Israeli society suffers from psychological trauma after the seventh of October, disintegration and emigration threaten it
The New York Times
The October 7 attack on Israel prompted soul-searching on the Israeli left, undermining faith in a common future with the Palestinians. It has created a crisis of confidence on the Israeli right, it has drawn 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 means 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 ultimat
ely upended its political and cultural life, the October 7 attack and the aftershocks are expected to reshape Israel for years to come.
The attack, which killed an estimated 1,200 people, shattered Israelis ' sense of security and shook their confidence in Israel's leaders. He shattered the idea that the Israeli blockade of Gaza and the occupation of the West Bank could continue indefinitely without significant repercussions for the Israelis. For Israel's Jewish majority, it broke the country's central promise.
When Israel was founded in 1948, the specific goal was to provide a haven 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.
Dorit rabinian, an Israeli novelist, at her home in Tel Aviv. At the moment of the attack, "our Israeli identity felt very crushed. It felt like 75 years of Israeli sovereignty had disappeared - in a flash,"he said.
"We used to be Israelis,"she added. "Now we are Jews."
Currently, the attack has also united Israeli society to an unimaginable degree on October 6, when Israelis were deeply divided by Mr. Netanyahu's efforts to limit the power of the courts; by a dispute over the role of religion in public life; and by Mr. Netanyahu's political future.
All this year, Israeli leaders have warned of civil war. And yet at the moment in October., Israelis of all stripes found a common cause in what they saw as an existential battle for the future of Israel. Since then, they have collectively come under international criticism for Israeli retaliation in Gaza.
And in parts of the ultra - Orthodox community, whose reluctance to serve in the Israeli army was a source of division before the war, there were signs of increased appreciation for the armed forces-and in some cases, participation in them.
Recent polling data paint a picture of a society in profound change since the Hamas attack.
Almost 30 percent of the ultra-Orthodox public now supports the idea of military service, 20 points higher than before the war, according to a December 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, according to a November poll by the Israel Democracy Institute, a Jerusalem-based research group. This is 22 points higher than in June and the highest percentage since the group began polling on the issue two decades ago.
Nearly a third of voters have abandoned Mr Netanyahu's right-wing party, Likud, since October 7, according to every national poll since the attack.
"Something fundamental has changed here, and we don't know what it is yet,"said Yossi Klein-Halevi, author and a fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, a research group in Jerusalem. "What we know is that this is a last chance for this country."
Aryeh Zeiger, a bus driver from Jerusalem, embodies some of these transformations.
In 2000, Mr. Zeiger became one of a small minority of ultra-Orthodox Israelis to serve as a military recruiter. At that time, he felt ostracized by his community.
"Joining the army was an unacceptable thing,"Mr. Zeiger said.
Ultra-Orthodox Jews, known as Haredim, are exempted from service so that they can study Jewish law and the Bible in government-supported seminaries. For decades, they have fought to keep the exemption, angering secular Israelis because it allows haredim to benefit from the public purse while doing little to protect the nation.
After October 7, when he rushed to rejoin the Army, Mr. Zeiger said that he felt welcomed by the Haredim. Friends congratulated him, a Haredi rabbi gave him a special blessing, and many Haredi synagogues asked him if he could attend Shabbat prayers with his rifle. Fearing further terrorist attacks, the rallies wanted to protect him.
Aryeh Zeiger, a reservist in the Israeli army. In 2000, Mr. Zeiger became one of a small minority of ultra-Orthodox Israelis working as a recruiter. At that time, he felt ostracized by his community. But that has changed, he says. Credit... Avishag Char-yashov for the New York Times
"This is a big change,"said Mr. Zeiger, 45. "They want me there."
His experience reflects a small but meaningful change among parts of the Haredi community.
Mr. Zeiger was among more than 2,000 Haredim who sought to join the army in the ten weeks since October 7, according to military statistics. This figure is less than one percent of the 360,000 reservists called up after October 7, but almost two times higher than the average, the army said in a statement.
Neri Horowitz, an expert on Haredim, said that the shift was too small to be significant, and that the rise in social solidarity would recede as quickly as it happened after the previous reversal points. Already, an influential Haredi rabbi has been filmed comparing soldiers to garbage collectors. Another video showed Haredi students entering a soldier from their institution, upset by attempts to recruit him.
