Rula Daood

Rula Daood (Arabic: رولا داوود,[1] Hebrew: רולא דאוד)[2] is a Palestinian Israeli activist and co-director of Standing Together.

Biography

Daood was born in 1985 in the Palestinian village of Kafr Yasif in northern Israel,[3] and is a Palestinian citizen of Israel.[4] She trained as a speech pathologist[5] and lived in Lod for six years,[6] and lived in Jaffa as of 2024.[7] She says she made a decision to try to build bridges between Israeli Jews and Palestinians during the 2014 Gaza War when standing in line at a bakery in Ashdod.[8] In response to a picture of Palestinian children who had been killed in Gaza in the newspaper Haaretz,[2] a woman next to her in the bakery said she hoped all Palestinian children burned to death. Daood felt rage upon hearing this and asked the woman if they should stand on the roof and watch the children of Gaza burn. She then realized she wanted to overcome this kind of hatred[8] and become a political activist.[2]

She joined Standing Together in 2017, after a humiliating experience by Israeli guards at the Ben Gurion Airport upon returning from vacation in Italy in 2016.[9] She worked as a community organizer within the organization for two years organizing events and protests before being appointed co-director.[5] She leads mobilizations from Tel Aviv that call for mass marches against the Gaza War.[3] In 2024, she and fellow Standing Together co-director Alon-Lee Green traveled across the United States with 12 speaking engagements in seven cities.[9] When advocating for Standing Together's message, Daood says that the only viable path forward for Israelis and Palestinians is a peaceful resolution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. She said that their struggle is rooted in the belief that both peoples equally deserve rights and dignity on the same land.[10] She said that the Israeli occupation needs to end and that there needs to be freedom and equality to both peoples.[7][11] After she spoke to students at a school in Lydda about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the war in Gaza, and her experience living as a Palestinian in Israel, the organization Betzalmu filed a complaint with the Ministry of Education.[12]

In 2022, Daood and Green received the Gallanter Prize from the New Israel Fund.[5] In October 2024, they were selected for Time magazine's list TIME100 Next 2024,[13] for Standing Together's activity against the legal reform, for promoting Jewish-Arab solidarity and for guaranteeing humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip.

References

  1. ^ "المؤتمر الشعبي للسلام..رولا داوود: الحرب على غزة هي حرب دمار وتجويع" (in Arabic). May 11, 2025. Retrieved September 2, 2025.
  2. ^ a b c ושי פוגלמן; ינאי יחיאל (September 11, 2024). "מנהלת ארצית שותפה של תנועת עומדים ביחד, בת 39. גרה ביפו | רולא דאוד". הָאָרֶץ (in Hebrew). Retrieved September 3, 2025.
  3. ^ a b Goyeneche, Teresita (May 19, 2024). "'Not all of Gaza is Hamas, and not all of Israel is the government': Rula Daood". El Espectador (in Spanish). Bogotá. ProQuest 3057010415.
  4. ^ Green, Alon-Lee; Daood, Rula; Goldberg, Karina (April 8, 2025). "'Standing Together' – A Meeting with Alon-Lee Green and Rula Daood". Psychoanalytic Inquiry: 1–10. doi:10.1080/07351690.2025.2463885.
  5. ^ a b c "The Gallanter Prize | Past Gallanter Prize Winners". New Israel Fund. Retrieved August 8, 2025.
  6. ^ Donevan, Connor; Shapiro, Ari (October 25, 2023). "The space for peace and Jewish-Arab solidarity is shrinking in wartime Israel". WGCU-FM. NPR.
  7. ^ a b Lederman, Marsha (March 29, 2024). "Israeli-Palestinian groups bring their hopeful fights for peace to Canada: Organizations such as Women Wage Peace and Standing Together have been fighting for equality long before Oct. 7 and the resulting war in Gaza". The Globe and Mail. ProQuest 3013982533.
  8. ^ a b Cohen, Roger (November 22, 2023) [November 20, 2023]. "Between Israelis and Palestinians, a Lethal Psychological Chasm Grows". The New York Times. ProQuest 2891643706.
  9. ^ a b Eshman, Rob (December 17, 2024). "It's a hopeless time. Here's one genuinely good Israeli solution". The Forward. Retrieved August 5, 2025.
  10. ^ Gelinas, Samuel (December 7, 2024). "A united front on Israel, Gaza? Standing Together: Leaders of Israeli-Palestinian movement visit synagogue to make case for peace". Daily Hampshire Gazette. pp. A1, A5 – via newspapers.com.
  11. ^ Margulies, Joanie (January 18, 2024). "Thousands call for end of Gaza war in Tel Aviv, mark Kfir Bibas' birthday". The Jerusalem Post. Retrieved September 3, 2025.
  12. ^ Tesler, Yitzhak (January 29, 2025). "A radical left-wing activist was hosted in Lida, and the Ministry of Education launched an investigation". jerusalem.mynet.co.il (in Hebrew). Retrieved August 17, 2025.
  13. ^ Serhan, Yasmeen (October 2, 2024). "TIME100 NEXT 2024 | Alon-Lee Green and Rula Daood". Time.
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