The Opinions - I Live in Israel. I Never Hear About What My Country Is Doing to Gaza.

Episode Date: October 7, 2024

Israeli anger toward Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been building in the year since the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks. Mairav Zonszein, an Israeli-American journalist and analyst, argues that this anger does not extend to the plight of the Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank. More than 41,000 people have been killed in Gaza, and yet, she says, Israelis are stuck in a cycle of “apathy” and “indifference,” unable to fully realize the devastation befalling their neighbors.Thoughts? Email us at [e-mail]. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This is The Opinions, a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times opinion. You've heard the news. Here's what to make of it. My name is Mirab Zunshin, and I am based in Tel Aviv, Israel. And I am currently the senior Israel analyst with the International Crisis Group, which is a think tank looking to prevent war and mediate solutions for peace. As we're speaking, there were rocket sirens at about 11. in the morning. Sirens have blared across central Israel, urging people to run for cover.

The Israeli army says rockets were launched from Hezbollah positions in Lebanon. And both my kids were at school at the time, and it's always more stressful when they're not at home or near me. But, you know, living in Israel is always something that has with it a certain amount of stress, I guess. But since October 7th, that's obviously much more visceral and palpable for people. and the war only seems to be intensifying further, and there seems to be no kind of end and no restraint.

And the day-to-day is very grinding and very full of despair. And at the same time, there's also the emotional burden that I feel about, you know, what Israel has been doing in my name, what it does in many people's names here. You know, I've been living through a situation in which I don't, really encounter any empathy or awareness as to Palestinian suffering and what we as a society are doing to another people who live amongst us. Like if I think about just the feeling that I have when my child has to deal with a rocket siren

when I'm not there and then think about parents who have been losing their children, parents who have no way to protect their children. So, you know, on top of everything else, there's just like this kind of void of knowing that something is being done that's so much worse than you can imagine to somebody else and having to still kind of go through your day anyway. So that's kind of the experience that I have here. In some ways, Israeli society is a society that knows that things are not going great but doesn't know how to get out of the mess. There's kind of this political paralysis about what to do vis-à-vis the Palestinians and the various actors that threaten Israel's security. But at the same time, there are shifts happening because of, first of all, the failure of the government and the military to prevent and protect citizens on October 7th. And also specifically the feeling that Netanyahu is looking to keep his seat in power.

And there's been numerous, numerous reports and many defense officials who have come out saying that a ceasefire hostage deal could have been reached. The common wisdom, the conventional understanding in Israel is that Netanyahu didn't go for that deal because he was worried that it would break apart his coalition. So you have, you know, a public that has lost trust in the leadership and specifically in him and don't believe that he has the national security interests of, of the, majority in mind. But at the same time, who in some ways align with his toughness on, you know, in terms of using military force against Hamas in Gaza, Rizbala in Lebanon. And so there's just kind of a vacuum. And I don't think anyone thought that a year after the October 7th Hamas attack, that hostages would still be in Gaza and Israel would be opening a second front in Lebanon. And so there's a lot of tension, there's a lot of stress, there's desire for change,

but there isn't a clear articulation of what that change should look like. I think the fact that Palestinians are not really talked about, the fact that they're not shown in the media, you don't hear Palestinian voices in your everyday life in Israel for the most part, that has contributed to the ability of the government and society as a whole to get. continue to prosecute this war and to really not have a sense of urgency for things to stop and for there to be a real effort at non-violent ways of reaching a better place. It's the level of distance from the violence in some ways, even though the violence is all around you. But like this kind of mechanism in which the violence done to the other side

is not going to affect me, that in and of itself enables the continuation of the of the violence, which of course works in a cycle and continues the violence against yourself as well. Whether I go to my Pilates class and everybody talks about what's happening, never have I once heard anything about what we were doing to the Palestinians, even in the context of how it will backfire on us, even if you put aside, like the moral issue of it. There's an apathy and there's and indifference. And I think this is a phenomenon that has directly hurt the chances of Israelis who are protesting, who do consider themselves liberal, to be able to affect change here. Because the government and a lot of the people that voted for that government or that make up a

base of people that you would call the right or the far right, and even the center right in Israel, they see Palestinians on a whole as a threat. There's no longer a sense in Israel of reaching some kind of solution with the Palestinians. It's more how do we get rid of this problem. You would think that what's happened in the last year is kind of rock bottom for everyone on all kinds of levels, personal, political, economic, emotional. In the world in general, there's a lot of disappointment in terms of how things are progressing. And we all know that the U.S. has been very complicit and in some cases aligned and supported very clearly with what Israel's doing.

And so for there to be real change here, there would have to be consequences and prices to pay. And I think a big part of Israeli apathy and numbness is precisely the fact that that there's been this kind of, you know, Israel has been able to be part of the Western, you know, liberal order in terms of economy, culture, and politics. All the while, there's an ongoing occupation and a conflict. And now it's kind of exploding in everybody's faces. There's just a feeling like, do I really want to keep living in this situation if I have a choice? It's also not a secret that many Israelis have for years been leaving Israel,

and increasingly in larger numbers, Israelis who have the means. Not that it's necessarily easy to be in Israeli somewhere else right now, but there is a very kind of, for me at least, a palpable feeling like there isn't a future here. And if you can have more control over the kind of environment that your children live in, then you want it to be an environment that is not this one. If you like this show, follow it on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. This show is produced by Derek Arthur, Sophia Alvarez Boyd, Vichaka, Fibylette, Christina Samuoski, and Jillian Weinberger. It's edited by Kari Pitkin, Alison Bruzek, and Annie Rose Strasser.

Engineering, mixing, and original music by Isaac Jones, Sonia Herrero, Pat McCusker, Carol Saburo, and Afim Shapiro. Additional music by Amin Sahota. The fact check team is. Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker, and Michelle Harris. Audience Strategy by Shannon Busta, Christina Samuiluski, and Adrian Rivera. The executive producer of Times Opinion Audio is Annie Rose Dresser.