As an Irish citizen living in Tel Aviv in Israel, I am constantly asked by Irish family and friends how Israelis view the war on Gaza and now the war with Lebanon, whether they openly talk about the war, and specifically how Israelis justify the devastation and deaths of 40,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
The simple truth is Israelis do not see what the rest of the world sees almost every night on their television screens. The harrowing images of the bodies of bloodied and lifeless small children covered in dust in the arms of a mother or father are rarely, if ever, shown on mainstream Israeli television news. People, of course, talk about the war. Every night Israeli news channels talk of little else. But this is a narrative of a different war. This is a war with Hizbullah, which has sent a barrage of rockets into Israel almost daily since October 7th last year; a war with Hamas which continues to hold hostages captive; and now in an existential fight for survival, a war with Iran and its so-called army proxies from Yemen, Syria and Iraq.
As an Irish journalist, I may have a different political perspective on all of these wars than most of my friends and family in Israel, but reporting a war and living that war are decidedly different. In Israel, the immediacy of the war for me is first and foremost as a father of two young Israeli daughters. As a parent, a challenge is how to talk about the war to our seven-year-old; how to describe the conflict or explain the sirens and the booms; how to talk about the importance of getting to a bomb shelter – and do all of that without either frightening or denying the reality around her. No doubt many Irish readers will be thinking: you are lucky to have the warning of sirens and the safety of bomb shelters. This is undoubtedly true. But you never get used to the deafening shock of those sirens, the immediate sense of panic about what might come next, particularly if your children are not with you, and the thunderous explosions overhead of intercepted missiles.
In the ethnic mosaic that is Israel-Palestine, those missiles and rockets do not discriminate. The single death of the recent Iranian barrage of 180 ballistic missiles was a Palestinian from Gaza living in the city of Jericho in the Occupied West Bank. The dozen children blown apart by a Hizbullah rocket on a sports field in the town of Majdal Shams, in late July, were from the minority Druze community. Ironically, it is the Israeli Palestinian and Druze communities in the north of Israel that have suffered the heaviest bombardment from Hizbullah over the past 12 months.
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Like all parents of Israeli children, I fear for their safety in Israel. I also now fear for their safety abroad. Almost every Irish person is familiar with the typically pleasant reaction when strangers abroad first learn that you are from Ireland. Israelis have always had to be circumspect. Today, out of necessity, they need to hide it. There is a strong belief in Israel that there is little acknowledgment of the depth and widespread popular acceptance of the demonisation of all things Israel.
There is a view here that in many parts of Europe and the US today, it is now perfectly acceptable, almost unquestioned, to openly express a visceral distaste of Israel, and by implication (Jewish) Israelis. As the father of two young Jewish-Israeli girls, that casual, unthinking, badge-of-honour of anti-Israeliness is something that I admit I fear more than any vulgar, disguised or otherwise, anti-Semitism. Most people will agree, in public at least, to condemn the seemingly never-ending regurgitation of anti-Semitic tropes.
The public comment of Fine Gael councillor, Punam Rane, this week – “how many of you know the entire US economy today, is ruled by the Jews, by Israel” – did not go unnoticed in Israel. In response to Rane’s comment, which she later withdrew and apologised for, the chair of the Jewish Council of Ireland said “demonisation of Israel is no more than a dog whistle for anti-Semitism”. Perhaps.
But for many in Israel the demonisation of all Israelis has now become dangerously indivisible from valid and necessary forceful criticism of the actions of the Israeli government. I write those words wondering at what age it is appropriate to discuss with my daughters the International Criminal Courts finding of “plausible genocide” against Israel. When is too early and when is too late?
Israelis themselves are profoundly divided.
Prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu himself remains deeply unpopular, arguably loathed by half the country. But this is a complex and diverse country. One in five Israeli citizens are Israeli Arab – Palestinian, Druze or Bedouin. One in 13 is now a settler living in the Occupied West Bank. Half of Israeli Jews trace their origin to Arab or Muslim states, predominantly Morocco, Iraq, Iran or Algeria. Each of those identities inform diverse political voices.
Just as there is no one Israeli, there is no single Israeli point of view. But there is a strong sense that the country and its citizens have been betrayed by the government. There is widespread belief that Netanyahu, out of narrow political self-interest, has repeatedly thwarted a ceasefire agreement with Hamas. Many Jewish Israelis, particularly those from a secular and politically centrist background, feel the current government has broken a sacrosanct Israeli policy never to abandon its citizens if taken hostage. The mood across the country is bleak.
It is difficult to communicate how the terror attacks of October 7th triggered a real existential fear in Israelis. Just over one year on, that existential fear is exacerbated by a war on multiple fronts and the prospect of a greater conflict with Iran, whose supreme leader Ali Khamenei has in the past said, “the cancerous tumour called Israel must be uprooted from the region”. There is no doubt that this existential fear is also fuelled by Israeli right-wing political rhetoric and growing hubris which suggest that with Hamas’s and now Hezbollah’s military capability degraded, Israel should now focus its military might on Iran to refashion the politics of the Middle East in its favour. Just last Wednesday, Netanyahu was quoted as saying, “if we don’t fight, we die”. The sense of being inexorably driven or led into the abyss is palpable.
Paul Kearns is a freelance journalist from Dublin who lives in Tel Aviv
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