#kibbutz kfar aza

[eretzyisrael]

By RICHARD FERRER IN KFAR AZA

Eight months before Machmud arrived at Batia Holin’s home to kill her, the two had jointly launched an exhibition aimed at promoting peace and unity between Israelis and Palestinians.

After connecting through a Facebook group for residents on the Israel-Gaza border, the pair spent months sharing pictures on WhatsApp of daily life from both sides of the fence. This seemingly heartfelt exchange blossomed into a poignant exhibition entitled Between Us, dedicated to bridging the divide. Due to the dire risks involved, they never spoke directly. ‘Normalisation’ (interacting with Jews) is the most serious crime a Gazan can commit.

“We didn’t discuss politics,” Batia tells me as we walk along the Gaza barrier fence on the outskirts of Kibbutz Kfar Aza, where Machmud – who told her he was a 28-year-old photographer from the Gazan town of Shuja’iyya – was one of 300 Hamas terrorists who breached the border on the morning of October 7 and entered her kibbutz.

The 71-year-old, who has lived on the kibbutz for more than 50 years, has dedicated her life to coexistence. The idea of collaborating with a Palestinian across the border, someone who experienced the same sights and sounds yet lived a vastly different reality, deeply resonated with her sense of purpose.

“Machmud and I wanted to show the world that, despite the circumstances in which we live, we share the same hope for a brighter future. That despite the obstacles, most people on both sides of the fence just want to live in peace.”

Batia Holin beside a banner displaying pictures of hostages from Kibbutz Kfar Aza that remain in captivity.

Their exhibition opened in Israel on 4 February 2023 in nearby Kibbutz Nahal Oz (where 14 people were killed and seven abducted), with plans for it to tour the United States. One of its most striking exhibits was photographs of the Mediterranean Sea, showing the same beach border from opposite perspectives: one looking north, the other south.

Machmud was, of course, unable to be there in person, so he wrote Batia a touching email: “I hope this project will influence and improve understanding, quality of life and security on both sides of the fence. I hope that with the help of my photos, Israeli society and the whole world will know that the Gaza Strip is not only a place of rockets and missiles but a place worth living in. I hope that with the help of my photos, Israeli society will see that in Gaza the people are simple, love life and are not fighters and terrorists. This exhibition, for me, is hope for a peaceful life.”

Batia at her Between Us exhibition

Today, in the wake of such unimaginable brutality, Batia’s dreams seem heartbreakingly naïve. Her faith has been so profoundly shattered that she fears there may not be a single adult in Gaza who shares her vision of peace. “The hardest feeling is the sense of total betrayal,” she tells me.

“The sense that everyone in Gaza was involved, even those who claim to oppose Hamas. I realise how awful that sounds. It truly is awful. But I cannot think anything else today. The past 17 years since Hamas took over Gaza have been difficult and it’s got worse over time. Before the attack, people called life here 90 percent heaven, 10 percent hell. Now it just feels like hell.”

Batia heard Machmud’s voice for the very first time at 10am on October 7 when she received a phone call from an Israeli number she did not recognise. He told her he was inside the kibbutz and asked if Israeli soldiers were nearby.

Burned-out homes in the kibbutz. Sixty-four residents were murdered

“I was so confused,” recalls Batia with a shudder. “At first, I thought Machmud must have heard about the attack and was calling out of concern. It didn’t take long to realise he had a different reason. He wanted to cause me harm. I didn’t speak to him. I just hung up. I didn’t have time to think about the call until two days later. Terrorists were everywhere. My husband and I were just trying to survive. Later, I gave all the details I had about Machmud to the army. His phone number, personal information he’d shared, screenshots of our chats. I have no idea what happened to him.”

[girlactionfigure]

Meet Amit Soussana. 

She is a 40 year old lawyer from Kibbutz Kfar Aza, on the northern Gaza border. She has three cats, enjoys rock music, and plays tennis in her free time. Amit's favorite TV show is “The Sopranos”. 

Amit lived by herself in Kibbutz Kfar Aza, and was kidnapped while hiding - with a fever - in the shelter of her home.  

