The decision came down from the highest echelons of the Israeli government shortly before the Passover Seder, the traditional holiday meal that enjoys rare consensus among Jews in Israel, bringing together relatives, friends and guests from all over the country and all colors of the political rainbow. Before wishing the people of Israel a happy and kosher holiday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that a series of events would be held in the coming weeks and months to mark the half-century anniversary of the “liberation of Judea, Samaria and the Golan Heights” — that is, the 1967 takeover of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Golan in the Six-Day War.

That same evening, several thousand Israelis read a special Haggadah at their Seder dinner. Instead of the traditional rendition of the Israelites’ Exodus from Egypt, they used a Haggadah issued by the organization SISO — Save Israel, Stop the Occupation. In stark contrast to Netanyahu’s policies, SISO, together with other civil society organizations, is trying to turn the 50th-anniversary celebration of the spoils of war into a protest against the 50-year Israeli occupation and a call to end it.

The traditional Passover Haggadah includes a series of questions designed to spark the curiosity of the children about the Exodus story. In addition to offering questions about why this night is different from other nights and the words to “We Were Slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt,” the “Jubilee Haggadah” includes commentary by Jewish thinkers from Israel and the United States. One of the first pages contains a lament penned by the writer Amos Oz in August 1967, some three months after the war.

“We are condemned now to rule people who do not want to be ruled by us,” the noted author wrote in “Davar,” the now-defunct daily newspaper of the then-ruling Labor Party, “condemned, not merry and euphoric.” Oz warned that all occupations corrupt the occupier. “I have fears about the kind of seeds we will sow in the near future in the hearts of the occupied,” he wrote. “Even more I have fears about the seed that will be planted in the hearts of the occupiers.” Like many of his friends on the political left, Oz did not imagine that five decades later Israelis would be “merry and euphoric,” celebrating the “liberation.”