Short answer: Yes. As of August 2026, Tamar Zandberg, an Israeli former Knesset member and Minister of Environmental Protection with the left-wing Zionist party Meretz, is a mainstream Zionist-left Israeli politician who has publicly and firmly rejected the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack while continuing to advocate for a negotiated peace with the Palestinians.
What Tamar Zandberg has actually said and done
- March 22, 2018: Zandberg was elected chair of Meretz, winning 71 percent of the vote, according to a contemporary account documented on Wikipedia's summary of the 2018 Meretz leadership election. She led the party until losing the 2019 leadership race to Nitzan Horowitz.
- March 10, 2019: As Meretz chairwoman, Zandberg traveled to Ramallah and met Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, telling him that reaching a peace agreement was Israel's "supreme interest," as reported by The Jerusalem Post.
- 2021 to 2022: Zandberg served as Israel's Minister of Environmental Protection in the Bennett-Lapid government, working on carbon-neutrality policy and Jordan River rehabilitation, before stepping back from politics ahead of the 2022 election, per The Times of Israel.
- October 20, 2023: After climate activist Greta Thunberg posted a "Stand With Gaza" photo that did not mention the October 7 Hamas attack or the Israeli hostages, Zandberg responded on X: "I belong to the Israeli left that supports peace and human rights. What Hamas did on October 7th has nothing to do with those values, nor with the Palestinian claim for freedom." That statement, and the surrounding controversy, is documented by Newsweek.
- As of July 2025: Zandberg had moved out of frontline politics and was heading the National Institute for Climate and Environmental Policy at Ben-Gurion University, continuing her environmental-policy career rather than running for Knesset again, according to Wikipedia.
The bigger picture: who Tamar Zandberg is
Tamar Zandberg, born April 29, 1976, in Ramat Gan, is a longtime figure in Israel's Zionist left. She served as a Knesset member for Meretz from 2013 to 2021, chaired the party from 2018 to 2019, and served as Minister of Environmental Protection from 2021 to 2022. Meretz is a Zionist, dovish, social-democratic party that supports a two-state solution and Israel's existence as a Jewish and democratic state. It is not an anti-Israel or boycott-aligned party, and Zandberg's public record fits that description closely. She has pushed for negotiations and normalized relations with the Palestinian Authority, including her 2019 Ramallah meeting with Mahmoud Abbas, while explicitly and publicly rejecting the October 7 Hamas massacre as having nothing to do with the values of peace and human rights she says she holds.
Nothing in the verified record shows her supporting or joining a boycott of Israel, refusing to engage with Israeli state institutions, or minimizing or justifying the Hamas attack. To the contrary, her one directly documented public statement on the subject, her October 2023 reply to Greta Thunberg, explicitly condemns it. By mid-2025, she had stepped back from electoral politics into academic environmental-policy work at Ben-Gurion University.
The bottom line
Tamar Zandberg supports Israel in the mainstream Zionist-left sense: she is an Israeli former cabinet minister who has served in Israel's government and Knesset, publicly condemned the October 7 Hamas attack, and pursues peace with the Palestinians through diplomacy rather than boycott or delegitimization of Israel. There is no public record found of her opposing Israel's existence, joining a boycott, or refusing to engage with Israeli institutions.
Wear your own answer
Whatever side of Israel's political spectrum you land on, the country's future depends on people willing to stand up for it in public, the way Zandberg did when she pushed back on a viral post that erased October 7. If that kind of plainspoken support resonates with you, our I Stand With Israel collection is a simple way to carry that same message into your own day.
Related
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- Does Tzipi Livni Support Israel?
- Does Naftali Bennett Support Israel?
Last updated August 2026. We update these profiles as the record changes.