Despite being sick, confused and scared, this footage shows Amit's extraordinary bravery as she fought for her life, battling seven Hamas terrorists as they beat her and dragged her across the Kibbutz fields to captivity in Gaza.  

This disturbing footage, taken from the Kibbutz CCTV cameras, is something Hamas does not want you to see.

55 days of hell later, Amit was released. 

However, there are still 136 hostages in Gaza. This includes 17 women and children, being held in the brutal and violent hands of radical Jihadists.

[flowers-and-pollen]

Honestly I just hope all of you evil zionist fucks die. It's so sickening how you just lie and lie and lie to kill people who just want to stay in their homes.

It's disgusting that y'all have the audacity to use apparent antisemitism as an excuse for genocide. Anyone with a functioning brain can see that Israel doesn't represent all Jewish people.

Ok I'm going to go through this hate anon sentence by sentence. imo anon hate in general is cowardice because you'll tell me to kms but not show your face? Coward. Look me in the eyes as you threaten and maybe then I'll take you seriously.

So! first sentance.

'Honestly I just hope all of you evil zionists fucks die.'

What do you think I did that makes me evil? Or are you just saying that because you're racist?

Do you even know what zionist means? Yeah I'm a zionist, yeah I'm proud of it, no you're not using it correctly. You're using it as if it's a slur, it's really really not, every zionist i know is proud of that fact

Hope all you like it's not gonna make it a reality

If you're looking to speak to all zionists, this is not the place. I am a single person who cannot spread your message even if I wanted to

Second sentance:

'It's so sickening how you just lie and lie and lie to kill people who just want to stay in their homes.'

Tbh if i could lie online I wouldn't be here

I didn't know the act of lying was actively killing people, pretty sure that's what weapons do

You think Israelis don't want to stay in their homes?? 134 hostages in Gaza who'll be happy to be back home, even though most of their homes were burned to the ground and destroyd by Hamas. So many families stuck living in single rooms because their homes were also burned to the ground and destroyd by Hamas. People who evacuated their homes from fear of being hit by rockets sent by Hamas.

We're the liars? Check again who bombed their own hospital, killing 471 of their own people, injuring 314 more, then blamed it on the IDF. Spoilers: it was Hamas.

I don't remember myself killing anyone. Again, I am not all of Israel, I am a single person.

Onwards to third sentance!

'I'ts disgusting that y'all have the audacity to use apparent antisemitism as an excuse for genocide.'

What genocide? Do you know what genocide means? It's against a race. Not a land. The Holocaust was a genocide, because no matter where the jewish people went the Nazis followed. this isn't a genocide. This isn't against the Palestinians, if they leave Gaza they will not be followed and killed. Stop calling what's going on here by names that don't fit.

'Apparent'? It's not apparent, the antisemitism jews face all over the world and have faced all over history is very true and real and painful.

Who's using antisemitism as an excuse? I've never seen anyone do that, I genuinly want some sources for that

Fourth (and last) sentence!

'Anyone with a functioning brain can see that Israel doesn't represent all Jewish people.'

I??? Never?? Said that israel represents all Jewish people???? Of fucking course it doesn't????

33.1% of Israel's population are atheists (Hilonim), 18.1% are Muslim, 1.9% are Christian, 1.6% are Druze, 4.8% are unclassified or other. Only 40.4% are Jewish, that's less then half.

There are 6.3 million Jews in the USA, that's almost half of the total 15.7 million in the whole world. Israel itself has 7.2 million Jews.

Then this means that a great chunk of the worlds population don't have a functioning brain, seeing the fact that jews all over the world are receiving hate, threats, and violence because of what's happening in Israel and Gaza

What I really wonder about here is that you said that anyone with a functioning brain can see that, yet you can see it even though your brain doesn't seem to be functioning.

In conclusion:

Go outside and touch some grass, pet a cat, watch the sunset, take a shower, take care of yourself, go to therapy, and for G-d's sake, stop spreading hate and misinformation. You are not immune to propaganda.

