Preserving Our Humanity

The meaning of 7 October 2023 for Israeli society can only described as a caesura, a singular event in the country’s history. At the end of the Jewish high holidays and the vacation that accompanies them, the residents of Israeli localities around the Gaza Strip were met with a cruel reminder of the fragile security situation in the region. Hamas’s brutal assault on civilians in the kibbutzim and small towns of Southern Israel ended in more than 1,200 deaths, thousands of injured, and about 150 hostages (including families with children, Holocaust survivors, and migrant workers) kidnapped and taken to the Gaza Strip, not to mention the IDF soldiers who were surprised by Hamas fighters in their military barracks.

The pain, confusion, and disorientation that followed are still unfolding as I write these lines, even though — or precisely because — I departed the country with my family two days after the latest round of fighting began. I left behind relatives, friends, and colleagues from the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, and am now following the events from Germany.

Apart from the atrocities committed by Hamas, the extraordinary and terrifying thing for the people of Israel on that long Shabbat and the days that followed was the glaring contradiction between the official information being issued by the Israeli government and army on the radio and TV, and the near real-time videos of the unfolding events on social media. This contradiction hammered home their own vulnerability to the Israeli people at a time when many of them were still grappling with the failure of their government and armed forces during the Yom Kippur War 50 years ago.

Even among the Israeli Left, the bewilderment and the fear of what may come is palpable and will not subside any time soon.

At that time, the advance of Syrian and Egyptian troops took Israeli troops by surprise. Then as now, hardly anyone thought that such a total failure of the Israeli armed forces and the far-right government responsible for them was possible, especially not on Israeli territory and over a span of several days. Thus, mixed in with the now ubiquitous calls for revenge against Hamas, its total annihilation and the destruction of parts of the Gaza Strip, more and more Israelis are asking how the localities near Gaza could have been “abandoned” in the first place.

How could it be that some kibbutzim residents, after spending hours alone with their children, were only freed by their armed fathers who rushed home from the military? How did the security services fail to anticipate the Hamas attack, given that it was obviously planned long in advance? And how could Hamas fighters pass through the border fence into Israel for days, engaging in regular skirmishes with police and soldiers in places like Sderot? All this while more and more IDF units were deployed to the occupied West Bank to protect fanatical settler groups that have repeatedly attacked Palestinian villages with the support of far-right government ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, and continue to do so now, including the killing of innocent Palestinians and the expulsion from their houses, out of the public eye.

It remains to be seen whether those affected will return to the devastated localities on the border with the Gaza Strip in the years to come. Even if they do, it will take a long time to answer the question of who carries responsibility for this colossal failure.

It took a remarkably long time for the Israeli government — far-right cabinet members included — to speak publicly on the matter, let alone accept responsibility (unlike Herzl Halevi, Chief of the IDF General Staff, who has since admitted the armed forces failed). Instead, Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich, himself a messianic settler, was among the first to refuse to consider the more than 150 Hamas hostages in the assault on the Gaza Strip, which itself is causing immense suffering and resulting in the destruction of entire neighbourhoods, alongside a total blockade of electricity, food, and water supplies. Israel’s top priority, he explained in a cabinet meeting, must be to “hit Hamas brutally and not to take the matter of the captives into significant consideration”.

It is questionable whether the emergency government announced last Wednesday, including the three-member war cabinet consisting of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defence Minister Yoav Galant, and opposition leader Benny Gantz will make the Israeli prisoners of war a top priority. Gantz, for example, despite his clear antipathy towards Netanyahu, announced in his first press conference that “We will wipe out this thing called Hamas”, and appealed to the unity of the nation in these “existential” times.

Israeli society appears to be largely in agreement that the country must first stand together and win the war before investigating what led to this situation or demanding political consequences and resignations. It is highly likely that any post-war soul-searching will not be on the structural level, but in terms of security: What further measures could have been taken to consolidate separation and border security, at the expense of the already disenfranchised Palestinian population?

As is all too often the case in Germany, too little space is given to these nuanced and tolerant voices from Israel, even in these fateful and terrifying days.

Even among the Israeli Left, the bewilderment and the fear of what may come is palpable and will not subside any time soon. No matter how critically and vehemently leftists in Israel, whether Jewish or Palestinian, have warned of the possible consequences of occupation and oppression, no one expected this level of brutality, destruction, and killing of civilians.

It is important to note that some left-wing anti-occupation activists were among the many victims and abductees, such as the former board member of the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem, Vivian Silver. There are now growing fears that right-wing Israeli groups will carry out revenge attacks against leftists and Palestinians inside Israel. It is encouraging to see people coming together to prevent violent clashes like the one between Jewish and Palestinian Israelis in May 2021, when Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel clashed violently for days during one of the numerous wars between Israel and Hamas in the last years.

Amidst the militarized logic that has engulfed the country over the last week, the voices of these Jewish and Palestinian activists and politicians are what gives me hope. Voices such as Sally Abed, a Palestinian from the Jewish-Palestinian grassroots organization Standing Together — she is able to share the deep pain of her Jewish-Israeli comrades and herself lost friends in the Hamas attack, allies in the struggle for equal rights for all in the region. Yet, at the same time, she points to the untenable fate of the people in Gaza and the reality of occupation in which all of this transpires. Or the Jewish-Israeli anti-occupation activist Sahar Vardi, whose only hope is radical, indivisible humanity in the face of mutual dehumanization.

It is these voices that deserve the Left’s solidarity. Yet as is all too often the case in Germany, the Left included, too little space is given to these nuanced and tolerant voices from Israel, even in these fateful and terrifying days.

This article first appeared in nd. Translated by Loren Balhorn.