I'm a Jewish Israeli, AMA

[israelilefty]

Jewish Israeli here. I grew up in a different country but have lived and worked most of my adult life here, living a fairly normal everyday life in northern Israel. When I'm not working, I enjoy cooking and hiking, I'm religiously observant (but also feminist), I'm on the left of the political spectrum, and have everyday contact with people from quite a range of different perspectives - Israeli society is incredibly diverse.

I guess I see us portrayed in a kind of monolithic way in the English-language media, so I'm taking a deep breath and posting here...

Feel free to AMA, just remember you're asking a real person, not a government or military spokesman :) I'll try to answer from my personal standpoint. as long as it's asked in good faith.

Yep

Yes, and I want to add something, but it's important to make clear that I'm responding now in a general way to @YetAnotherSpartacus's comments, not to the previous poster:

I have encountered this attitude you describe in your post VERY frequently among the left outside Israel: that any Israeli who thinks in any way similarly to them must be an exception that proves the rule. It's often combined with litmus tests that nobody could reasonably be expected to "pass", and which are intended not to seek to build bridges, but to find reasons to exclude the Israeli left from any kind of consensus or partnership (because such tests "prove" that if we are pressed hard enough, we will reveal that actually we, too, are beyond any possible political consensus). In this way, the only Israelis who are considered possible allies are those who completely denounce not just policies but the entire legitimacy of their own country.

This attitude is rooted in Palestinian rejectionism: the wholesale denial of the legitimacy of the state of Israel (that is, denial of the legitimacy of the state itself, not just objection to any of its policies). It's fair enough of course if Palestinians want to continue with that as a political course, but in my mind it's just as useless an attitude as right-wing Jewish Israelis who claim that "there's no such thing as Palestine", because it denies the reality of a state of 9 million citizens who are not just going to evaporate somewhere conveniently, and with its own language, culture and institutions - and it also denies that the clear preference among both Israelis and Palestinians is for self-determination, not a hypothetical pipe dream of a democratic binational single state.

I want to say absolutely clearly: the "litmus test"/rejectionist attitude specifically delegitimises people with views like mine (and those of the rest of the Israeli left). Of course the international left doesn't agree with Netanyahu. Neither does the Israeli left. But Israel has an extremely vigorous left, including political parties, journalism, literature, films and many NGOs which specifically fight the occupation and inequality - and we are talking about hundreds of thousands of people, not just a few oddballs here and there. Failing to seek partners on the Israeli left, and instead just looking for opportunities to throw us back into the "unacceptable" category, is a lazy way to avoid looking at the complexity of the conflict, and plays into the hands of extremists on both sides who are interested in prolonging rather than solving the conflict.

Just to reiterate: these comments are not aimed at anyone on this thread - by definition everyone has come here to listen to an Israeli leftist - but rather at an attitude that @YetAnotherSpartacus raised.

@israelilefty do you think the conscientious objector movement will gain any ground in Israel or that it's something that has always been there and it's just having a light shone on it again?
There is another article in the guardian today about it in the UK.

I feel you have misunderstood me.
My politics are not on the left.
I just don’t approve of the sanctioning of violent extremist land-grabbing and the killing of thousands of innocent children.

I’m not Palestinian either.

Thank you for your very generous response OP.

I have read it and am still digesting it.

First of all, don't apologise. This is AMA and I'm here to try to answer any questions, as long as they are asked in a respectful manner.

