2 hours ago
3
Defying a chorus of global condemnation and international law, Israel nevertheless proceeded earlier this month with the de facto annexation of the West Bank, home to more than three million Palestinians and a territory it has illegally occupied since 1967.
The international criticism that met the announcement was hardly new. Over the two years of its genocide in Gaza, Israel has set itself on course to become, in the words of some of its own lawmakers, a “pariah state”. Its prime minister and former defence minister are wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court, while global revulsion over its actions in Gaza has pushed the boycott of Israeli goods to the forefront of consumers’ minds.
Recommended Stories
list of 3 items- list 1 of 3After dozens died in Israeli jails, death penalty law rattles Palestinians
- list 2 of 3‘Zionist to the core’: Swiss commentator slams Israeli bobsleigh team
- list 3 of 3Israeli settlers displace 15 Palestinian families in West Bank: Official
Four countries – Spain, Slovenia, the Netherlands, and the Republic of Ireland – are refusing to take part in the popular song competition Eurovision in protest at Israel’s presence. A global campaign is also under way to suspend Israel from both European UEFA and international FIFA football competitions, while South Africa’s case accusing Israel of genocide in the International Court of Justice is ongoing.
But in Israel, this international isolation – and the killing of more than 72,000 Palestinians – is not significantly changing opinions on how the country should behave. In fact, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu still has a strong chance of winning elections set to be held this year, and much of the opposition towards him comes from his domestic policies, rather than disagreement over how he has treated Palestinians, which many remain indifferent to.
“Most people don’t even know we’ve largely annexed the West Bank,” said Orly Noy, the editor of the Hebrew-language news site Local Call. “It just isn’t reported that way.”
“They may be aware that some of the rules of governance have changed, but they probably won’t know that it’s been de facto annexed until there’s an international response that affects them, such as Eurovision,” she said, noting that the withdrawal of the four nations in objection to Israel’s genocide has been framed in Israel as being motivated primarily by anti-Semitism.
Disinterest
For many Israelis, Palestinians barely exist, observers have said, with the extreme settler violence perpetrated upon them going largely unreported or cast as somehow deserved.
“The media never really reports opposition to anything Israel does,” Noy continued. “It simply dismisses it as anti-Semitic, and presents the world as being made up of those that are either for us, or against us.”
“Why would they [Israelis] ever reflect on any of their government’s actions?” she asked rhetorically. “They have the answers already: anti-Semitism, victimhood and defiance.”
Little of the carnage that Israel has inflicted on Gaza has made its way to Israeli television – overwhelmingly the most popular way of receiving news – over the course of the war. On the contrary, Israeli news channels covering the conflict have focused on the number of “terrorists” killed, or framed concern over the nature of the war entirely through the prism of the 250 or so captives taken by Hamas and other groups in 2023.
In print, criticism of the government or its war has largely been left to smaller outlets on the left.
In such a landscape, where Israel’s actions go largely unreported, criticism of its government’s conduct is easily cast by lawmakers as anti-Semitic in origin, with just the accusation serving as a second “Iron Dome” – a reference to Israel’s anti-missile defence system – in deflecting criticism of the state, said Neve Gordon, an Israeli professor of international law and human rights at Queen Mary University of London.
“Israel always has to be the victim, and that victimhood justifies any level of violence in its defence,” Gordon said.
“I visited Israel around 10 times during the first year and a half of the war,” he said, describing the period of war when Israel had killed tens of thousands of men, women and children in Gaza and starved thousands more.
“All you heard about was the hostages. You never heard about what was happening in Gaza,” he said, “It’s a repetition of trauma that erases everything else, including compassion.”
Siege mentality
According to Netanyahu – speaking at a conference in January – the anti-Semitism that Israel faces runs deeper than mere racism.
Rather, the battle against anti-Semitism is the battle over the future of civilization, Netanyahu said.
“Racism has existed throughout history. That’s not what anti-Semitism is,” he told attendees. “Anti-Semitism began as a creed 2,500 years ago, 500 years before the birth of Christianity, with an ideological attack against the Jews that kept on metamorphosing over centuries.”
Decades of similar statements from a variety of politicians have left their mark, said Daniel Bar-Tal, professor of social-political psychology at Tel Aviv University, noting that an entire nation is now “indoctrinated” into a world view that positions its own history as the overwhelming counterweight to whatever actions it chooses to undertake or criticism of it.
“Many Israeli Jews have a kind of siege mentality,” Bar-Tal said, describing how criticism of Israel was met by a form of “moral silencing” weaponised and propagated by the government. “They imagine that the rest of the world just wants Israel to disappear.”
“They think, you Europeans didn’t say anything about us during World War II,” he added. “You did nothing to stop the Holocaust, and now you want to attack the one place where Jews feel safe?”
