Enduring pain keeps public support for Gaza war strong in Israel
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[January 18, 2024]
By Estelle Shirbon
TEL AVIV (Reuters) - Life in Tel Aviv appears normal for Rhona Ukrainsky
three months after Hamas killed 1,200 Israelis on Oct. 7, but the pain
and fear are just under the surface, causing her to cry when the subject
is mentioned and flinch when she hears a loud noise.
The trauma inflicted by the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust
has not faded. She feels distraught over the hatred directed at her
country by Hamas and its allies, and fearful for the safety of her three
young children.
"Sometimes you just try to keep with daily things, take the kids, go to
work," said Ukrainsky, 35, a finance director at a medical equipment
company, who was out walking in the city with her newborn baby in a
pram.
"But it's lying down there at the bottom of the heart," she said, unable
to contain her tears.
Just over 100 days after Oct. 7, enduring pain is a key reason why polls
in Israel show consistently high support for its military offensive in
Gaza, even as optimism over whether it can achieve its stated goals has
started to erode.
Israeli forces have laid waste to much of the Palestinian enclave,
killing over 24,000 people and wounding over 61,000, Gaza health
officials say, as well as displacing most of the population, causing
widespread hunger and disease.
The scale of the deaths and suffering in Gaza have shocked much of the
world and prompted widespread criticism of Israel's actions, including
accusations of genocide brought by South Africa at the U.N.'s top court
-- dismissed as false by Israel.
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But within the country the media are not dwelling on the unfolding
humanitarian disaster in Gaza, and for most people the focus is on doing
whatever it takes to keep Israelis safe and restore their shattered
confidence.
"It's not a war that we chose. It was thrust upon us by this terrible
invasion and all the atrocities that were committed," said Ray Parnes,
92, who immigrated to Israel from the United States in 1958. "There's
never been a more just war."
DANGER EVERYWHERE
One reason why Oct. 7 is still so painful for Israelis is empathy with
over 130 hostages still being held in Gaza, out of an estimated 253
seized by Hamas that day, and with their families. Photos of the
hostages are everywhere and tireless campaigning by the families is
covered daily by the media.
Another is the relentless drip-drip of harrowing details about what
happened on Oct. 7, including sexual violence against women, still
emerging from witness accounts.
Televised funerals of soldiers killed in Gaza are also an emotional
wrench in a country where most adults have to do military service and
identification with the army is strong.
"For the rest of the world, Oct. 7 is something that happened three
months ago, but Israelis are still living it every day," said
commentator Chemi Shalev.
In a society steeped in the history of antisemitic persecution, from
Biblical times to the Holocaust, the scale and ferocity of the Hamas
attack awakened fears ingrained into people's psyche since childhood,
said political scientist Tamar Hermann.
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![](../images/011824PIX/news_n2.jpg)
Demonstrators embrace at a 24-hour protest, that calls for the
release of Israeli hostages in Gaza and marks 100 days since the
October 7 attack by Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, amid the
ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Tel Aviv, Israel,
January 13, 2024. REUTERS/Alexandre Meneghini
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2024/Jan/18/images/ads/current/xamis_lda_LUAL_2023.png)
She pointed out that Jewish holidays such as Passover, Hanukkah and
Purim commemorate moments when the Jewish people escaped from or
revolted against persecution, or survived attempted extermination.
"The political culture and religion and everything here socialises
Israelis into believing that danger is everywhere all the time,"
said Hermann, the academic director of a polling unit at the
authoritative Israel Democracy Institute.
Scenes of celebration among some Palestinians after Oct. 7 and polls
showing support for Hamas rising in the occupied West Bank, both
prominently covered by Israeli media, felt unbearably painful and
threatening to most Israelis, she said.
'NO OTHER PLACE FOR US'
Hermann said street protests against the war in Gaza, seen across
the globe, and condemnation by some governments and U.N. officials,
reinforced Israelis' sense of being alone in a hostile world, able
to rely only on themselves.
"It makes me feel like there's no place other than Israel for us,"
said Ukrainsky.
Oren Persico of the Seventh Eye, an independent website covering
Israeli media, said one of the reasons why many Israelis felt the
criticism abroad was unfair was because they were not seeing what
the rest of the world was seeing in Gaza.
Persico said mainstream domestic media were showing images captured
by the military, such as strikes on buildings seen from the air, or
by journalists embedded with the military, but covered very few
personal stories or harrowing scenes like those receiving blanket
coverage outside Israel.
"You do not see the wounded, the women and children, you do not see
the dead, you do not see the grief of Gazans," he said, attributing
this to editorial choices. "The rationale is that showing those
pictures might hurt the Israeli war effort."
For Ukrainsky, like for many of her compatriots, Israel has no
choice but to fight Hamas and Palestinian suffering is another
tragic consequence of what Hamas did on Oct. 7.
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"I feel very compassionate for the suffering of the innocent
civilians there in Gaza, but it's too difficult to do this operation
(without harming them). We must do what we need to do to protect
ourselves as a state and as a nation," she said.
(Additional reporting by Rami Amichay and Dan Williams; Editing by
Gareth Jones)
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