ובנוסף, לפחות תעשה קצת מחקר לפני שאתה פולט שטויות מהפה שלך. אתה סתם מפזר שנאה בעולם שלא צריך עוד ממנה. צר לי שהחיים שלך עד כדי כך עצובים שאתה מחפש לריב באינטרנט סתם כי אתה משועמם, חסר חיים, וגזען. אני באמת מצטערת בשבילך, צר לי שמישהו פגע בך בצורה בלתי הפיכה שגרמה לך להיות איך שאתה, אדם ש��נא שהעולם כנראה יהיה יותר טוב בלי. נראה אם בכלל תלך לגוגל לעשות לזה תרגום, מגיע לך להבין את זה. אבל בכל זאת, תודה ששלחת את זה. זה עזר לי לבריאות הנפשית. לצחוק עם חברים על כמה מטומטמים פרו פלסטינאים יכולים להיות, רוב החברים שלי התפקעו מצחוק כבר במשפט הראשון. תענה בתוך עוד שאלה אנונימית אם אתה רוצה, אני אפרק אותה משפט-משפט בדיוק כמו שעשיתי עם זאת.

[documenting-apartheid]

JULY 7 2024 - Israeli media Haaretz finally confirms that on October 7th, three Israeli army facilities used the Hannibal directive, an Israeli military policy that dictates the use of maximum force to prevent the capture of an IDF soldier by enemy forces, including the preemptive killing of their own soldiers in order to prevent them from being taken hostage.

Haaretz also confirms because of the Hannibal Directive, the IDF indiscriminately launched mortar shells, tank fire and artillery fire at anything moving in Gaza's direction, close to the communities of Be’eri & Kfar Aza, without knowing how many soldiers, hostages, or civilians were there, which likely killed civilians and hostages. Haaretz notes on instance where the IDF killed 13 hostages in the house of Pessi Cohen at Kibbutz Be'eri due to indiscriminate shelling.

This comes eight months after Haaretz had originally wrote articles labelling independent journalists "conspiracy theorists" and "denialists" for investigating and suggesting that Israel used the Hannibal Directive on October 7th.

Link to non paywalled article here

[dimsilver]

💔

[deborahdeshoftim5779]

Senior Contributing Editor Caroline Glick broadcast from Kfar Aza, Israel, a few days ahead of the October 7 memorial.

This short yet powerful special presents a drop in the ocean of horror inflicted upon the Israeli people (and some non-Israeli nationals) by Palestinian murderers in and outside of Hamas.

See the homes standing empty. See the bullet holes in the walls. See the writing commemorating the victims. See the Israeli flags draped around this living graveyard.

Never forget this horror.

[clarabosswald]

on october 8th 2023, kibbutz be'eri was still under control of hamas terrorists, who have held be'eri residents hostage in several locations throughout the kibbutz. 92 of the kibbutz's residents were murdered and 31 were kidnapped into the gaza strip (out of ~1000 residents overall).

on october 8th 2023, kibbutz kfar aza was in a similar state to be'eri. 72 residents of kfar aza were murdered out of less than 800 residents overall.

on october 8th 2023, there was an additional attempt by hamas terrorists to storm kibbutz magen.

on october 8th 2023, hamas terrorists were still roaming the streets of the town of sderot, where they've murdered 37 citizens and firefighters. a large group of terrorists bunkered down in the town's police station, and the town's main battle was still ongoing there.

on october 8th 2023, in the town of ofakim, hamas terrorists were still holding an elderly couple hostage in the home, as police forces were still attempting to negotiate with them. rachel edri famously gave her captors food and drink, and even bandaged the wounds of one of them. the edri couple were rescued in 2am, after about 20 hours. 27 of ofakim's residents were murdered by hamas teams who stormed the town.

on october 8th 2023, there were still lone teams of terrorists roaming open areas, hiding, waiting for the opportunity to attack.

on october 8th 2023, hamas and the pij were still constantly launching rockets at israeli towns. up north, hezbollah started attacking too.

on october 8th 2023, in alexandria, egypt, a policeman opened fire on 3 israeli tourists, killing them and their egyptian guide.

on october 8th 2023, nobody still had any idea exactly how many people were murdered and kidnapped the day before. schools were closed. people didn't go outside unless they had to.

the events of october 7th weren't neatly wrapped up in 24 hours.

