As the world’s gaze shifts to Gaza, the Israeli psyche remains defined by the October 7 attack
The October 7 attack on Israel has prompted further soul-searching the Israeli left, undermining faith in a shared future with the Palestinians. It has created one crisis of confidence on the Israeli right, undermine support for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It has brought ultra-Orthodox Jews, who are often ambivalent about their relationship with the Israeli state, closer to the mainstream.
Across religious and political divides, Israelis are coming to terms with what the Hamas-led terrorist attack meant for Israel as a state, for Israelis as a society and for its citizens as individuals. Just as Israel’s failures in the 1973 Arab-Israeli war ultimately upended its political and cultural life, the October 7 attack and its aftershocks are expected to reshape Israel for years to come.
The attack, which killed an estimated 1,200 people, has shattered Israelis’ sense of security and shaken their confidence in Israel’s leaders. It has shattered the idea that Israel’s blockade of Gaza and occupation of the West Bank could continue indefinitely without significant consequences for Israelis. And for Israel’s Jewish majority, it has broken the country’s central promise.
When Israel was founded in 1948, its main purpose was to provide refuge for Jews after 2,000 years of statelessness and persecution. On October 7, the same state proved unable to prevent the worst day of violence against Jews since the Holocaust.
“At that moment, our Israeli identity felt so crushed. It felt like 75 years of sovereignty, of being Israeli, had disappeared in an instant,” said Dorit Rabinyan, an Israeli novelist.
“We used to be Israelis,” she added. “Now we are Jewish.”
For now, the attack has also united Israeli society to a degree that felt unthinkable on October 6, when Israelis were deeply divided by Mr. Netanyahu’s efforts to reduce the power of the courts; by a dispute over the role of religion in public life; and by Netanyahu’s own political future.
Throughout the year, Israeli leaders had warned of civil war. But in an instant on October 7, Israelis of all stripes found common cause in what they saw as an existential struggle for Israel’s future. Since then, they have collectively been plagued by international criticism of Israel’s retaliatory measures in Gaza.
And in parts of the ultra-Orthodox community, whose reluctance to serve in the Israeli army before the war had been a source of division, there were signs of an increased appreciation for – and in some cases involvement in – the armed forces.
Recent polling data paints a picture of a society in profound flux since the Hamas attack.
Nearly 30 percent of the ultra-Orthodox public now supports the idea of military service, up 20 points from before the war, a December report shows poll by the Haredi Institute for Public Affairs, a Jerusalem-based research group.
Perhaps surprisingly, 70 percent of Arab Israelis now say they feel part of the State of Israel, a November report shows poll by the Israel Democracy Institute, a Jerusalem-based research group. That’s 22 points higher than in June and the highest percentage since the group started polling on the issue two decades ago.
According to every national poll since the attack, about a third of voters for Netanyahu’s right-wing party, Likud, have left the party since October 7.
“Something fundamental has changed here, and we don’t know what it is yet,” said Yossi Klein Halevi, author and fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, a research group in Jerusalem. “What we do know is that this is kind of the last chance for this country.”
Aryeh Tsaiger, a bus driver from Jerusalem, embodies some of these shifts.
In 2000, Mr. Tsaiger became one of a small minority of ultra-Orthodox Israelis to serve as military conscripts. At the time, he felt excluded from his community.
“Joining the military was something unacceptable,” Mr. Tsaiger said.
Ultra-Orthodox Jews, known as haredim, are exempt from military service so they can study Jewish law and scripture at government-subsidized seminaries. For decades, they have fought to preserve the exemption, which has confused secular Israelis because it allows Haredim to benefit from public resources while doing little to protect the nation.
As he rushed to rejoin the army on Oct. 7, Mr. Tsaiger said he felt welcomed by Haredim. Friends congratulated him, a Haredi rabbi gave him a special blessing, and several Haredi synagogues asked if he could attend their Sabbath prayers with his gun. Fearing further terrorist attacks, the municipalities wanted his protection.
“That’s a big change,” said the 45-year-old Mr. Tsaiger. “They want me there.”
His experience reflects a small but meaningful change among parts of charedi society.
According to military statistics, Mr. Tsaiger was among more than 2,000 Haredim who sought to join the army in the 10 weeks since Oct. 7. That figure is less than one percent of the 360,000 reservists called up after Oct. 7, but is almost twice as high as the average, the military said in a statement.
Neri Horowitz, an expert on haredim, said the shift was too small to be significant, and that the rise in social solidarity would fade as quickly as after previous tipping points. An influential Haredi rabbi has already been filmed comparing soldiers to garbage collectors. Another video showed Haredi seminary students leading a soldier out of their facility, irritated by his recruitment efforts.
