HAIFA, Israel - War is a human disaster. Not only due to the victims, but also because it brings in plain view many evil and ugly phenomena: violence, racism, nationalist zeal. The atmosphere here in Israel during the current war is one of bloodletting, that brings to mind prior periods of incitement that preceded the murders of peace activist Emil Grunzweig and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

On a recent Saturday evening, July 19, a joint Jewish-Arab antiwar demonstration took place in the northern city of Haifa. Amongst the demonstrators stood Yara, a young Arab woman from Kufr Yassif and a student at Haifa University. Yara stood with a sign that read "In Gaza and in S'derot, girls want to live." At some point a brick was thrown at her from the right-wing counter-protest. It hit her stomach. She was knocked to the ground. In a Facebook status she published after the demonstration, she emphasized that three young Jewish women whom she did not know came to her aid. Yara saw in this proof that even in difficult times, human decency transcends national boundaries.

The violence was not confined to the demonstration itself. In the nearby square outside the Haifa Arts Cinema, the deputy mayor Suheil Assad and his son were attacked by right-wing activists, because they spoke Arabic. A few hundred meters away, the Hussari brothers were attacked as they left their car. A group of people moved toward them, one shouting, "Are you Arabs?" The brothers did not answer, instead choosing to flee. Their assailants caught up to them, broke the nose of one brother, and the other's arm. When an ambulance arrived to evacuate them, it was surrounded by a furious mob, which proceeded to hit it, screaming "Death to Arabs." If not for the courage of the paramedic, who prevented the mob from taking their anger beyond mere injuries, there would have been people killed that night in Haifa.

It's easy to blame far-right militant Kahanists for the violence. Indeed, racist Kach and Lehava activists were amongst the leaders of the violence in the right-wing demonstration in Haifa. But they did not stand alone. With them stood many people wearing the shirts of Netanyahu's Likud and the Beitar Jerusalem soccer team. It was not merely the radical fringe, but also fans of the ruling party that stood there that night and shouted "Death to Arabs" and "Incineration for Leftists."

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