Tags
Benjamin Netanyahu, Gaza, Hamas, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, kidnapped girls, October 7th
By Rhona Burns
The State of Israel is currently experiencing the most devastating time in its history, with more than 1,300 already dead, and approximately 200 held hostage by the terrorist group Hamas (including women, children and infants, elderly, and men).
But the tragedy Israel is facing is twofold: On the one hand Israel has experienced an unprecedented attack on its civilian population, when on early Saturday morning heavily armed Hamas Palestinian militants forced their way through its south-eastern border with the Gaza Strip, perpetrating unspeakable atrocities against multitudes, thousands, of uninvolved infants, women, elderly, and men, slaughtering and massacring them in their home villages and towns.
On the other hand, many Israelis are feeling an acute sense of betrayal, following what is seen as a complete failure of the state. This, more political, side of the current situation is based on the continuous political unrest Israel has been going through since January 2023. This unrest has also been unprecedented, with repeated, huge weekly demonstrations against what most scholars and experts are calling a judicial overhaul, that the government, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, has been trying to drive. This overhaul aims to weaken Israel’s Judicial system, and in effect strengthen unrestrained potential use of power by the government, currently held by a coalition of conservatives, anti-liberal, extreme-orthodox and messianic-racists. Furthermore, this current government is led by allegedly corrupt or otherwise criminally convicted politicians. The Prime Minister himself is facing several criminal allegations, including bribery, fraud, and breach of trust. But perhaps most importantly, in the eyes of many, the current government, which formed in November 2022, seemed a complete reversal of the historical liberal Zionist narrative, with so many of the government’s members simply not sharing the commonly-held Israeli – mostly secular, mostly humanistic – ethos.
In many ways then, the sense of betrayal, frustration and anger, has started long ago. However, there is no question that in recent days feelings of betrayal have increased and quadrupled. Part of this deterioration is due to the fact that many of the civilian victims so far belong to the mostly liberal-Center-Left communities – the destroyed kibbutz villages near the Gaza border, and the mostly secular participants of the Nova Music Festival that turned into a bloodbath. Ironically then, following the recent atrocities, it is the liberal-democratic camp that feels it has paid, with its blood, the impossibly horrifying toll for the incompetency of the acting government, the incompetency of which this camp has been warning for so long.
The terrible realization that for hours and hours Hamas militants have been terrorizing, torturing and killing so many innocents, without interruption, on such a large scale, was for many Israelis, especially in the liberal camp, a most terrible catastrophic culminating point of an ongoing crisis that has been shaking the very foundations of the State and of their personal worlds.
The sense of betrayal in the liberal camp is not unfounded. Indeed, there has even been incidents when some Israelis on the Right, being incited for so many years against the Centre-Left, exclaimed they were happy that the kidnapped women, bound to be on the liberal side, are now being raped by Palestinians in Gaza. This is not surprising as only recently, Netanyahu himself accused in an official personal statement that the liberal demonstrators against him are traitors, claiming that they “allied with Iran, the PLO and others”.
On this backdrop, Netanyahu has been trying since very early on in the current fighting to form an “emergency coalition”, together with the Center-Left parties in order to gain public legitimacy for decisions that would have to be made as part of the unfolding war with Hamas. Many have strongly argued against such a step, claiming that any partnership with Netanyahu would lend him legitimation that he does not deserve and would cover up his responsibility of the current disaster. Eventually, an agreement has been reached (October 12) to form some sort of “emergency cabinet”, with one of the strong centralist parties, led by ex IDF Chief of General Staff, Benny Gantz, who has the reputation of the weakest link in the political game.
Meanwhile, in Israel, calls for revenge are heard everywhere. People report of graffiti being sprayed around Jerusalem that read “Death to the Arabs”, and of people erasing the Arabic names from street signs (that usually include both Hebrew and Arabic). These feelings are understandable in light of the footage and testimonies people were exposed to, but the concern is that – with Netanyahu’s led coalition and especially with his new political acquisition of Gantz’s support – these feelings are quickly turning into official policy. After all, this is Netanyahu’s great expertise, turning irrational politics into political gain, even if the cost is thousands of casualties and victims on all sides.
There is little doubt that the civilian casualties and expected casualties in Gaza caused by Israeli massive bombings will probably include some if not all the approximately 200 Israeli civilians that are currently held hostage in atrocious conditions by Hamas (assuming Hamas has not murdered them already). Rescuing them, and not destroying Gaza, would have been the top priority of a government that truly believed in the sanctity of human life. However, Netanyahu being Netanyahu, cannot be expected to make any decision that he might think would harm his popularity, and this perhaps is Israel’s greatest tragedy of all.
Rhona Burns is a Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Jewish Studies, Harvard University