I’d honestly love to know more about what it’s like to be an Israeli right now.
The cities and settlements surrounding the Gaza strip are still mostly vacated, and the government is trying to incentivize former residents to go back to their homes, but is doing a very poor job of it. That gets a fair amount of media attention.
What’s on everyone’s mind are the kidnapped civilians who are still being held by Hamas and subject to conditions that only a terrorist group is capable of. AFAIK the red cross still hasn’t been allowed to see to their safety, so we are all in the dark about their state. The traumatic experiences and inhumane abuse shared by those hostages who did return home, do not bode well for the well-being of the remaining hostages.
There is talk about “the day after the war”, what will need to happen, what needs to change, etc. both within Israel and in Gaza, but it’s still far off. Israel doesn’t want to rule over Gaza, but it can’t allow a terrorist group to rule over it either. Hamas and related groups in Gaza have been sending rockets aimed at Israeli civilians for decades and Israel has mostly shrugged it off, with occasional operations of relatively small scale intended to buy a few months or years of peace each time. This system can’t go on anymore after this war, as far as we’re concerned.
In areas of Israel that are far enough away from Gaza, life more-or-less went back to normal, but there’s always the war looming over our consciousness, and the missing soldiers who are currently at the front lines or have fallen. I’m sure life in Gaza is many orders of magnitude worse right now.
I don’t follow much news (I can’t handle it), but from what I do see, there’s not much coverage of the destruction in Gaza. Not nothing, but not much. We are mostly united in knowing that something must be done and Hamas must be vanquished. That’s Hamas, not Gaza. We know that innocent Gazans are just as much victims as the victims of the Oct 7 horrors… I think so, at least. (There have been some attempts to explain that ‘even those not directly active in Hamas did still support Hamas’, but I don’t buy it - and in either case I think those arguments aren’t made to justify genocide, but to give an excuse for the civilians that died as collateral)
Is the segregation discussed? Is the foundation of Israel controversial among Israelis at all?
Foundation of Israel - not really, as far as I’m aware. Israel has a right to exist, and it’s kind of ridiculous to ask the country or its citizens to say that it doesn’t have a right to exist or anything of that sort. Granted, there’s a lot of opinions going around and I can even think of at least one person I know that holds views like that, but when talking about mainstream, I don’t see it. Cries of “from the river to the sea” you hear elsewhere in the world are synonymous with “evict all Jews from this land”, there’s no other way to interpret it. These cries are just not accepted as legitimate in any sense here.
As for the expansion of Israel since its declaration of independence and the constant friction with both Palestinians and neighboring countries - I don’t think that’s getting much attention specifically now (we’re more focused on the here and now), but historically it has almost always been the defining political point of contention that defines what kind of person you are. The thing is, at least from my limited understanding, Israel didn’t one-sidedly make things end up in this situation (for the West Bank in particular). It’s all been failed diplomacy, which failed because the Palestinian identity basically revolves around struggling against the Israeli state, and not allowing even an inch of “Palestine” to be ruled by Israel. There was no possible way to co-exist, but Israel tried anyway, for decades. The current situation is the result of a whole bunch of messy history, and it ended up this way because yes, Israel is stronger than Palestine, and will do what it must to subdue and prevent attacks on it. I don’t like it one bit, but I also don’t see any way out of it. But, I’m not a politician, and my knowledge of history is actually embarrassingly lacking, so my views on this are very much NOT set in stone.
As I said, the whole topic of “what to do with the Palestinians” used to be the center of attention in politics, but in recent years it has stopped being that. The reason is that we’ve given up, as a collective at least. We’ve been at it for over 70 years and are farther than ever to a solution. And from a cold viewpoint, the current situation is ideal for Israel (we thought, before the Oct 7 disillusion) - we have security and confidence that we won’t be attacked.
Worth noting that “segregation” is far from accurate - the West Bank is not Israeli territory, it’s not under its civil control. And like everything else around here - it’s complicated. Anti-Israel propaganda will have you believe “it’s not complicated”, but it really is. The simple, surface-level “Israel is committing genocide” is less than even the tip of the iceberg.
Sorry for the wall of text, please let me know if you’ve even received this reply.
I can 100% tell you that we are consuming completely different media and I am trying very hard to find balanced sources and honestly trying not to over do it because I’m mentally exhausted by the news. I am always a skeptic because I know public media cares more about drama than truth frequently. However, I can say with certainty too many innocent people are dying and it makes me extremely worried about normal folks like you who are so close to this danger. Non-Israeli jews in the states are also turning their backs on the Israeli government… I don’t know what I’m trying to get at other than please be safe and I really wish you well. Thank you for your time.