[jewishvitya]

972mag is a publication by Palestinian and Israeli journalists.

Quotes from here:

In a eulogy for her brother Hayim, an anti-occupation activist who was murdered in Kibbutz Holit, Noi Katsman called on her country “not to use our deaths and our pain to cause the death and pain of other people or other families. I demand that we stop the circle of pain, and understand that the only way [forward] is freedom and equal rights. Peace, brotherhood, and security for all human beings.”

Ziv Stahl, executive director of the human rights organization Yesh Din, and a survivor of the hellfire in Kfar Aza, also came out strongly against Israel’s assault on Gaza in an article in Haaretz. “I have no need for revenge, nothing will return those who are gone,” she wrote. “Indiscriminate bombing in Gaza and the killing of civilians uninvolved with these horrible crimes are no solution.”

Yotam Kipnis, whose father was murdered in the Hamas attack, said in his eulogy: “Do not write my father’s name on a [military] shell. He wouldn’t have wanted that. Don’t say, ‘God will avenge his blood.’ Say, ‘May his memory be for a blessing.’”

And people there talk about breaking the cycle, which has to mean us. We must be the ones to do that, we have the power and the freedom to allow us to do that. We keep Palestinians trapped and dying and give them no path out of this way of life.

Peace should not mean quiet subjugation. It should mean stopping the genocide, and it should mean no occupation, no apartheid, no ethnic cleansing, undoing whatever we can from the colonialist tactics Israel has been using from the start.

And it has to mean us.

[zvaigzdelasas]

The final death toll from the attack is now thought to be 695 Israeli civilians, including 36 children, as well as 373 security forces and 71 foreigners, giving a total of 1,139. This excludes five people, among them four Israelis, still listed as missing by the prime minister's office.[...]

On October 14, Israeli authorities announced a preliminary toll of more than 1,400 people killed by "Hamas terrorists". On November 10, the foreign ministry published an "updated estimate", saying the number "murdered in cold blood" was around 1,200 people, without further details.[...]

Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas in response to the attack. Its air and ground offensive has killed more than 18,700 people, mostly women and children, according to figures from the health ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, and left much of the territory in ruins.[...]

[the data] invalidates some statements by Israeli authorities in the days following the attack.[...]

15 Dec 23

In particular, a claim made on October 10 on the government's official [Twitter] account spoke of "40 babies murdered" at Kfar Aza kibbutz, based on a report by i24NEWS channel.[...]

According to Bituah Leumi, 46 civilians were killed in Kfar Aza, the youngest 14 years old.

Another testimony called into question was that on October 27 by Colonel Golan Vach, head of the army's search and rescue unit, who told a group of journalists, including one from AFP, that he "personally" transported "a decapitated baby" found in the arms of his mother in the Beeri kibbutz. According to Bituah Leumi, only one baby was killed in Beeri: the 10-month-old Mila Cohen, whose mother survived. Army spokespersons did not respond to queries by AFP.[...]

"Our volunteers were confronted with traumatic scenes and sometimes misinterpreted what they saw," said [a leader of an emergency response NGO that helped collect victims' bodies][...]

The Bituah Leumi data does not distinguish between those killed by Hamas and civilians killed by Israeli forces in the fighting to retake control of southern Israel, an operation in which the army used shells and rockets on inhabited areas, according to testimonies collected by AFP and Israeli media.

