Three years after October 7, trauma still blocks empathy for Gaza in Israel

Three years after the October 7 attack, many Israelis near Gaza still see Palestinians chiefly as a threat. The enduring trauma has narrowed public empathy for Gaza even after a ceasefire.

In Short

• Memorials, burnt vehicles and marked shelters keep attack memories painfully present
• Many Israelis say global focus overlooks their losses, fear and insecurity
• Israeli media rarely show Palestinian lives, limiting public exposure to Gaza

Three years after the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, many Israelis living near Gaza say they are still unable to see Palestinians there as anything other than a threat. At a lookout near Sderot, where visitors use binoculars to view the shattered Gaza town of Beit Hanoun, some openly spoke of the destruction with approval, reflecting how raw memories of the attack remain.

The war that followed the killing of about 1,200 people in southern Israel and the abduction of 251 others has left deep scars inside Israel even after a fragile ceasefire. While there is widespread global condemnation over Gaza's devastation, many Israelis say their own trauma, losses and sense of insecurity are still not fully understood.

At the lookout, Beit Hanoun could be seen lying in ruins, with dust raised by Israeli military activity the only visible movement. An Israeli documentary released this year showed one onlooker saying, "Wow, destroyed beautifully." The Associated Press reported hearing similar remarks there. A visit to communities attacked on October 7 suggested that, for many residents, it is still too soon to view the people in Gaza with empathy.

Along the highway running parallel to Gaza, where militants shot at people trying to escape, memorials now stand at several points. Elsewhere, smashed and bullet-marked vehicles belonging to victims have been stacked together. Portraits of young women military spotters, whose warnings about a possible attack were ignored, mark where they died. Deganit Bar Hay said she still cannot barbecue because the smell of burnt flesh, which she called "the smell of hell", remains a trigger.

The contrast between Israeli memory and the condition inside Gaza is stark. According to Gaza's Health Ministry, more than 74,000 Palestinians have been killed, and most of Gaza's 2 million residents are living either in rat-infested tent camps or among debris, with the territory still in ruins and cut off from the world a year after the ceasefire. But AP reported that empathy for Palestinians remains unthinkable for many Israelis, who say the trauma of October 7 is still fresh. Israeli media report little on the people of Gaza, and most Israelis rarely hear Palestinian voices unless they actively seek them out.

A new Israeli documentary, "NAZA", in which military insiders describe what they said was the systemic killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, has drawn outrage at the filmmakers rather than the government. Across Israel, from train stations to beaches to the Gaza viewpoint, stickers remember the hundreds of soldiers killed on October 7 and in the war that followed. "We are post-traumatic, all of us," said Ziporah Livneh, speaking outside a caf near Gaza that serves tour groups and soldiers. Livneh, whose family was affected by the Holocaust and who came to Israel at the age of 2, said people must keep believing in humanity but respond strongly to evil. She added that a society and a country cannot be built on revenge, but said for the world to think "we can be Mother Teresa, it is a hypocrisy".

Many Israelis say their own story is not being heard. They argue that Palestinians in Gaza receive more attention, even though Israel's government still largely blocks journalists from entering the territory except on rare, tightly controlled visits, and very few Palestinians are able to leave. From the start of the war, public attention in Israel focused on those killed and on the hostages taken into Gaza, a place only an hour from Tel Aviv but long treated as distant, especially after cross-border contact was heavily restricted following Hamas' takeover in 2007. This is the first anniversary since the attack that all remaining hostages are out of Gaza, alive or dead.

In the Israeli communities that were attacked, rebuilding is under way, but so is an effort to keep the memory of October 7 alive. Mor Izreal, who runs an October 7 virtual reality exhibit in Sderot, said more than 10,000 people, most from overseas, have visited since it opened a year and a half ago. "I know many people around the globe don't understand us," she said, adding that visitors react with sadness, anger and a sense of connection.

The first election since the attack has also sharpened divisions. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government remains deeply polarising. Many Israelis blame him for failing to prevent the October 7 attack and for not securing the hostages' release sooner, before many were killed. He is also accused of corruption and threatening democratic institutions. But there has been little criticism inside Israel of how his government has treated Palestinians in Gaza, where the Israeli military now controls more than 60 per cent of the territory, pushing people into a shrinking area. Outside Sderot, beside a bullet-marked rocket shelter, Amit Gurfinkel held a banner calling for an official inquiry into the security failures around October 7, something Netanyahu has long resisted. Gurfinkel said he spent that day in a safe room in nearby Netivot with his daughter, holding a knife and waiting for the worst.

Gurfinkel's view is not the dominant one in a region that has long backed Netanyahu. Campaign banners for his far-right allies, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir, were visible across Sderot. Ben Gvir, the national security minister, has called for killing "30 to 40" people in targeted assassinations in Gaza each night. In Sderot, where residents have only 10 seconds to reach shelter when rockets are fired from Gaza, security dominates public life. Even so, Gurfinkel said Israel's reputation also matters. Watching passing drivers shout support for Netanyahu, whose government is isolated over the destruction in Gaza and who has been indicted by the International Criminal Court, he said: "This is pathological. I don't know. Sociologists and psychologists will have answers in the years to come."

Public discussion of Palestinian civilians remains limited. Some Israelis say there are no real civilians in Gaza because of Hamas' presence there, while some Palestinians make similar arguments about Israelis because military service is compulsory for most Jewish men and women. Graffiti and slogans reflect that hostility: "Death to Arabs" was written inside a rocket shelter near the Sderot police station, which was besieged and then destroyed; "Hamas is still in Gaza" was scrawled on a guardrail along the highway where bodies fell from vehicles on October 7; and "Make Gaza Jewish Again" appeared on a banner in Jerusalem's Old City.

At the memorial for the Nova music festival, where hundreds were shot dead, Adi Marmelstain said she does think about the people in Gaza, but called it complicated. Her 20-year-old daughter, who serves in the security forces, stood nearby with a rifle over her shoulder. Both knew people who had been killed. Marmelstain recalled waking another daughter on October 7 and sending her to war with bottled water and biscuits, later wondering what she had been thinking. She said life remains hard to process three years later. Saying the world does not see Israel in the right light, she added of Palestinians in Gaza: "I think they have the right to live, but they choose not to."

The picture that emerges from southern Israel three years after October 7 is of a society still defined by trauma, anger, remembrance and political division, with little space in public life for discussion of how ordinary Palestinians in Gaza have lived through the war.

With PTI Inputs

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