1. As I mentioned before, I live quite far away from the Gaza border. For me my experience of the first days of the war was of a sudden chaotic whirlwind of uncertainty. It was really not clear what was going on (on every possible level), and part of that was because the first part of the Hamas attack knocked out exactly the army posts which were responsible for gathering information and conveying it to others. Clearly there was a huge intelligence failure, a failure to pick up on signs and connect the dots, and a failure to understand Hamas's intentions. But of course the situation was absolutely terrifying for those stuck in their homes for 24 hours or more just waiting for the army to turn up - and in many cases losing their lives while they waited. All the military/intelligence chiefs responsible have already stood up and taken responsibility for failures, and it's clear that there will be massive changes in the aftermath of this war. Having said that, despite some reports identifying specific intelligence failures, it's also clear that Hamas planned this attack in a way that made it very, very difficult to detect. They used word of mouth and "old tech" to avoid surveillance, and the vast majority of Hamas fighters involved were not notified until that morning and were not given their instructions until they were literally on their way, which meant that normal intelligence networks would not pick it up. Apparently Hamas didn't even notify their political leadership in Qatar or their regional allies in advance. Likewise, the army did respond immediately - they were just completely outnumbered and as mentioned above, the units who should have been telling them what was happening and where to go were the first to be destroyed. However, where the public anger lies is with Netanyahu. He failed in his policy of "managing the conflict", he allowed extremists in his government to stage provocations in the West Bank meaning that two large army units who should have been on the Gaza border weren't there to respond on the 7 Oct, the government basically disappeared after the war and has failed to respond adequately to the needs of the citizens (a gap that has been admirably filled by civil society), and Netanyahu has not admitted responsibility.
2. Houthi impact - not really (I did hear on the news that Ikea might take longer to restock, but we can probably live with that for now...). Israel also has two major seaports on the Mediterranean coast. I think the impact will be more global - shipping costs and thus consumer costs will rise for everyone if a large proportion of ships are not going through the Suez Canal. Meanwhile, the Houthi side of the story has pretty much bemused everyday Israelis - nobody is sure who they are, and why they have suddenly jumped into the story.
3. Why would Netanyahu be planning for a world war? There are two conflicts going on here - the more local Israeli-Palestinian one, and the one in which Hamas and Hezbollah as Iranian proxies are trying to alter the balance of power in the region and specifically to stop Israel from normalising relations or forming alliances with Arab states including Saudi Arabia. Realistically I don't see the Arab states joining the conflict on either side - they are reportedly ok with Israel getting rid of Hamas, and really have only issued weak words of condemnation, so I don't see them waging war on Israel, but they're not going to fight Hamas either. But Iran's proxies might intensify the conflict. We see things escalating on the northern border, and based on news reports it wouldn't surprise me if we saw an intensification of the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in the near months. I haven't heard knowledgeable people speculating about the present conflict widening beyond that.
4. I'm not sure which videos you refer to, and I don't really want to get dragged into a discussion of specific incidents because I know that videos are circulated by both sides as propaganda out of context and so it's hard for me to say anything concrete. But just to comment: the IDF has a code of conduct that soldiers are expected to adhere to. During this war, soldiers have been disciplined, for example, for using a mosque's loudspeakers to broadcast Jewish prayers (by the way I have seen forceful posts from rabbis also condemning this). Also from two very widely published "friendly fire" incidents, there has been criticism that soldiers are not adhering to the rules of engagement, and the IDF chief of staff has circulated a video emphasising this issue. However, many of us on the left believe that they could be doing better. Most people emphasise that the responsibility and blame are primarily on the high ranks who set the tone, not on individual soldiers under immense pressure in the moment of an incident.
5. I realised that I didn't answer your question on friendly fire. It's grossly exaggerated to make a general statement that 'forces fired on their own people'. I know that some pro-Palestinian sites have tried greatly to exaggerate incidents of Israeli friendly fire on October 7 in order to minimise the Hamas atrocities. There is one well documented event in which a decision was made to fire light tank shells on a house in kibbutz Be'eri where 14 hostages (it wasn't clear how many were alive and from news reports some were already dead) were being held by a large group of terrorists who were engaged in an long and intense firefight with IDF forces. Only two hostages emerged alive. This particular incident has received a lot of attention and is under investigation. It's very possible that better decisions could have been made on the spur of the moment, and it's also likely that there were other isolated incidents in such an incredibly complex and huge incident. Of the latter, four further civilians (out of over 800) are listed as having been killed in friendly fire on Oct 7. But those numbers are absolutely tiny compared to the overall atrocities on Oct 7, and there are far more stories of bravery and self-sacrifice by military personnel to save civilians. My friend's cousin, Aner Shapira, was an unarmed off-duty soldier at the Nova party. He hid with other partygoers in a concrete shelter, then Hamas terrorists began to throw grenades into the shelter. Aner told the others to get down on the floor, and with his bare hands threw the grenades out one by one as they were thrown in. He managed to throw back seven grenades before he was killed by the eighth. Some of those in the shelter survived.