[starlightomatic]

I’m sorry to have to be asking this, do we have definitive sources for babies being killed? I feel like every time I see a source that confirms it I see someone yelling about how it’s been debunked. I thought I saw an rb by you a couple days ago confirming that it had happened but I can’t keep track of things anymore.

kfar aza story

kibbutz be'eri story

[bringherhome7]

They met a year and a half before the massacre and since then have been an inseparable pair of lovers. Her wedding dress was already hanging in the closet, they were about to get married, this is a story about true love. When the terrorists entered Kibbutz Kfar aza they broke the living room window and broke into Neta and Irene's home. Just a few minutes before, terrorists murdered his grandmother and then his uncle and his uncle's son in the nearby houses. Neta managed to write in the WhatsApp groups: "The terrorists are here at my home now, I love you all" and hid with Irene in the safe room. The terrorists managed to open the door and called them in Hebrew: "Get out!" When Neta and Irene did not respond, the monsters threw 2 grenades that did not explode inside. They threw the third grenade in the direction of Irene. Neta shouted: "grenade!" and jumped on it. The terrorists fired a bunch of shots at him while jumping, Neta hugged the grenade tightly and closed his eyes. Neta was murdered. But the monsters didn't give up and to make sure everyone was dead, they threw in a fourth grenade that set the room on fire and left. Irene tried to put out the fire and hid for hours behind Neta's body under the bed. Thousands accompanied Neta on his last journey, he was buried next to angels with weeping eyes. 22 years old in total. This is a story about Neta, with the sweet smile and big heart. It's a story about a hero who jumped on a grenade to save the love of his life. A hero who will never return.

[eretzyisrael]

A senior medical official with Zaka, Israel’s volunteer civilian emergency service organization, has confirmed that he personally saw Israeli children and adults beheaded by Hamas terrorists in Kibbutz Kfar Aza.

“I saw a lot more that cannot be described for now, because it’s very hard to describe,” Yossi Landau, the head of operations for the southern region of Zaka, told CBS News. He then referred to parents and children found with their hands bound and clear signs of torture.

Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson Maj. Libby Weiss. further told CBS News that one of the first Israeli soldiers who reached Kfar Aza in southern Israel reported finding “beheaded children of varying ages, ranging from babies to slightly older children,” along with adults who had also been dismembered.

The confirmation came after reports from international media organizations, including CNN and the New York Times, on Tuesday describing horrific scenes at the kibbutz. Charred homes stood in the background as smoke wafted in the air and the bodies of dead civilians and terrorists still littered the ground.

Since then conspiracy theories have circulated across social media that the massacre was staged propaganda by Israel.

“The playbook, They make up a lie; there is no evidence for it,” tweeted Mohammed El-Kurd, a pro-Palestinian activist who has spoken at Harvard and Princeton universities.”

[girlactionfigure]

There is something very private about death – or at least there should be. Perhaps that is why murder is so horrifying. Life is the one thing that belongs only to the individual and the creator.

Invading your body to steal that spark of holiness is a defilement beyond words.

The Gazan invaders went a step beyond murder. They murdered with glee. Laughing with joy.

Signs of their enthusiasm remain, one year later.

How are you supposed to deal with places where this frenzy took place? Places where people you knew and loved had this done to them?

In Kfar Aza, the “young people’s neighborhood” remains untouched. While other areas of the kibbutz are being renovated and refreshed so that life can return to them, this neighborhood is frozen in time - from the bullet holes in the walls and the signs left behind by the rescue workers to the dishes left in the sink by people who will never have another morning. From here hostages were taken and others were murdered. Here the kibbutz decided that visitors could bear witness to the remains of the horror that occurred throughout their community.

Most of the homes are blocked off with red tape. Families who agreed to have visitors see, wanted to keep those last moments between their loved ones and their murderers and the people who found them to themselves. Not private but also not open for all.

One family decided they want visitors to see. They want everyone to know.

A sign above the door explains that the family requests visitors enter. Here Sivan Elkabets and Naor Hasidim lived and died together. Their families added enlarged photos to the house so visitors could see the before, not just the after – an image of their bedroom, clean and neat in contrast to the mattress flipped upside down and the mess on the floor. Images in the living room of the happy couple. The last Whatsapp conversation Sivan’s dad had with his daughter and her boyfriend, Naor.

