An aspect of the Israel-Palestine horror that has been of personal interest is how the Israeli people view the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attack, the ensuing Gaza war and what they want after the war ends. The polling I've seen so far indicates that majority public opinion has hardened into deep anger and desire for revenge. A NYT opinion (not paywalled) exemplifies the situation:
The View Within Israel Turns BleakIt was the pictures of Palestinians swimming and sunning at a Gaza beach that rubbed Yehuda Shlezinger, an Israeli journalist, the wrong way. Stylish in round red glasses and a faint scruff of beard, Mr. Shlezinger unloaded his revulsion at the “disturbing” pictures while appearing on Israel’s Channel 12.
“These people there deserve death, a hard death, an agonizing death, and instead we see them enjoying on the beach and having fun,” complained Mr. Shlezinger, the religious affairs correspondent for the widely circulated right-wing Israel Hayom newspaper. “We should have seen a lot more revenge there,” Mr. Shlezinger unrepentantly added. “A lot more rivers of Gazans’ blood.”
It would be nice to think that Mr. Shlezinger is a fringe figure or that Israelis would be shocked by his bloody fantasies. But he’s not, and many wouldn’t be.
Israel has hardened, and the signs of it are in plain view. Dehumanizing language and promises of annihilation from military and political leaders. Polls that found wide support for the policies that have wreaked devastation and starvation in Gaza. Selfies of Israeli soldiers preening proudly in bomb-crushed Palestinian neighborhoods. A crackdown on even mild forms of dissent among Israelis.
This bleak ideological landscape emerged slowly and then, on Oct. 7, all at once.
The massacre and kidnappings of that day, predictably, brought a public thirst for revenge. But in truth, by the time Hamas killers rampaged through the kibbutzim — in a bitter twist, home to some of the holdout peaceniks — many Israelis had long since come to regard Palestinians as a threat best locked away. America’s romantic mythology and wishful thinking about Israel encourage a tendency to see Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the main cause of the ruthlessness in Gaza, where Israel has killed more than 35,000 people. The unpopular, scandal-ridden premier makes a convincing ogre in an oversimplified story.
But Israel’s slaughter in Gaza, the creeping famine, the wholesale destruction of neighborhoods — this, polling suggests, is the war the Israeli public wanted. A January survey found that 94 percent of Jewish Israelis said the force being used against Gaza was appropriate or even insufficient. In February, a poll found that most Jewish Israelis opposed food and medicine getting into Gaza. It was not Mr. Netanyahu alone but also his war cabinet members (including Benny Gantz, often invoked as the moderate alternative to Mr. Netanyahu) who unanimously rejected a Hamas deal to free Israeli hostages and, instead, began an assault on the city of Rafah, overflowing with displaced civilians.
The Israeli left — the factions that criticize the occupation of Palestinian lands and favor negotiations and peace instead — is now a withered stump of a once-vigorous movement. In recent years, the attitudes of many Israelis toward the “Palestinian problem” have ranged largely from detached fatigue to the hard-line belief that driving Palestinians off their land and into submission is God’s work.
“The issues of settlements or relations with Palestinians were off the table for years,” Tamar Hermann told me. “The status quo was OK for Israelis.”
Ms. Hermann, a senior research fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, is one of the country’s most respected experts on Israeli public opinion. In recent years, she said, Palestinians hardly caught the attention of Israeli Jews. She and her colleagues periodically made lists of issues and asked respondents to rank them in order of importance. It didn’t matter how many choices the pollsters presented, she said — resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict came in last in almost all measurements.
“It was totally ignored,” she said. Israel’s uneasy detachment turned to rage on Oct. 7.
A handful of songs with lyrics calling for the annihilation of a dehumanized enemy have been circulated in Israel these past months, including “Launch,” a hip-hop glorification of the military promising “from kisses to guns, until Gaza is erased” .... “There is no forgiveness for swarms of rats,” another song goes. “They will die in their rat holes.”
Israeli shops hawk trendy products like a bumper sticker that reads, “Finish them,” and a pendant cut into the shape of Israel, with East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza seamlessly attached.
So many questions and ways to look at it
In view of the Hamas horror of Oct. 7, is it unreasonable or too biased to attribute the dehumanization and attitude hardening of the Israeli public to propaganda? After all, the murderous Hamas terror attack was an unspeakable evil. Yes, it arguably is too biased if one considers the horrible event that triggered the massive public opinion hardening of mind and dehumanization of all Palestinians.
But what if one looks at all events from ~1946-1948 to 2024? or ~1500 to 2024? Could the horror of Oct. 7 be seen as a final cry of rage and anguish from a group of people who have been oppressed and imprisoned since 1948? Well, Hamas is not all Palestinians. The truth includes the fact, not opinion, that for decades Gaza has been an open air prison and Palestinians in the West Bank have been illegally forced into smaller and smaller areas of land. For decades, extremist Israeli propaganda has dehumanized all Palestinians, not just Hamas.
1517 to 1950
This is messy, isn't it?
This 12 minute video discusses the related topic of what is going on with the Palestinians living in the West Bank. That has nothing to do with Hamas because the Palestinian Authority governs the West Bank, not Hamas. This exemplifies the hardened attitude of Israel toward all Palestinians, not just those in Gaza or just Hamas fighters.
Is the democratic West cynical & hypocritical about
human rights for Russia vs for Israel?
This discusses some evidence that is true
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