I have had a jarring week with several conversations about various narratives about Palestinians in Gaza and what Israel is supposedly doing to them. At first I thought that what made these conversations jarring was that the narratives are just so distorted and callous. Then, today I read an article about the women soldiers at the Nahal Oz base who were overrun and murdered on 7 October, and their base torched.
When I read the horrific scenes at this base, and what must have happened to these soldiers that the IDF left insufficiently protected, I realised that one of the main reasons that this week was so jarring is because for so many Israelis, we are still being traumatised by not only the attacks on 7 October, but by everything that has followed since then.
Intellectually I know that it is now 75 days after that dark day. Emotionally, viscerally, I feel like it was last week, or perhaps two weeks ago. All these narratives about Israel committing genocide, ethnic cleansing, erasing Palestinian culture, and more are just continuations of those attacks. This doesn’t mean that we are losing our way and giving into the criticism. If anything, this draws us closer together as Israelis and as Jews (often despite our personal or political differences).
I mentioned the following on Mastodon and Threads the other day –
It is very difficult to have a meaningful conversation about Palestinians, whether those caught up in the war in Gaza, or elsewhere if your (you know who you are) starting point is that Israel, and the people who live in Israel (the majority of whom are Jews) don’t have a right to exist and a right to self-determination on our ancestral land. 🇮🇱
It’s not that we are not aware of the casualties in Gaza. We are. Right now, though, we are still under attack. Not just in Gaza and in northern Israel. We are under attack globally as Jews and Israelis. So for now, we are defending ourselves because this is a fight for our survival as a nation and as a people.
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What do you think?