I live in central Tel Aviv, and walking around my neighbourhood I see packed cafes, restaurants and wine bars. Israel’s longest and toughest war is being fought several dozens of miles away, but our “non-stop city” has not altered its lifestyle. Last Tuesday at dusk, as news reports warned of the coming Iranian missile attack, the beach was full of surfers. But partying cannot hide the war from our minds. It is present everywhere in fading pictures of the Israeli hostages left behind in Hamas dungeons.
On the lamp post down the street, I look at the image of Eden Yerushalmi, a 24-year-old Tel Avivian kidnapped by Hamas from the Nova music festival on the fateful 7 October. Her pictures are all over town, featuring her last words: “You will find me, right?” But we didn’t. Starved and tortured, Yerushalmi was murdered by her captors, with five other hostages, in late August in a tunnel in Rafah. Their horrible death was a stark reminder of Israel’s worst ever, continuing defeat.
Rather than uniting the country around saving lives, as in the past, the hostages’ fate became just another battleground in our polarised, fractured society. The prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, would not accept what Hamas has demanded for releasing the remaining 101 hostages, half of them presumed alive. He will not stop the war, nor release incarcerated Palestinians, including the masterminds of deadly terrorist attacks, to bring home the Israelis held by Hamas. His government prefers to occupy Gaza and pave the way for Jewish resettlement there.
To Israel’s Jewish liberals, Netanyahu’s refusal to “bring them home now” is another incarnation of his lifelong mission to “replace the elites”, whom he views as too cosmopolitan and condescending towards his base of socially conservative, ultra-Orthodox and ultra-nationalist Jews. Last year, after a second comeback to power at the head of a fervent rightwing coalition, Netanyahu launched a campaign to turn Israel into a theocratic, authoritarian state.
The battered liberals fought back. Scores of protesters chanted “democracy” and vowed to defend the independent judiciary, the source of civil rights in a country with no constitution or common ethos. But unlike pro-democracy movements elsewhere, ours had a militaristic tone: many of its leaders and public speakers showed off their military experience and rank, to prove their loyalty to the state, and the protesters’ ace card was the threat of reservist fighter pilots not to fly under a dictatorship.
It all recalled the Israel of my childhood after the 1967 six-day war, when fighter pilots and decorated soldiers were the epitome of the elite. And the movement deliberately ignored the elephant in the room that was created by that 1967 victory – the occupation of millions of Palestinians – lest the Kaplan Street marchers be smeared by Netanyahu’s “poison machine” as unpatriotic.
Then came 7 October, and the overlooked conflict exploded in our faces: the total surprise by Hamas, the slaughtering and raping and looting and kidnapping in the communities around Gaza, followed by the brutal Israeli counter-offensive. Netanyahu denied any responsibility for the country’s worst tragedy yet. Overcoming its initial shock, his coalition resumed its zeal to crush civil freedoms at home and grab Palestinian land in the occupied territories.
The anti-Bibists faced a conundrum. Overwhelmed by the grief and horrors of 7 October, replayed constantly in Israel’s media, they strongly supported the war against Hamas and its latest escalation with Hezbollah and Iran. The series of blows to Israel’s foe in Lebanon, culminating in the assassination of its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, elicited joy and pride across the political aisle. Our pilots and intelligence were winning, less than a year after their worst debacle.
But the popular war cannot overshadow the deeper sense that our government is still going after us, leading the country to disaster and using the external pretext to win the culture war at home. And it exacerbates the painful disillusionment over the antebellum mentality of living a western-style life in the liberal Tel Aviv enclave, as if the Palestinian-Israeli conflict didn’t exist.
Netanyahu fuelled this self-delusion with his “managing the conflict” policy, avoiding peace or war and allowing secular Jewish Israelis to feel they were part of western Europe or the US west coast. But 7 October burst the bubble, not only on our borders, but also in our lands of inspiration. Pro-Palestinian protest on US campuses and “Free Palestine” signs in London and Paris have been a stark reminder that regardless of our self-image, many progressives in the west don’t treat us as equals, but as belligerent colonialists.
This reckoning caused erstwhile Israeli liberals and leftists to “sober up” and adopt a militant approach towards the Palestinians, while still opposing Netanyahu and his bunch of zealots. The “sobered-up” couldn’t care less about the cataclysmic death and destruction in Gaza – hardly aired on Israeli television – and blame the Palestinians for their self-inflicted disaster.
Some decided to leave: professors extending their sabbatical leaves, affluent families taking “a year off and then we’ll see” and young digital nomads, flocking to the new Israeli havens of Greece, Portugal and Thailand. Many more will follow them if the war brings economic meltdown.
The plight of the hostages, abandoned by Netanyahu, became the rallying cry for those who chose to stay and raise the flag of Israeli liberalism against the hostile government, while supporting its fight against Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran.
But even when the hostages are back, hopefully sooner rather than later, the conflict is not going to end. Rather than deploying more and more force, Israel needs a peaceful way out of the morass: stopping the war and leveraging its battlefield advantage to promote a two-state solution backed by regional normalisation and beginning the rebuilding of Israel and Palestine. We must heed, rather than defy, our western and Arab allies who have our back against Iran.
But Netanyahu won’t listen. And his opponents keep the Tel Aviv party going while waiting, just like the prime minister, for his elusive, horizonless “total victory”.
Aluf Benn is the editor-in-chief of Haaretz
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