War is unleashing Incendiary Rhetoric in Israel
The Times Editorial Board – A Reflection on the Israel-Hamas War and the Palestinians’ Right to Live in the West Bank
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Any kind of shared future is most likely a longer way off than it was a month ago. Palestinians already knew that. I wonder if the day before Hamas attacks were considered peace? Maybe for Israelis it was, but for Palestinians it wasn’t.
It has been lost in the discourse of the Israel-Hamas war that this was a random attack. The truth is, even in times of relative peace, Palestinians are second-class citizens in Israel — if they are deemed citizens at all. According to Israeli law, Palestinians do not have the right to national self-determination, which is reserved for Jewish citizens of the state. Palestinians have the right to movement, but a variety of laws restricts where they can live, how they can see their relatives, and even what their personal identifications are.
The attacks broke open that state of play. The impossibility of governing two peoples but privileging one of them over the other was laid bare by the occupation, as was the unsustainable nature.
Israeli officials point out that Hamas is also active in the West Bank and say that many of those clashes resulted from the military’s efforts to root out militants. Three Israelis have been killed in attacks by Palestinians.
Many Gazans have parents who were forbidden to enter in certain areas because they were born a few miles away. When they were children they used to walk through the groves in Yaffa or olive fields in Qumya, which later became a kibbutz.
In the wake of the October 7 attacks, the National Security Minister had given hundreds of assault rifles to civilian squad in the settlements in the northern West Bank. So far, the ministry has purchased 10,000 assault rifles for such teams around the country. It is part of the atmosphere which has killed more than 130 Palestinians in the West Bank since Oct. 7.
The Israeli War on the Gaza Strip and a Palestinian Perspective on Israel’s War with the Amalek Regime in the Genocide Regime
For the past month, normal life in Ramallah — a city in the West Bank usually known for its young population and its vibrant nightlife — has been brought to a standstill.
Some Israelis are worried that the war in Gaza will cause more deaths in the country due to the spread of radical rhetoric, which has been a political battle within Israel all year.
Last week, another right-wing minister talked to a radio station about the idea of a nuclear strike on Gaza, noting that there was no one in the territory who wasn’t a combatant. Mr. Netanyahu suspended Mr. Eliyahu because his comments weren’t in line with reality.
Mr. Netanyahu says that the Israeli military is trying to prevent harm to civilians. But with the death toll rising to more than 11,000, according to the Gaza health ministry, those claims are being met with skepticism, even in the United States, which has pressed Israel to allow daily four-hour humanitarian pauses in the combat.
Such reassurances are also belied by the language Mr. Netanyahu uses with audiences in Israel. His reference to Amalek came in a speech delivered in Hebrew on Oct. 28 as Israel was launching the ground invasion. While some Jewish scholars argue that the scripture’s message is metaphoric not literal, his words resonated widely, as video of his speech was shared on social media, often by critics.
“These are not just one-off statements, made in the heat of the moment,” said Michael Sfard, an Israeli human rights lawyer and author of “The Wall and the Gate: Israel, Palestine and the Legal Battle for Human Rights.”
Yehuda Shaul, one of the directors of Ofek in Jerusalem, has collected hundreds of statements since October 7 that he says have the potential to cause harm. His list also includes Eyal Golan, an Israeli pop singer; Sara Netanyahu, Mrs. Netanyahu; and Yinon Magal, a host on Israel’s right-wing Channel 14.
Ms. Netanyahu said that calling them human animals would be disrespectful to animals.
“It’s time for Nakba 2,” Mr. Magal wrote on X on Oct. 7, a reference to the mass displacement and flight of Palestinians before and after Israel’s creation in 1948, which Palestinians refer to as the “nakba,” or “catastrophe.”
In the West Bank last week, several academics and officials cited Mr. Eliyahu’s remark about dropping an atomic bomb on Gaza as evidence of Israel’s intention to clear the enclave of all Palestinians — a campaign they call a latter-day nakba.
Eran Halperin, a professor of psychology at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, argued that the use of inflammatory language by Israeli leaders is not surprising, and even understandable, given the brutality of the Hamas attacks, which inflicted collective and individual trauma on Israelis.
Israel’s survival hangs in the balance for the first time in over 40 years. The country is facing the prospect of a multi-front conflict against Hezbollah and Hamas, as well as a potential uprising in the West Bank.
Hamas and the War of Gaza: Implications for Israel and for the Security and Democracy of the Palestinians, the Israeli Government, and Social Media
“People in this situation look for very, very clear answers,” Professor Halperin said. You do not have the mental luxury of complexity. You want to see people who are good and bad.
Halperin said that the government can ask people to makesacrifices for the war effort bycasting the threat posed by Hamas in stark terms.
Mr. Sfard stated that such language will make it difficult for the conflict to end with the Palestinians, erode the democracy of Israel, and create a young generation that is easily used in their discussion with their friends.
He said that turning the wheel back required a lot of education. “There is an old Jewish proverb: ‘A hundred wise men will struggle a long time to take out a stone that one stupid person dropped into the well.’”
Two days after the attacks, Yoav Gallant, the defense minister, said that Israel was fighting human animals and would eradicate Hamas in Gaza.
Inflammatory language has also been used by journalists, retired generals, celebrities, and social media influencers, according to experts who track the statements. Calls for Gaza to be “flattened,” “erased” or “destroyed” had been mentioned about 18,000 times since Oct. 7 in Hebrew posts on X, the site formerly known as Twitter, said FakeReporter, an Israeli group that monitors disinformation and hate speech. The phrases were only mentioned 16 times over the course of a month and a half.
The discussion of ideas that were off limits before Oct. 7 have been normalized due to the cumulative effect.
iary statements are not limited to Israel. Ghazi Hamad, a senior leader of Hamas, vowed on Oct. 24 that the group would wipe out Israel as a country, and appeared to exult in the barbaric acts that his militants had carried out against Israeli civilians. He said that they are not ashamed to say it. We have to teach Israel a lesson, because we will do it again and again.