I couldn’t take in everything I was seeing. All I could see where the holes everywhere… bullet holes… holes also from a grenade? The walls, the refrigerator, even the ceiling, riddled with holes.

The murderers were ecstatic.

This is the entrance to their home. Just this is enough to convey the horror. The holes in the washing machine. The door. The walls. On the wall under the window, in small letters instructions for the Zaka crew: “Human remains on the couch.”

The bigger writing on the other wall, a mixture of different crews who checked the house for safety and what other tasks needed to be done there. The writing in yellow indicates that on October 11th, 3 days after the invasion, there was a dead terrorist that still needed to be removed. On the door, the Zaka sticker from when the house was finally cleared.

Around the world many seem to have forgotten (or pretend not to know) what happened that day. We cannot. We will not.

We meant it when we said NEVER AGAIN.

Forest Rain Marcia is in Kfar Aza.

[cloudycleric]

actually i deleted the post i was gonna make originally bc got scared but im gonna actually not gonna delete it this time

if you support what is happening in israel, fuck off. did you know, mind-blowingly, you are able to be pro-palestine AND anti-terrorist at the same time!

i feel like i have to say something, bc my dad's side of the family is jewish. & this shouldn't be a controversial statement. terrorism is wrong.

tw for under the cut it kinda gets a little. violent

i think what israel is doing to palestine is wrong, 100% yes. but that doesn't mean you should justify the brutal murders of people (including babies, like actual babies being beheaded). if you're gonna stand outside the sydney opera house & chant "gas the jews" there is something wrong with you.

people are being brutally murdered. shot. chopped up. burned. beheaded. taken as hostages. no matter what, that should OUTRAGE YOU.

this isn't about palestine vs israel. this is about humans being massacred. thank you. that is all.

[meayefet]

I find myself half-assing projects these days or doing nothing at all, but here is a snippet from a recent project I'm kind of happy with. It still feels a little half-assed but I feel like I'm finally learning how to use watercolors outside of my sketchbook.

The illustration is based on a photo of my grandfather conducting the Kfar Aza choire during the Kibbutz's anniversary celebrations in 1957.

On a personal note - "davka" is a very nice Hebrew word to describe things done out of pure spite. So out of pure spite we will build a good life for everyone who lives on this land, with our without your help, you privileged antisemites. You know nothing about us and about this conflict and yet you allow yourself talk nonesense, to import capitalist identity politics into it, and to send us, who have lived here our entire lives, to """educate ourselves"""". How dare you. How dare you do this while we, who have been protesting against our government and against the occupation, are still counting the (barely recognizable due to Hamas' atrocities) bodies. So DAVKA we will overthrow Hamas and Bibi and build a good life for every person who lives on this land.

[mariacallous]

FAR AZA, Israel—There is a pervasive sense in Israel that time stopped on Oct. 7, 2023. Kibbutz Kfar Aza, one of the first places Hamas attacked on that day, is now a closed military zone, frozen in time. A sukkah, or temporary hut erected for the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, which took place the week leading up to Oct. 7, still stands in the yard of one house. In another, a cluster of children’s bikes lean under a tree. 

In the home of Sivan Elkabetz and Naor Hasidim, a young couple in their early 20s, there are still dishes on the drying rack by the kitchen sink. Writing on the wall by the front door, scrawled in the aftermath of the attack, reads “human remains on the sofa.” 

In the days after the attack, in which thousands of militants led and organized by Hamas streamed into Israel at daybreak on Oct. 7, raping, mutilating, and killing some 1,200 people and taking a further 253 hostage, much of the world rallied in support of Israel. Monuments from the Eiffel Tower to the Sydney Opera House were illuminated in the blue and white of the Israeli flag in solidarity with the country.

Eight months later, much of that international outpouring of sympathy has given way to condemnation as Israel has waged an unsparing war in Gaza in a quest to root Hamas out of the coastal territory. 

A little over a mile to the west of Kfar Aza lies Gaza, where Israel is now embroiled in the longest war it has fought since the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Amid the burned houses of the kibbutz on a recent morning in late May, a black anvil of smoke could be seen hanging over the the Gaza Strip, accompanied by the distant thud of artillery fire.