I'm not aware of that specific article but every year there are conscientious objectors in Israel, and it's probably just a light shone on it right now. (Just to note, young people can be exempt from army service if they are pacifists who object to any and all armed conflict, but are subject to imprisonment if they refuse to serve for political reasons. Those who choose to go the route of conscientious objection are making a very strong political statement, because it's not THAT difficult to obtain a "mental health" exemption if they don't want to serve.)

I don't think conscientious objection will rise. The opposite. Since October 7th, many Israelis have felt a duty to serve the country, including hundreds of thousands of army reservists who were overseas when they were called back for reserve duty and abandoned studies, travels and jobs abroad in order to serve. That also goes for non-military service: many of thousands of Israelis have volunteered in civil roles, whether it's in farming to keep Israeli agriculture going during the crisis (most of the fruit and vegetables here are grown locally so it's literally a matter of having food to put on dining tables), or for example a friend who is a teacher gave up her sabbatical this year to teach a class of kids whose community was displaced from near the Gaza border to a town near here.

I'm sorry if I misunderstood you. The nature of this kind of forum means that I have literally no idea who is asking the questions, and I have to try to understand the questions and what their context might be, because I know that people are asking from very different standpoints and experiences to my own. Sometimes that means I read people or their questions wrong. It would all be better if we could meet in a cafe and chat, but meanwhile this is the best we can do. Feel free to ask other questions and add context if there's something else you'd like me to answer.

@israelilefty - I’ve just seen your AMA and I think it’s so important, as an Israeli Jewish woman, to put your experiences and views across.
In the uk, antisemitism is riding in the wake of the conflict and even though I feel safe living in a fairly Jewish area, some friends living in more Muslim areas are feeling threatened. And it’s not like we have any sway on what Israel’s government does!
Whats general opinion on Netanyahu in Israel as most people I know can’t bear him - I mix in a left leaning bunch of Jews, generally though.

@Thereissomelight does anyone? Why the need for hyperbolic rhetoric on this thread? The op has been more than generous with their time and opinions. I have seen nothing that supports either of those statements. They are not personally responsible for the governments actions.
I can see why someone might avoid the conflict threads if that's the way you engage with people.

Most people I know can't bear him either ;) As I've written above, about half a million Israelis, including me, were out on the streets each week in enormous protests against his government and him specifically, even before October 7th.

The best way to gauge his popularity is via the polls. In the most recent opinion poll (published yesterday, but all the recent polls have come out similar), the current coalition would go down from 64 to 45 mandates (out of 120) with the biggest losses to the Likud, Netanyahu's party. Also now 52% of Israelis favour Benny Gantz for the next prime minister, over 31% for Netanyahu. As has been noted on the news, these are extraordinary figures, because wartime prime ministers in Israel usually increase their popularity, and Netanyahu has historically held very high personal approval ratings even among people who don't vote for his party.

So in short, no, his popularity ratings are not looking good.

Oops, of course my previous post was replying to @Goatymum: "Whats general opinion on Netanyahu in Israel as most people I know can’t bear him - I mix in a left leaning bunch of Jews, generally though."

Just wanted to say sorry for the loss of your friend's cousin, and for answering the questions so honestly. For me, the most difficult was the fact that the Mossad, of all intelligence organisations, missed any sign of prep for 7/10. It also feels as thoigh Hamas gave Netanyahu the excuse he needed to wipe out what he saw as a threat to Israel's existence (tbh, probably acurately).

It's very difficult though to watch the ongoing deaths of civillians, amd to hear about sniping into, for instance, the Church of the Holy Family by IDF soldiers without wondering about intentions.

I do get it, the soldiers are mainly young kids doing compulsory national service / reservists, and they get scared & open fire, but wonder how these incidents are reported in the Israeli press? Is there a general questioning of it or does it tend to be 'it's a 'war' and these things happen'?

Also, is there mental health / welfare support for the soldiers and their families?

