The TikTok videos feature Israeli soldiers, standing under the concrete blast barriers of a military base, in front of a rolling green landscape or beside armoured vehicles. Most are in full military gear, in settings that make clear these are men at war, with one message to their country’s journalists. “If you don’t have something unifying to say, just shut your mouth.”
To someone who made a cursory scan of the country’s TV channels and newspapers after 7 October, the reservists’ anger might be confusing – the Israeli media have rarely presented their audiences with such a uniformly patriotic vision of reality as they have over the past three months.