“If you want to take a metaphor from a different conflict from around the world, Israel started the war as Ukraine, and seven months after, it’s Russia,” Shira Efron, the Israel Policy Forum’s research director, said at an FP Live event last month. 

More than 37,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health authorities, which do not distinguish between civilians and combatants. Some 8,000 children have been killed, according to data shared by the United Nations—a likely undercount as an untold number remain buried under rubble. 

The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, has asked the court to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, alongside senior Hamas leaders, accusing them of having committed war crimes, including the use of starvation as a method of warfare. The United Nations has warned that a full-blown famine has taken hold in northern Gaza. 

But although Israel has grown increasingly isolated, the war is viewed in starkly different terms within the country, where many see the campaign in Gaza as one of existential necessity. 

“For us, it’s a ‘never again’ war,” said Avner Golov, the vice president of research and alliances at the Tel Aviv-based think tank MIND Israel. “My generation now faces a question that I never thought I [would] face, and this is whether a Jewish state can exist in the hostile Middle East,” he added. “We need to make sure the answer is yes.”

While global attention has turned to Gaza, Israel is still mired in the trauma of Oct. 7 and the security failures that left thousands of people defenseless in the face of Hamas’s onslaught. There’s a creeping fear that the bloodshed of the attack is being forgotten or even denied. 

“I feel like no one believes us enough,” said Yarden Gonen, whose 23-year-old sister, Romi Gonen, was taken hostage from the Nova Music Festival. In a country of just under 10 million people, almost everyone knows someone who survived, was killed, or was taken hostage. 

Reminders of the 120 hostages who remain in Hamas captivity—only about 80 of whom are thought to still be alive—are omnipresent throughout Israel. Passengers arriving into Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport are confronted with images of the captives on biometric passport scanners, ATMs, and a phalanx of posters that line the ramp down to passport control. The media is filled with an agonizing drip of information about their fates. 

Hamas struck as Israel was embroiled in its most profound political crisis in decades over judicial reform proposals by the Netanyahu government that critics feared would undermine the country’s vaunted independent judiciary. And though Israelis rallied together in the wake of the attack, that did not translate into greater support for Netanyahu, and frustration has only mounted over the government’s failure to secure the hostages’ freedom or present a viable path out of the war.

Shmuel Rosner, a researcher with the Jerusalem-based Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI) who has been conducting weekly polls of Israeli public opinion, said there was no surge in government approval ratings in the wake of Oct. 7. 

“There was never a case in which a country was attacked by another country or by a terror organization in which the leadership of the country did not get not even one iota of bump in the polls,” he said. 

But when it comes to critiques leveled by the international community, Israelis largely stand united, said Dan Illouz, a member of the country’s parliament, the Knesset, from Netanyahu’s Likud party who sits on the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. “On almost all of the issues where the international community is trying to pressure Israel, those issues are not seen as political within Israel,” he said. “There’s tremendous consensus within Israeli society on these issues.”

A Pew Research Center survey conducted in March and early April found that almost 40 percent of Israelis felt that the country’s military response in Gaza had been about right, while just over a third felt that it had not gone far enough. The poll found sharp divides in the way Jewish and Arab Israelis see the war. Almost 75 percent of Arab Israelis, who make up around a fifth of the country’s population, see the war as having gone too far, compared with 4 percent of Jews.

“I just came back from Canada and the U.S., and I saw that even very intelligent people adopted this thing of [the Gaza war being] ‘Netanyahu’s war,’” said Einat Wilf, a former Knesset member who served as a foreign-policy advisor to former Israeli President Shimon Peres during his tenure as vice prime minister. “It is Netanyahu’s bungle—I think he is in large responsible for it being so badly done,” she added. “But the war? It’s the war of our people.”

Part of that disconnect between Israeli and international perceptions of the war has to do with how the war is portrayed in the media. “The media here [in Israel] doesn’t show what’s happening in Gaza the way that other media does,” said Mairav Zonszein, a senior analyst on Israel-Palestine with the International Crisis Group. “Suffering in Gaza is just not a factor in the way this war is being narrated in Israel.”