Mr. Tsaiger believes a more lasting change is underway.
“The same people who cut ties with me 20 years ago are now very proud of me,” he said.
For Israel’s Arab minority, this evolving dynamic has put them in a bewildering, contradictory position.
About a fifth of Israel’s more than nine million inhabitants are Arabs. Many of them identify as Palestinians despite holding Israeli citizenship, and many feel solidarity with Gaza residents killed in Israeli attacks – a sentiment that has grown stronger as the reported death toll in Gaza has risen to approximately 20,000.
Several Arab-Israeli leaders were arrested in November after trying to organize an unsanctioned anti-war protest. Others were investigated by police for social media posts seen as supportive of Hamas.
But some Arab Israelis are also feeling a competing emotion: a greater sense of connection to Israel.
Dozens of Arabs were killed or kidnapped by Hamas on October 7, giving their communities a greater sense of solidarity with Jewish Israelis.
“If I were given two options, Hamas or Israel, I would choose Israel without thinking twice,” said Bashir Ziyadna, an Arab-Israeli law student.
Several members of Mr. Ziyadna’s family were killed and kidnapped in the attack.
Mr Ziyadna later became a spokesman for the family as they lobbied the government to do more to save their relatives. In the process, Mr. Ziyadna, 26, began to become more involved in Jewish society, forming bonds with the families of other hostages and getting to know Israeli politicians and leaders.
Although he still feels Palestinian and has major problems with the government’s treatment of Palestinians, the horrors of October 7 and the feeling that he too could have died have made him feel more Israeli and aspire to a greater role play in the Israeli struggle. public life.
“I don’t want to help my community by criticizing the system,” he said. “Now I want to be part of the system to make it better.”
This growing social consensus has occurred despite Mr. Netanyahu.
Israelis have rallied together over a shared belief in the military campaign led by Mr. Netanyahu. But they have not sided with the Prime Minister.
Part of the right’s frustration with Netanyahu has its roots in the way his governments have fostered a sense of complacency over Gaza. Officials frequently and incorrectly talked about how Hamas was being deterred and that Israel’s biggest immediate threats lay in Iran and Lebanon.
The anger also stems from the fact that Mr. Netanyahu presided over the widening of deep rifts in Israeli society and a toxic public debate.
At a time of such unrest, some right-wing Israelis want a more measured public debate, says Netanel Elyashiv, a rabbi and publisher who lives in a West Bank settlement.
“You know, in those cartoons, when Roadrunner goes off the cliff and keeps running for a while and doesn’t notice that it’s unstoppable?” Mr. Elyashiv asked. “Netanyahu’s regime is in the same situation. I think this is the end of his term.”
Regardless of Netanyahu’s personal fate, his approach to Palestinians – including opposition to a Palestinian state and support for West Bank settlements – remains popular.
More than half of Jewish Israelis oppose resuming negotiations to create a Palestinian state poll conducted in late November by the Israel Democracy Institute.
Jewish settlers in the West Bank also feel that they have definitively won the debate over maintaining Israel’s presence in the Palestinian territory.
According to Mr. Elyashiv, the October 7 attack would not have happened if Israeli soldiers and settlers had remained in Gaza.
“The reason this hasn’t happened in Judea and Samaria is because of the settlements,” Mr. Elyashiv said, using a Biblical term for the West Bank. “As far as safety is concerned, this is where we need to be.”
“Wherever we go, it will be a nightmare,” he added.
Some Israelis still say the conflict can be resolved by establishing a functional Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank.
But for others, the scale of the October 7 atrocities has left them struggling to even empathize with Gazans, let alone maintain hope for a peaceful resolution to the conflict.
In 2018, author Klein Halevi wrote a book addressed to an imaginary Palestinian, “Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor,” in which he attempted to lay out a vision for a shared future between Arabs and Jews in the Middle East.
Since October 7, Mr. Halevi says, he has found it difficult to even think about what such a future looks like. As an observant Jew, he still prays for the Palestinians, but more out of duty than empathy, he said.
“I spent years explaining the Israeli story and absorbing the Palestinian story – trying to find a space where both could live together,” Mr. Klein Halevi said.
“I don’t have that language right now,” he said. “It’s not emotionally available to me.”
Reporting was contributed by Nathan Odenheimer in Jerusalem; Johnatan Reiss in Tel Aviv; And Jonathan Rosen in Rehovot, Israel.