Fear and a far-right lurch: How October 7 reshaped Israel

Three years on, the trauma of October 7 continues to reshape Israel’s politics, wars and place in the world. Save Share For the vast majority of Israelis, modern history is divided between the period before the Hamas-led attacks of October 7, 2023 and the time after. In the three years since Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza began, Israeli society has undergone fundamental changes. A sense of collective trauma has been amplified through political rhetoric and media hysteria to hitherto unseen levels in modern Israel, observers say. Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians, and Israel has expanded its attacks to several regional states. A series of settler pogroms in the occupied West Bank, fueled by the Israeli far-right, have contributed to Israel’s growing isolation from much of the world. Daniel Bar-Tal, an Israeli political psychologist at Tel Aviv University, said October 7 shattered the myth of Israeli military invincibility. Before October 7, 2023, a powerful sense of confidence regarding Israel’s supposed technological and military superiority was common. That ended in 2023 when Hamas and other groups stormed into Israel: Nearly 1,200 people were killed, and Palestinian groups took about 250 others captive. The Israeli public had been generally isolated from the consequences of the military’s violent actions in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, and Bar-Tal said many were shocked that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu might have had prior intelligence about Hamas’s plans. Inside Israel, the psychological impact of the attacks was palpable. “It disrupted [everything] immensely. It is a crisis that doesn’t leave the population,” he told Al Jazeera. Palestinians, in particular, have lived with Israel’s genocidal response ever since. Politicians have exploited the fear and trauma of the October 7 attacks to further their own ends, and are using it to target Palestinians as a whole. “There is no doubt that many Israelis were gripped by genuine fear after October 7, but there is also no doubt, in my view, that political forces have exploited that fear to erase virtually every achievement made over the years in Jewish-Palestinian relations,” Israeli sociologist Yehouda Shenhav-Shahrabani said. Countless polls show that Israeli society has lurched even further to the right over the past three years....