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Hamas may have pushed Israelis into a far darker place than Netanyahu ever dreamed of | Dahlia Scheindlin
Israel’s new wounds will never heal. It’s too soon to know all the political ramifications. But based on experience, the unity of crisis is only a pause from the profound divisions in Israeli society.
On Wednesday, a clutch of demonstrators turned out at the Tel Aviv defence compound with Israeli flags to demand the demise of the government. It was nothing compared with the recent, massive pro-democracy protests in Israel, but still a few pro-Netanyahu Israelis stopped to harangue them. Despite the paltry numbers, the interaction symbolised the same pro- or anti-Netanyahu breakdown that had caused Israel’s political paralysis for four election cycles in a row – until a fifth poll finally yielded a fanatical, theocratic, proto-authoritarian government led by Netanyahu, despite his indictments on three counts of corruption.
In one scenario, this very same divide remains in force, with each side more existentially furious at the other. The pro-Netanyahu camp is already insisting that the far right must be even more extreme, while the anti-Netanyahu camp finds it inconceivable that Netanyahu should remain in power after the catastrophe that has occurred on his watch. “What else needs to happen to prove that this man is incapable,” pleaded Bracha Shalita, 79, as she left the demonstration with her husband, Dudu. “How much must we suffer?”
But it’s hard to imagine anything staying as it was, and another scenario is just as plausible: that Israel’s political ideology could lurch far, far to the right.
All over Tel Aviv, ominous graffiti declares: “Wipe out Gaza”; someone spray-painted this on my own tiny residential street, in a reliably centre-left voting district, just a few houses down. Within hours of the attack, Israel began a massive air war against Gaza, causing 1,500 deaths by Thursday, cutting electricity in a zone whose 2 million civilians have been under severe blockade since 2007, and killing approximately 500 children. More than 400,000 people have been displaced by shelling. By Wednesday, Gaza’s main power plant had run out of fuel and been forced to shut down, while on Friday Israel ominously ordered the complete evacuation of Palestinians from the northern part of the Gaza Strip, apparently in preparation for a ground war. Soon, the very idea of being rightwing in Israel will mean being extreme, brutal, cruel and vengeful.
The past offers strong lessons as to the Israeli mindset after major attacks. The Palestinian uprising of September 2000, known as the second intifada, prompted a rise in the proportion of Israeli Jews who self-identified as rightwing, according to my survey research over the years; this was accelerated by Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, followed by Hamas’s takeover in 2007. This process quickened following Netanyahu’s return to power in 2009, and correlated with a dark cycle of violent escalations with Hamas in Gaza every few years until this current war.
It’s hard to imagine Israel being any more rightwing than it is now. Netanyahu’s government has 64 seats out of 120 in parliament, with the most extreme politicians in its history. Rightwing ideology in Israeli terms extends to well over 70 members of parliament – hardline, nationalist, militant and probably annexationist regarding the Palestinians. But it’s all too likely that today’s centrists will rush to the right following the atrocities of the Hamas assault.
There wasn’t much of a left wing to start with. But what exists is already fraying in the wake of Saturday’s horror. It is intolerable to some leftwingers that others would invoke Israel’s occupation and siege over Gaza, brutal as they are, to explain Hamas’s actions and hint of justifications (of which there can be none). Some are incapable of hearing about the apocalyptic destruction in Gaza at this moment, which seems emotionally incompatible with the hell Israelis are experiencing now. Even hardcore leftwingers I know are fighting feelings of rage and revenge. Some will slide towards the right.
On Wednesday, a clutch of demonstrators turned out at the Tel Aviv defence compound with Israeli flags to demand the demise of the government. It was nothing compared with the recent, massive pro-democracy protests in Israel, but still a few pro-Netanyahu Israelis stopped to harangue them. Despite the paltry numbers, the interaction symbolised the same pro- or anti-Netanyahu breakdown that had caused Israel’s political paralysis for four election cycles in a row – until a fifth poll finally yielded a fanatical, theocratic, proto-authoritarian government led by Netanyahu, despite his indictments on three counts of corruption.
In one scenario, this very same divide remains in force, with each side more existentially furious at the other. The pro-Netanyahu camp is already insisting that the far right must be even more extreme, while the anti-Netanyahu camp finds it inconceivable that Netanyahu should remain in power after the catastrophe that has occurred on his watch. “What else needs to happen to prove that this man is incapable,” pleaded Bracha Shalita, 79, as she left the demonstration with her husband, Dudu. “How much must we suffer?”
But it’s hard to imagine anything staying as it was, and another scenario is just as plausible: that Israel’s political ideology could lurch far, far to the right.
All over Tel Aviv, ominous graffiti declares: “Wipe out Gaza”; someone spray-painted this on my own tiny residential street, in a reliably centre-left voting district, just a few houses down. Within hours of the attack, Israel began a massive air war against Gaza, causing 1,500 deaths by Thursday, cutting electricity in a zone whose 2 million civilians have been under severe blockade since 2007, and killing approximately 500 children. More than 400,000 people have been displaced by shelling. By Wednesday, Gaza’s main power plant had run out of fuel and been forced to shut down, while on Friday Israel ominously ordered the complete evacuation of Palestinians from the northern part of the Gaza Strip, apparently in preparation for a ground war. Soon, the very idea of being rightwing in Israel will mean being extreme, brutal, cruel and vengeful.
The past offers strong lessons as to the Israeli mindset after major attacks. The Palestinian uprising of September 2000, known as the second intifada, prompted a rise in the proportion of Israeli Jews who self-identified as rightwing, according to my survey research over the years; this was accelerated by Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, followed by Hamas’s takeover in 2007. This process quickened following Netanyahu’s return to power in 2009, and correlated with a dark cycle of violent escalations with Hamas in Gaza every few years until this current war.
It’s hard to imagine Israel being any more rightwing than it is now. Netanyahu’s government has 64 seats out of 120 in parliament, with the most extreme politicians in its history. Rightwing ideology in Israeli terms extends to well over 70 members of parliament – hardline, nationalist, militant and probably annexationist regarding the Palestinians. But it’s all too likely that today’s centrists will rush to the right following the atrocities of the Hamas assault.
There wasn’t much of a left wing to start with. But what exists is already fraying in the wake of Saturday’s horror. It is intolerable to some leftwingers that others would invoke Israel’s occupation and siege over Gaza, brutal as they are, to explain Hamas’s actions and hint of justifications (of which there can be none). Some are incapable of hearing about the apocalyptic destruction in Gaza at this moment, which seems emotionally incompatible with the hell Israelis are experiencing now. Even hardcore leftwingers I know are fighting feelings of rage and revenge. Some will slide towards the right.