Mr. Zeiger feels that a more permanent change is underway.
"The same people who broke off relations with me 20 years ago, are now very proud of me,"he said.
For the Arab minority in Israel, these evolving dynamics have left them in a confusing and contradictory position.
Almost a fifth of Israel's population of more than 9 million people are Arabs. Many identify as Palestinians despite having Israeli citizenship, and many feel solidarity with Gazans killed in Israeli strikes - a feeling that has grown stronger as the reported death toll in Gaza has risen to nearly 20,000.
Several Arab Israeli leaders were detained in November after attempting to organize an unsanctioned protest against the war. Others were investigated by the police for social media posts deemed supportive of Hamas.
But some Arab Israelis also feel a competing emotion: a greater sense of belonging in Israel.
Hamas killed or kidnapped dozens of Arabs on October 7, giving their communities a greater sense of solidarity with Israeli Jews.
"If I was given two choices, Hamas or Israel, I would choose Israel without thinking twice,"said Bashir ziadna, an Arab-Israeli law student.
Several members of Mr. ziadna's family were killed and kidnapped in the attack.
Mr. ziadna later became a spokesperson for the family as they pressed the government to do more to save their relatives. In the process, Mr. ziadna, 26, began to engage more with the Jewish community, forming bonds with the families of other hostages and getting to know Israeli politicians and leaders.
While he still feels like a Palestinian and has deep problems with the government's treatment of Palestinians, the horror of October 7 and the feeling that he could have died too, made him feel more Israeli and strive to play a greater role in Israeli 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 occurred despite Netanyahu's policy.
Israelis rallied around each other, with a shared belief in the military campaign led by Mr. Netanyahu. But they did not rally around the prime minister.
Part of the right's frustration with Mr Netanyahu is rooted in how his governments have fostered complacency about Gaza. Officials have regularly and erroneously talked about how to deter Hamas, and that Israel's biggest immediate threats lie in Iran and Lebanon.
Anger also comes from the fact that Mr. Netanyahu has caused deep rifts in Israeli society and toxic public discourse to widen.
At a time of such turmoil, some right-wing Israelis want a more measured public discourse, said nitanel Elyashiv, a rabbi and publisher who lives in a West Bank settlement.
"Do you know in that cartoon, when a Roadrunner comes off the cliff and keeps running a little and doesn't notice that it's not continuous?" Netanyahu ruled in the same situation."I think this is the end of his term."
Regardless of Mr. Netanyahu's personal fate, his approach to the Palestinians - including opposition to Palestinian statehood and support for West Bank settlements - remains popular.
More than half of Jewish Israelis oppose the resumption of negotiations to create a Palestinian state, according to an opinion poll conducted by the Israeli Institute for democracy in late November.
Jewish settlers in the West Bank also feel that they have definitively won the argument about maintaining Israel's presence in the Palestinian Territories.
New buildings in the Israeli settlement of Eli in the West Bank.Credit... Avishag Char-yashov for the New York Times
According to Mr. ilyashev, the October 7 attack would not have happened if the Israeli soldiers and settlers had remained in Gaza.
"The reason it didn't happen in Judea and Samaria is because of the settlements,"Mr. ilyashev said, using a biblical term for the West Bank. "From a security point of view, we should be here."
"Wherever we withdraw, it becomes a nightmare,"he added.
Some Israelis still say that the conflict can be resolved through the creation of an effective Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank.
But for others, the scale of the October 7 atrocities left them struggling even to sympathize with the Gazans, not to mention retain hope for a peaceful resolution of the conflict.
In 2018, Mr. Klein Halevi, the author, wrote a book addressed to an imagined Palestinian, "letters to my Palestinian neighbor", in which he tried to lay out a vision of a common future between Arabs and Jews in the Middle East.
Since October. 7, Mr. Halevy said, he found it difficult to think about what such a future might look like. He said that he is a committed Jew, he still prays for the Palestinians, but it is more duty than sympathy.
"I spent years explaining the Israeli narrative and absorbing the Palestinian narrative - and trying to find a space where both could live together,"Mr. Klein-Halevi said.
"I don't have that language now,"he said. "It's emotionally impossible."