International media has been awash with harrowing reports from Gaza of doctors performing amputations without anesthetic, of parents writing their children’s names on their bodies for identification in the event they are killed. But although left-leaning Israeli outlets such as Haaretz and +972 have closely scrutinized the conduct of the war and the vast suffering it is causing for the millions of Palestinians living in Gaza, analysts say it has not featured prominently in the mainstream Israeli media.

“Seven months of Israel displacing, shelling, starving, killing, crushing and crowding together about 2 million people—and on the Israeli channels there’s nothing,” Israel lawyer Michael Sfard wrote in an op-ed for Haaretz last month.

Amid international outrage about the death toll in Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) contends that it has gone to significant lengths to spare civilian life while fighting in exceedingly challenging urban terrain against an adversary that has deliberately entrenched itself among the civilian population. 

“Israelis by and large feel that the world puts too much emphasis on the humanitarian issue in Gaza and does not have proper consideration for the need for Israel to win the war and hence to fight in problematic urban areas,” said Rosner of JPPI. “Israelis feel that the world does not appreciate enough the huge effort that the IDF is making not to harm innocent people, not to hit civilian targets.”

By the end of March, the IDF had dropped more than 9 million leaflets and sent 17 million voice messages warning civilians to evacuate ahead of its operations in Gaza, according to IDF data. “The army, in its very protocols, does much more than what is needed according to international law,” said Illouz, who previously served as a legal advisor to the IDF. 

But longtime observers of the IDF, including some in Israel, counter that the military has, in recent years, loosened its rules of engagement, particularly in the current war. “It was very clear from the beginning that the IDF adopted new rules,” said Yagil Levy, a professor at the Open University of Israel, who said he feared that the campaign was fueled by revenge “in a most severe way” in the wake of the Oct. 7 attack.

Statements made by Israeli officials have also furthered the perception that the country’s political and military leaders don’t see as much of a distinction between Palestinian civilians and militants in Gaza as the rest of the world does.

“Though it is distinguished from the civilian population, Hamas is a Palestinian organization,” said Capt. Adam Ittah, a spokesperson for the Southern District of the IDF’s Home Front Command. “There is collective responsibility once you conduct such a massacre.”

Most controversial has been Israel’s use of hundreds of heavy ordnance in Gaza’s dense urban environments, including 2,000-pound bombs that are capable of killing and severely injuring people within a 1,000-foot radius. 

In the first two weeks of the war, around 90 percent of the munitions Israel dropped in Gaza were satellite-guided bombs of 1,000 to 2,000 pounds, according to a senior U.S. military official cited by the New York Times. 

“Even a 500-pound bomb is too much in a densely populated area,” said Wes Bryant, a retired U.S. Air Force master sergeant who led a U.S. strike cell against the Islamic State in Iraq. “I could tell from the start that Israel, from the government to the IDF, was waging an emotional campaign.”

In early May, the Biden administration paused a shipment of heavy ordnance, including 2,000-pound bombs, to Israel as its troops planned to enter the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where U.S. officials have urged Israel to conduct a more targeted operation than those seen in the early phases of the war. 

The civilian death toll, Israel’s throttling of humanitarian aid, and the killing of aid workers in Israeli strikes have placed enormous strain on Israel’s relationship with its closest partner, the United States, which provides the country with billions of dollars of military aid annually. 

Eleven days after the Hamas attack, Biden touched down in Israel for an extraordinary wartime visit. In an emotionally charged speech, he drew on the Hebrew Bible, his decades in office, and his own experiences with grief. “As long as the United States stands—and we will stand forever—we will not let you ever be alone,” he said.

His remarks also contained a word of caution, based on the United States’ own bitter experiences of going to war in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. “While you feel that rage, don’t be consumed by it,” he said. 

Biden referred back to this warning in an interview with Time magazine published last week. “They’re making that mistake,” he said.