Amid isolation over Gaza, Israelis grapple with ‘becoming outcasts’
| Tel Aviv, Israel
Israel’s sense of isolation is deepening as its war against Hamas in Gaza drags on.
Around the world, protests against Israel fill city streets and college campuses. Legal actions against Israel and its leaders are proceeding at the International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court. More countries have recognized a Palestinian state.
Why We Wrote This
A story focused onBoth sides in the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza are seeking international empathy. In Israel, a growing sense of global isolation is fueling both support for the hard-line government and a feeling of abandonment.
“We are slowly becoming outcasts, and that is a very difficult feeling,” says Amit Schwartz, a left-leaning tech employee who works in Tel Aviv.
Growing up with social media, young liberal Israelis identified with #MeToo and Black Lives Matter; they rooted for LGBTQ+ rights, traveled the world, and made friends with like-minded people.
Now, their friends abroad are identifying with the Palestinian cause without, they say, showing empathy for them. They feel abandoned.
“I am truly sorry for any innocent people in Gaza that are suffering or who were killed,” says Daniela Yoeli, a Ph.D. student in Jerusalem. “But ... Israel is obliged to provide safety to its citizens.”
Ms. Yoeli says she has identified over the years with global progressive causes such as LGBTQ+ and women’s rights. “I cared about all their suffering,” she says. “But when I’m in danger, and when I suffer, it doesn’t count.”
Israel’s sense of international isolation is deepening as its war against Hamas in Gaza drags on.
Protests erupted around the world after an Israeli strike in Rafah ignited a fire that killed dozens of displaced Palestinians. The International Court of Justice, already weighing South Africa’s genocide allegation against Israel, had ordered Israel to limit its offensive there.
Spain, Norway, and Ireland unilaterally recognized a Palestinian state.
Why We Wrote This
A story focused onBoth sides in the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza are seeking international empathy. In Israel, a growing sense of global isolation is fueling both support for the hard-line government and a feeling of abandonment.
The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court at The Hague is seeking the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including the starvation of Palestinian civilians.
And the United States, the Jewish state’s closest ally, is calling on Israel to reach a cease-fire deal with Hamas and set out a day-after plan for the Gaza Strip. On Friday, President Joe Biden challenged both Israel and Hamas to accept the latest proposal, which is creating sharp divisions inside the Israeli Cabinet.
“We are slowly becoming outcasts, and that is a very difficult feeling,” says Amit Schwartz, a left-leaning tech employee who works in Tel Aviv.
For young liberal Israelis like Mr. Schwartz, the war has triggered a crisis of belonging, of sorts. While the Hamas-led massacre Oct. 7 led many across the political spectrum to harden their views about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, these young liberals say the subsequent stream of accusations against Israel has created for them a sense of abandonment, even betrayal.
Israel’s plight is misunderstood, they say, the global isolation unwarranted.
“I really disagree with the opinion that we are committing genocide,” Mr. Schwartz says, adding that many in the West are “disconnected from reality.”
“I feel frustration that there is such misunderstanding about the situation here,” he says. “Islamic extremists are trying to take over, and Israel is fighting this.”
Growing up with social media has enabled young liberal Israelis to feel like citizens of the world. They identified with sweeping global movements like #MeToo and Black Lives Matter; they rooted for LGBTQ+ rights, protested capitalist greed, traveled the world, and made friends with like-minded people abroad.
Then came the horrors of Oct. 7. Many around the world expressed sympathy with Israel, but attention in some quarters pivoted almost immediately to the plight of Palestinians in Gaza, caught in the path of Israel’s retaliation against Hamas. As the civilian death toll soared into the tens of thousands, so did expressions of rage against Israel, including on university campuses.
The global backlash isn’t unfamiliar to older Israelis, and indeed Mr. Netanyahu’s right-wing government is parlaying the criticism into growing political support. But it has shaken many in younger age groups who see friends abroad identify with the Palestinian cause without, they say, showing empathy for them or even trying to understand the complexities of the war.
