There is a poem by the great German poet Bertolt Brecht. It goes: General, your tank is a powerful vehicleIt smashes down forests and crushes a hundred men.But it has one defect:It needs a driver.General, your bomber is powerful.It flies faster than a storm and carries more than an elephant.But it has one defect:It needs a mechanic.General, human beings are very useful.They can fly and they can kill.But they have one defect:They can think.It is difficult to predict, in this day and age, how long this poem will remain relevant. But upon seeing, hearing and speaking with Aida Touma-Suleiman in Jerusalem, this poem came to mind vividly. Sixty-one-year-old Aida Touma-Suleiman is a member of Israel’s parliament, known as the Knesset. She is an Israeli citizen, of Arab-Christian origin, but she declares herself an atheist.She is a member of Israel’s Communist Party, and represents the coalition Hadash, a feminist, the editor of the party’s Arabic-language newspaper Al-Ittihad – the first and only female editor in Israel. She is also the first female member of the “high-level committee for Arab Citizens of Israel”. She fights for the rights of Israeli citizens, but also for that of the Palestinian people. Meeting her reminded me of all those activist comrades in my own country who, despite not being Muslim, Christian, Dalit, LGBTQ++ or Adivasi, fight for human justice and often face criticism within their own communities. She is also famous for having passed a law in the Knesset, raising the legal age of marriage for women in Israel from 17 to 18.The conversation I had with her was about Israel, but my own country, India, repeatedly came to my mind with various similar observations. Aida Touma-Suleiman with the author, Vineet Tiwari. Photo: Vineet TiwariOfficially, Israel is a democracy and so is India. But Hitler too rode the chariot of democracy to reach fascist dictatorship, and we see the same is happening in India and Israel today. The capitalist ruling class uses the guise of democracy to carry out anti-people work and secures legitimacy for those crimes in the name of democracy. Whereas, the Left wants to establish that very democracy in the true sense for the welfare and upliftment of the people.Aida says, “It is true that we have gained a few rights by virtue of being Israeli citizens. We are a group of Israeli Arab citizens, who are indigenous to this land, so we can form our own political party, raise our issues in politics, and contest elections. We also have some scope to raise our voice, however little, against any wrong step taken by the Israeli government. But this was true two years ago.”“Now, replace ‘is’ with ‘was’ in these statements – all these things have become matters of the past. It is true that whatever democracy existed in Israel, it was the only so-called democracy in the Middle-Eastern countries, and by that token, we had some rights, but in the last two years, these rights have been completely stripped away. In the last two years, an entirely new kind of situation has been created, and it is taking new shape every single day,” she adds.Aida did not condemn the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack in the Israeli Knesset and instead raised her voice against the atrocities by the Israeli army. In response, she was suspended from parliament for two months and penalised with a two-week salary cut. Aida also accused the Israeli army and rulers of bombing hospitals in Gaza, as a result of which only seven out of 48 surgeons survived. She condemned the Israeli army’s attack on displaced and unarmed people and refused to apologise or retract her statement. The Knesset’s Ethics Committee, recommending action against her, said that “not condemning the Hamas attack is a betrayal of those Israeli citizens whose tax money pays your salaries as representatives… Accusing your country’s army of atrocities against Palestinians aids Israel’s enemies.” Aida had also alleged that Israeli soldiers fired bullets at Gazans fleeing for their lives through the humanitarian corridor established for evacuating civilians from the war zone. “With what face do they call themselves the world’s most moral army and claim they do not attack the innocent and hospitals?” she had questioned.She says that many people also think that everything was fine until October 7 and that the deteriorating situation started only after the Hamas attack. Because of this, many people conclude that if Hamas had not done this, the Israeli government would not have been forced to take such harsh measures. Aida says, “Among those who think like this, there are many good people, who are politically literate and often supporters of Palestine as well. But I want to say that this perspective is flawed and incomplete, The history of Israel’s oppression of Palestine is older than October 7, 2023.”She says that people outside don’t know, or they forget, what was happening in Israel before October 7, 2023. They are not allowed to see behind that date. From January 2023, until the Hamas attack in October, there were large-scale protests in Israel against the Netanyahu government because the working-class people of Israel were unhappy with the new laws the government had proposed in the name of judicial reforms. Under the guise of these proposed reforms, the