I was also glad to see the clarification on the new laws, as from what I'd been able to read from the safe position as a UK-Christian, it did look as though a wholesale apartheid was being imposed on Arab-Israelis or those of Palestinian descent.

Thanks again for being open to this.

Dear all, just to say, as I mentioned last week I observe the Jewish shabbat (Sabbath), which includes not using technology from Friday sundown until Saturday evening, and I've run out of time to type today :) Feel free to keep posting questions, I'll do my best to get back to them (and to the one above) after Shabbat.

Shabbat shalom שבת שלום (have a peaceful Shabbat)

Shabbat shalom and thank you for your honesty and openness OP

Israelilefty, thank you for this thread. I also have Israeli citizenship though no longer live there. I have a child, grandchild and friends there.

I have been watching the thread for a couple of days and am impressed that it hasn't degenerated into blatant antisemitism in the way that many threads on the Conflict in the ME board do. I have hidden that board as it was emotionally too much to deal with what happened in Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza, without dealing with the backlash of outright lies, misinformation and online hate as well.

Glad your thread is here :-)

Thank you for replying so honestly, I do appreciate hearing it from your point of view, it’s very thought provoking.

On intelligence failures: I wrote about this a bit in one of the recent posts. Of course this was been one of the biggest questions in the wake of Oct 7. We do know more now (although I'm sure that more will come to light in time): According to all the reporting, it's not that Israel had no intelligence whatsoever that Hamas was planning something. But three things seem to have contributed to the failure: 1. there was piecemeal information but nobody correctly joined the dots; 2. it was incorrectly assumed that Hamas could not pull off or wouldn't attempt an attack of this kind. Both these are issues of human error, which shouldn't have been able to happen, but this is by no means an unique situation in which a country's intelligence very seriously misread the intentions of the enemy. Finally, both of these were combined with 3. Hamas leaders revealed the final plan to very, very few people before Oct 7 to avoid detection.

Was Netanyahu looking for an excuse to wipe out Hamas? I don't think so, because his entire policy around Gaza was based on the opposite. He openly strengthened Hamas in order to weaken the Palestinian Authority, and he believed that economic incentives, like giving increasing numbers of Gazans permits to work in Israel and turning a blind eye to money coming in to Hamas from Qatar, would maintain the status quo because Gazans would not see it as in their interests for Hamas to provoke a major fight with Israel. Also the intelligence failures indicate that Israel did not believe Hamas posed a serious security threat of this scale. Clearly these understandings were wrong. But I really doubt he was looking for an excuse to fight Hamas.

As I've written above I don't really want to comment on specific incidents because I don't have any more information than anyone else. You asked how the Israeli press reported the alleged sniper shooting at the Church of the Holy Family: newspapers reported the news including the claims made by the Patriarchate about shooting into the church compound (the report in one of the newspapers also shared a Twitter post with pictures that the Patriarchate posted), and counter-claims by the army as a result of a preliminary investigation, plus the comments of the Pope and Joe Biden, and the fact that an army investigation was continuing. Not referring to this incident in particular, the line that newspapers would take on incidents would depend on the newspaper. Some (eg Haaretz) include viewpoints extremely critical of the way the war is being conducted including the destruction in Gaza, others less so depending on their position on the political spectrum.

Mental health: in general the mental health toll of the war is very well understood. In fact, every person in the country has effectively received a pre-referral meaning that they can book meetings with a psychologist through our national health services, without needing a referral from a family doctor. There have also been high profile journalists calling for people to acknowledge the mental health toll. I think for soldiers specifically, it really depends. Everyone in Israel knows that post-trauma is a really serious issue. The army has mental health support and its importance is understood, and there is a lot of mental health support at the front lines. However, there are of course people who also slip through the net, especially when the issue might not as easily recognised - for example, young soldiers who are not in a dangerous role themselves, but on Oct 7 lost a whole group of friends with whom they had been training until very recently.

Do you think in Israel it's ok to be critical of what is happening or do you think Israelis are sheltered from the worst of what we see In the uk?
Would people feel frightened to be critical? In my experience discourse is almost expected. I just wondered what you thought?
Would you feel comfortable with it? Being anti war? Or is it the country's 'party line' at the moment?
What is the uk not getting that Israel does?