“When I suffer, it doesn’t count”
“I am truly sorry for any innocent people in Gaza that are suffering or who were killed,” says Daniela Yoeli, a Ph.D. student of computational neuroscience at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. “But the war in Gaza is justified, because Israel is obliged to provide safety to its citizens.”
The Israeli army has sought to minimize civilian casualties, even at the cost of soldiers’ lives, she says, arguing that Hamas bears a lot of the blame for using the civilians as human shields.
Ms. Yoeli, who says she no longer feels safe following Oct. 7, says she has identified over the years with global progressive causes such as LGBTQ+ and women’s rights and animal welfare.
“I cared about all their suffering,” she says. “But when I’m in danger, and when I suffer, it doesn’t count. ... And when I say I, I mean me, my people, and my friends and everyone here in Israel.”
Dr. Ofir Sheffer, of the Kaye Academic College of Education in Beer Sheba, researches the lives of young Israelis and their civic participation. She says progressive millennials are among those who took to the streets last year to protest against the right-wing government’s proposed judicial overhaul.
“They see the judicial reform and now the October war as a clash between liberalism and traditionalism, the old world and the new,” she says. “Many of them are in reserve duty fighting for what they perceive as a war for a more liberal Middle East and a more progressive world. They don’t understand why the liberal world is not standing with them.”
Many young Israelis have moved to the right since the start of the war and hardened their views of Palestinians, she says. But those on the left still hold their liberal values. When they see the destruction and the devastation in Gaza, they feel a huge amount of “dissonance,” she says.
“Within Israel, they go to the anti-government protests,” she adds. “But on Twitter, they fight the European trolls and defend their country.”
Evenings on social media
Ori Zehngut, an engineering master’s student at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, says the harrowing images from Gaza are “being taken out of context,” and blames anti-Israel and antisemitic forces for inflaming sentiment.
The war, he says, was inevitable after Oct. 7. “Maybe we could have managed it differently,” he says. “But ... we would have anyway had difficult images from Gaza.”
Mr. Zehngut, who identifies as a centrist, served in the reserves for four months with his artillery unit on the Lebanese border at the start of the war. These days, after studies and work, he spends many of his evenings on social media, to “counter the huge amount of anti-Israel spin that exists out there.”
Amid the global criticism of Israel, meanwhile, support for Mr. Netanyahu and his hard-right coalition partners, who portray the dispute over the war in “us-versus-antisemitic-them” terms, has increased, according to a poll last week.
The global criticism “gives glue to the coalition,” says Dr. Yonatan Freeman, an international relations specialist at Hebrew University, who dismisses talk of Israeli isolation as just a “perception” generated by the loud “megaphone” of social media.
Nevertheless, the isolation feels real to Israelis like Yotam, a Tel Aviv resident in his late 30s who works for a local tech firm and has been connecting with people through social media since he was a teenager.
He identified more with liberal-thinking friends in the U.S. and Europe than with his Sabbath-observing Orthodox Israeli neighbor, says Yotam, who asked to withhold his full name, in a phone interview.
“They had me to talk to”
His Northern California friends identify with the Palestinians and have not bothered to inquire about him or his opinions of the war, he says, leaving him “feeling a little betrayed” and “very alone.”
“I understand why they chose [the Palestinian] side,” he says, because as a “left-wing Jewish person” he, too, always roots for the weaker side.
But he says he expected his friends to at least try to dig a little deeper, to understand the complexity of the situation. “They had me to talk to, to ask questions to,” he says. “But they passed.”
Yotam has not let go of his left-wing convictions.
“We have to stop the war in Gaza; I still think we must talk about a Palestinian state,” he says. “We must destroy Hamas, of course, but not how we are doing now.”
He hopes global opinion will change, but Israelis like him will have to work for it, Yotam says.
“We will have to make a correction here in Israel,” he says. “That is why I go to protest twice a week, because ... if we don’t show the world that there are very many forces within Israel that still fight for this place and for its moral equality, this will be our end.”
