hamas attacks of October 7, this group of former soldiers pivoted from protesting to evacuating kibbutzim, distributing food and saving animals.
At a kibbutz in southern Israel, not far from Gaza, what used to be a collective farm has been transformed into a crisis management centre.
Under a hot morning sun, dozens of volunteers are waiting. All are army veterans, and all are members of Brothers and Sisters in Arms (temporarily renamed Brothers and Sisters for Israel), which has become Israel’s largest aid organisation in the wake of the Hamas attacks in Israel on October 7.
The group originally formed in January 2023 to protest against controversial reforms to the national justice system proposed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government that would reduce the Supreme Court’s oversight of the government.
“At the beginning it was just a very few close friends,” says Eitan Herzel, the organisation’s co-founder and a former member of an elite commando unit in the Israeli army.
“We decided to do a three-day journey to the Supreme Court in Jerusalem,” he says. “We thought, after that, people will listen to us and everything will be stopped.” The group quickly gained momentum, and thousands joined them on the journey to protest.
“Unfortunately, we realised that it was not enough,” Herzel says.
Netanyahu’s most fervent supporters saw the group as traitors and even anarchists, but the former soldiers felt they were engaged in a fight to save “democracy in Israel”. Their mission quickly transformed when Hamas fighters carried out a deadly attack in Israel on October 7.
Watching the attack felt like “the sky was…
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Source : france24