Sorry just reread your post where you mentioned Haaretz. Do you think it's well received? Or do people look down their noses at people like Gideon Levy and think he is a nut?

Thank you Ms Lefty for such a great thread.

Why did you immigrate as an adult? What was your motive? Do you ever regret it?
I am a grown up women, hold an Israeli citizenship and I go there every couple of years to visit my relatives. But I can't think of any reasons which can motivate me to immigrate.
I always think of a brilliant film "Hello Goodbye" with Gerard Depardieu and Fanny Ardant about immigration to Israel. They left everything behind for a romantic dream but the reality was somewhat different. I would love to hear your thoughts.

There are a few questions here, which are all tied up in one another. First of all Israelis are in general not afraid to be critical of the government and institutions and since the beginning of the war there have been voices criticising it (including from members of the kibbutzim that were destroyed on 7 Oct). Gideon Levy (who is a well known leftist journalist in Haaretz) is hardly the only one. People are often critical of him but more on a personal level because of the tone of what he says, including making out that he is some kind of lonely persecuted voice. There are small groups of people who have demonstrated against the war throughout.

Having said that, I have only recently seen more leftists starting to be more critical of the war in general. This is not because they are somehow censored from saying it, but because most of us are genuinely extremely conflicted (and also know that whatever we say on Facebook or to friends won't have an impact in any case). This is relevant to the other part of your question - 'what is the uk not getting that Israel does?'. The difference is not so much a difference of information, it's a difference of perspective. For someone in the UK, thinking or writing 'ceasefire now' is probably easy to say because you don't directly feel the consequences of what happens here. For us here in Israel, the state in which Hamas is left following the war has a very direct and immediate impact on the safety of our friends and family who live in the south and Gaza border areas. Even though I am both critical and extremely sad about the way the war is playing out, and have extremely deep criticisms at many levels of the government and its motivations, before I would write 'ceasefire now', I also need to be reasonably convinced that my friends on a kibbutz 3km outside Gaza, which Hamas intended to attack on 7 Oct but didn't succeed, will be able to return to their home and sleep at night in relative security even knowing that Hamas has openly declared its intention to attack again. Likewise, if I say that I'm fine with releasing all Palestinian prisoners in Israel in exchange for the hostages, I have to bear in mind that among my friends there are both family members of hostages still held by Hamas, and also people who have been bereaved in terror attacks masterminded (like the 7 Oct attacks) by prisoners released in a previous hostage exchange. For all these reasons, for most Israelis it's complicated.

Are we sheltered? In terms of news images, as I've discussed previously, we see fewer violent images (from both sides) than TV news overseas will broadcast. The Israeli news consciously tries to limit the violent images, not because they are trying to censor the existence of events, but because news is quite often on in front of kids. In terms of the impact on Gaza, it's reported in pictures, numbers etc but there wouldn't be, say, a news reporter on the ground reporting events from a Palestinian perspective.

However, I could hardly describe any of us here as sheltered - again, the perspective here is completely different. We are all affected directly by the war, all the time. We all know multiple people in the army and multiple bereaved people, and multiple people with hostages in their families. Our world has been turned upside down by what happened on Oct 7th both directly and in terms of the way it has made us reassess what we believed about our own safety. I guess as wise people have often said: don't judge people until you have seen the world through their eyes.

I laughed at "Ms Lefty". I think I've answered this one before. But, in brief, most directly I moved because I applied for and was offered a job here. But I wanted to move to Israel - I had studied here, had a lots of friends here, I spoke Hebrew, I had really found that the kind of high-octane buzz of Israeli society suited me, and I was excited (and still am) at the possibility of being part of the creative, exciting renewal of Jewish life and culture in Israel, and also at the prospect that rather than sitting around and sighing about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from outside, I could do a job which would maybe be able to make a small impact on improving things here (for reasons of anonymity I'm not going to talk about that in more detail). Even though it might sound a bit naive, I'm still motivated by a sense of responsibility to my people, and to take shared responsibility for making things better where I can for future generations.

I really appreciate your candour & efforts Op. Wishing you & your fellow countrymen well!