Moments of acute trauma can completely change societies. But that is not exactly what happened to Israeli society on October 7, 2023. It was not transformed completely by the events of that horrible day. It did not take on entirely new traits or convictions that did not exist before. The change was in the way the old traits and convictions began to present themselves, and what that means for the country’s sense of self.
Since its establishment, Israel has been based on the notion of Jewish superiority, particularly with regard to the Palestinians. Settlements on occupied Palestinian territory were a makeshift plan B; the original plan upon Israel’s establishment, ample evidence shows, was to drive most of the Palestinians out of the state’s boundaries altogether. This was to ensure that the country would have, in Israeli parlance, the “strategic depth” necessary for withstanding attacks it perceived to be inevitable. The Palestinians who stayed were to be either second-class citizens or subjects of occupation, devoid of rights.
Israeli society always saw the occupation as a necessity. Palestinians, most of us Jewish Israelis have been taught since infancy, want to either kill us or drive us off land that they regard as exclusively theirs. We had to keep them in check, we were led to believe, to ensure that they would not be able to carry out this almost hardwired mandate.
Still, we were aware of the fact that an ongoing military occupation would not serve us well in our quest to distinguish ourselves in the eyes of the West in a region it only saw as conflict-ridden. We desperately wanted to belong to the West – the same West whose members had, for the most part, declared the occupation a crime. With this vision, Israel invested tremendous resources and effort in normalising its occupation.
Israelis did not – and still do not – like to speak of “occupation”. They consider it a pejorative term for a complicated situation. In the early 1990s, it seemed that an independent Palestinian state was in the offing. The ascendance of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to a position of nearly uninterrupted power foiled this potential development.
This was, in fact, a matter of consensus among Israeli politicians and Israelis generally: that a Palestinian state would, by definition, be detrimental to Israel’s security because the Palestinians had never successfully demonstrated that their paramount wish was no longer the destruction of Israel and the killing of Jews.
The normalisation of the occupation meant to do away with the very notion of an Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There was no conflict; Israel was doing what it had to do to defend itself. The Palestinians had only one option: accede to their status as subjects or second-class citizens under non-democratic Israeli rule.
Once this division of powers had been established, Israel could turn its attention towards its relations with the rest of the region. In both the run-up to and the aftermath of the Abraham Accords, Israelis considered the normalisation of relations with Saudi Arabia to be the ultimate prize – one they thought would ensure co-operation from other Middle Eastern countries. Such co-operation, especially with regard to the struggle for regional influence with Iran, would consolidate, the thinking went, the inevitability of Israel’s position of status in the Middle East and would enhance Israeli security.
This seemed closer than ever as we entered the second half of 2023. Even in the polarised landscape of American politics, normalisation seemed like the one goal that could unite Democrats and Republicans. Some of the intelligence that came out of Gaza seems to suggest that the Hamas attack on October 7 of that year was very much connected to a belief within the movement’s leadership that this might be the very last opportunity to act violently and irrevocably before the Palestinian cause would be subsumed by the new normal.
While vengeance played a role in Israel’s retaliation, I would argue it was not Israel’s main motivation for embarking upon a campaign of unprecedented bombings, death and destruction. The Hamas attack shattered the Israeli narrative of normalisation. Where once the mechanics of occupation and apartheid were not spoken of loudly or publicly by Israelis, the great majority of us now saw them as the least lethal or problematic of the measures we must take to ensure our security.
The psychologist Sigmund Freud spoke of the psyche as consisting of three parts: the id, the ego and the superego. The deeper, unconscious layer that drives desire and aggression is the id. The superego embodies wider society’s ideals and expectations, and the ego is the middle layer, which mediates between the id and the superego.
Before October 7, the coercive nature of the occupation was the collective Israeli id. It was the murky heart of our subconscious, a fantasy and nightmare that should not be wholly fulfilled or even articulated. The occupation fed and sustained notions of Jewish superiority, but it did so – or so we thought – discreetly. Our collective superego, the formal and overt rationale for our political demeanour towards the Palestinians, was diplomatic and strategic. So many in Israel believed we spoke the language of polite interaction, of sustained behavioural patterns.
Following the Hamas attack, our id and our superego changed places. Any notion of peaceful resolution was quickly and forcefully submerged. The fantasies and the nightmares were not only released but became our new norms. We considered ourselves entirely legitimated in discussing actions like ethnic cleansing openly. After all, did not the Palestinians prove that this was the only way Israel could “deal” with them if Israelis wanted to live? What pity should we have for those who claimed they wanted to destroy us? We knew them for what they were – “Amalek” and terrorists.
Initially, we claimed a clear distinction between Hamas and Palestinians civilians. Soon enough, when it became clear that there was no limit on civilian deaths as “collateral damage” in pursuit of Hamas, Israel demonstrated that – as far as it was concerned – there were no innocents in Gaza. Fantasies and nightmares have no room for such nuances.
This is the most meaningful change in Israeli society. Every aspect of Israeli society has been influenced by this recasting of fantasy and nightmare as norm. The value of life has cheapened considerably. Levels of societal violence have risen sharply. Notions ranging from divine redemption to a global tsunami of antisemitism are now articulated as incontrovertible facts.
Still, the most pertinent aspect of this change has to do with Israel’s actions in Gaza. It is not coincidental that, other than a desire to forcefully make the Palestinians disappear, Israel does not appear to be guided by any clear strategic logic or vision. Fantasies and nightmares require no such commitments.
