Opinion | Israeli Trauma Awakened the Impulse to 'Kill or Be Killed.' It's Time to Look in the Mirror

A woman mourns over the shrouded bodies of loved ones killed in December.Credit: AFP

“… it's now clear to everyone that all Gazans should be exterminated.”

Likud Member of the Knesset (MK) Moshe Saada

"The great fear awakened tribalism, the impulse to "kill or be killed,”
as well as a passion for vengeance and for achieving "deterrence.”

Such emotions and expressions gained legitimacy in the public discourse,
and it is now almost impossible to return them to Pandora's box.”

With the cloud of The Hague hanging over Israel, more and more people are blaming statements by "extremists" for this predicament. This applies to Prime Minister Benjamin ("Remember what Amalek did to you") Netanyahu, through lawmakers such as transfer advocate Bezalel Smotrich, to singers Eyal Golan and Kobi Peretz, who all made it onto the indictment filed at the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

The latest figure guilty of providing anti-Israel ammunition to international courts is Likud MK Moshe Saada, who said last week that "it's now clear to everyone that all Gazans should be exterminated." The choice of the verb "exterminate" is horrific, but when you listen to the full quote, it turns out that he's right. "Everywhere you go, people are saying, 'Exterminate them,'" said Saada, who emphasized that he's heard this in circles that used to be considered leftist.

Indeed, since October 7, expressions of empathy towards people living in Gaza, or even basic reporting such as the number of casualties there, are considered a betrayal of the homeland. The immense collective trauma has given vent to dark emotions such as revenge, which up to now were considered unseemly in mainstream circles. The supposedly esoteric examples appearing in the indictment in The Hague are meant to prove precisely this point: that this is the social zeitgeist now prevailing in Israel.

I know Saada is right, since in recent months I too have also been hearing such statements everywhere, particularly in dissonant settings. In October, I gave birth to the sound of sirens, with missiles directed at the hospital. To the deep emotions accompanying childbirth were added unnerving layers of existential anxiety. I cried more than I had before when seeing every video showing Israeli toddlers kidnapped to Gaza, as well as videos showing the fate of Gazan children. These were fundamental complexities which in regular times could have been contained.

I quickly learned that I should not be sharing these feelings. In some workshops for mothers of newborns, surrounded by cooing and oxytocin, gentle mothers explained to me, as they were cuddling their infants, that as far as they were concerned, "let them all die over there." At the child health center, the nurse holding my son so sweetly muttered that "a bomb should be dropped over the entire Gaza Strip."

And this was just the small talk. A beloved friend who votes for the left explained to me that she understands why there is no longer any sorrow over the fate of civilians on the other side. Columnist Carolina Landsmann was correct in her diagnosis that in order to combat incitement to commit war crimes, the attorney general will have to contend with millions of Israelis. (This fact, incidentally, should not stop her from doing her job.)

Palestinians search for bodies and survivors in the rubble of a house destroyed in an Israeli airstrike, in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, on Sunday.Credit: Fatima Shbair /AP

One sunny day I had to push the baby carriage to a public shelter. One mother whispered: "There are workers here who are our 'cousins' (in Hebrew, a euphemism for Arab citizens of Israel). Don't let them in." I replied, "If a rocket falls on us, they will be killed too," and she said, expressing the bottom line: "That's true, but I'm afraid." Her fear came before their right to live. What can you do with such emotions?

This primal truth reflects the mental state of many Israelis. The trauma of October 7 released in almost everyone an inner Moshe Saada. The great fear awakened tribalism, the impulse to "kill or be killed," as well as a passion for vengeance and for achieving "deterrence." Such emotions and expressions gained legitimacy in the public discourse, and it is now almost impossible to return them to Pandora's box.

But after the initial shock, the time has come to look in the mirror.

The easiest thing to do is to point a finger at Moshe Saada and his ilk and express one's disapproval. The easiest thing to say is that these statements are providing ammunition for the court in The Hague. It's harder to recognize the little Saada within oneself, to loudly condemn it and expel it from public conversation and from small talk. It's even harder to insist on expressing empathy for civilians on the other side. Especially now, so that we don't become Saada, it's vital.