government wanted to massively increase its own powers, thus reducing the power of the judiciary. In fact, the government’s intention was to completely take over Israel’s Supreme Court, she claims, adding that the aim of these so-called reforms was that they would pass their unilateral laws and become unquestionable, and also gain legal sanction for it. Aida says that all opposition parties including hers, opposed these proposals, and the Israeli public too protested vehemently against the repressive, dictatorial, right-wing and fascist government. Opposition against NetanyahuIn 2021, Netanyahu’s party had lost and he had been ousted from the prime minister’s post. When he returned to power in November 2022, he tried to impose his dictatorship, which faced strong opposition in Israel. Under the cover of these legal reforms, he wanted to accelerate actions to seize Palestinian lands. Aida and her party were opposing the government’s move. The public wanted peace, and it seemed that his government would fall again.According to surveys in September 2023, his party’s members in the Knesset were going to decrease. Right at this time, the Hamas attack happened, and citing a state of war and emergency, all protests were stopped. Several opposition party members were placed under house arrest. Palestinians walk along a street lined with war-damaged buildings in the rain in Gaza City, Monday, December 15, 2025. Photo: AP/PTISince then, the Israeli government has presented the Palestinians as villains and corrupted the public’s minds with arrogance, portraying that “Jews as better and more powerful than Palestinians”. As a result, the Israeli government was able to carry out genocide in Gaza because they had instilled hatred, anger and fear towards Palestinians within the Israeli population. The Israeli government left no stone unturned in exploiting the October 7 incident as an opportunity.Aida was talking of Israel but hearing this, my memories took me to 2002 Godhra incident, just before which the then-BJP government in Gujarat had started becoming unpopular and had even faced defeat in the local body elections. The Godhra incident united most Hindu voters in the state against the “fear of Muslims”. I also remembered the Kargil War, just before which the NDA government fell due to Jayalalithaa’s party’s – the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam’s – withdrawal of support. The declaration of the Kargil War, however, united people against Pakistan and stabilised the central government. Then I remembered the Pulwama attack, which also made the political equations favourable for the party holding chair in New Delhi.The Israeli government had to do something to fix its declining popularity and diminishing international support. If it hadn’t done it on October 7, it would have done it on the 6th or the 8th, or the 20th or 25th. If not in October, then at some other time – on any of the 365 days of the calendar, but it would have done it for sure. This time, it just chose the pretext of the Hamas attack. Aida insists that most people in Israel did not become supporters of the Israeli government or anti-Palestinian or right-wing racist thinkers, but it is true that the rest are afraid to express their feelings because in the surge of this kind of nationalism, it becomes very easy for power to throttle dissenting voices – no matter how rational and sensible that voice may be.She says, “We are filled with the pain of oppression being inflicted on our own Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank, but apart from that, we Palestinian Israelis living inside Israel are facing different kinds of challenges.” Aida says that earlier, whenever the Israeli government took any repressive action in Gaza or in the West Bank, the Palestinians living in Israel would immediately go to the streets and register our protest against it. “Now, under the declared state of emergency, we cannot do that. We are immediately arrested. Now we cannot demonstrate anywhere,” she says.She also informs that when they tried to hold a meeting inside a hall, the owner of that hall received a message from the government that your hall will be shut down for six months, and what else would happen, was a separate matter. Another major challenge they face is that they are being turned into villains in their own cities and villages by state-sponsored propaganda against them. In his first address to the nation after October 7, Netanyahu told Israeli citizens that they have to fight a war on four fronts. One in Gaza, the second in the West Bank, the third in Lebanon, and the fourth front is against those who, living in Israel, oppose its voice and raise the voice of justice.According to Aida, Netanyahu was pointing a clear finger towards them. The Israeli government, she says, considers them its enemy and also presents them as traitors before the public so that the public stops paying attention to the voices they raise against their anti-people actions.Brecht’s poem’s lines were echoing in my memory again, “Human beings can think.” If they can think, then they can also change the circumstances.Vineet Tiwari is a writer and human rights activist associated with India-Palestine Solidarity Network. He visited the West Bank region of Palestine in November 2025.