The cities and settlements surrounding the Gaza strip are still mostly vacated, and the government is trying to incentivize former residents to go back to their homes, but is doing a very poor job of it. That gets a fair amount of media attention.
What’s on everyone’s mind are the kidnapped civilians who are still being held by Hamas and subject to conditions that only a terrorist group is capable of. AFAIK the red cross still hasn’t been allowed to see to their safety, so we are all in the dark about their state. The traumatic experiences and inhumane abuse shared by those hostages who did return home, do not bode well for the well-being of the remaining hostages.
There is talk about “the day after the war”, what will need to happen, what needs to change, etc. both within Israel and in Gaza, but it’s still far off. Israel doesn’t want to rule over Gaza, but it can’t allow a terrorist group to rule over it either. Hamas and related groups in Gaza have been sending rockets aimed at Israeli civilians for decades and Israel has mostly shrugged it off, with occasional operations of relatively small scale intended to buy a few months or years of peace each time. This system can’t go on anymore after this war, as far as we’re concerned.
In areas of Israel that are far enough away from Gaza, life more-or-less went back to normal, but there’s always the war looming over our consciousness, and the missing soldiers who are currently at the front lines or have fallen. I’m sure life in Gaza is many orders of magnitude worse right now.
I don’t follow much news (I can’t handle it), but from what I do see, there’s not much coverage of the destruction in Gaza. Not nothing, but not much. We are mostly united in knowing that something must be done and Hamas must be vanquished. That’s Hamas, not Gaza. We know that innocent Gazans are just as much victims as the victims of the Oct 7 horrors… I think so, at least. (There have been some attempts to explain that ‘even those not directly active in Hamas did still support Hamas’, but I don’t buy it - and in either case I think those arguments aren’t made to justify genocide, but to give an excuse for the civilians that died as collateral)
Foundation of Israel - not really, as far as I’m aware. Israel has a right to exist, and it’s kind of ridiculous to ask the country or its citizens to say that it doesn’t have a right to exist or anything of that sort. Granted, there’s a lot of opinions going around and I can even think of at least one person I know that holds views like that, but when talking about mainstream, I don’t see it. Cries of “from the river to the sea” you hear elsewhere in the world are synonymous with “evict all Jews from this land”, there’s no other way to interpret it. These cries are just not accepted as legitimate in any sense here.
As for the expansion of Israel since its declaration of independence and the constant friction with both Palestinians and neighboring countries - I don’t think that’s getting much attention specifically now (we’re more focused on the here and now), but historically it has almost always been the defining political point of contention that defines what kind of person you are. The thing is, at least from my limited understanding, Israel didn’t one-sidedly make things end up in this situation (for the West Bank in particular). It’s all been failed diplomacy, which failed because the Palestinian identity basically revolves around struggling against the Israeli state, and not allowing even an inch of “Palestine” to be ruled by Israel. There was no possible way to co-exist, but Israel tried anyway, for decades. The current situation is the result of a whole bunch of messy history, and it ended up this way because yes, Israel is stronger than Palestine, and will do what it must to subdue and prevent attacks on it. I don’t like it one bit, but I also don’t see any way out of it. But, I’m not a politician, and my knowledge of history is actually embarrassingly lacking, so my views on this are very much NOT set in stone.
As I said, the whole topic of “what to do with the Palestinians” used to be the center of attention in politics, but in recent years it has stopped being that. The reason is that we’ve given up, as a collective at least. We’ve been at it for over 70 years and are farther than ever to a solution. And from a cold viewpoint, the current situation is ideal for Israel (we thought, before the Oct 7 disillusion) - we have security and confidence that we won’t be attacked.
Worth noting that “segregation” is far from accurate - the West Bank is not Israeli territory, it’s not under its civil control. And like everything else around here - it’s complicated. Anti-Israel propaganda will have you believe “it’s not complicated”, but it really is. The simple, surface-level “Israel is committing genocide” is less than even the tip of the iceberg.
Sorry for the wall of text, please let me know if you’ve even received this reply.
Thank you so much for your response!!!
I can 100% tell you that we are consuming completely different media and I am trying very hard to find balanced sources and honestly trying not to over do it because I’m mentally exhausted by the news. I am always a skeptic because I know public media cares more about drama than truth frequently. However, I can say with certainty too many innocent people are dying and it makes me extremely worried about normal folks like you who are so close to this danger. Non-Israeli jews in the states are also turning their backs on the Israeli government… I don’t know what I’m trying to get at other than please be safe and I really wish you well. Thank you for your time.