Next month will see the commemoration in Israel of the tragic events of October 7, 2023. For Israelis, that day has taken on a degree of sanctity. It is seen as an event that was unprecedented, unforeseen and unconnected to all that came before. To look for causes, beyond antisemitism and military and political culpability or incompetence, is to question the sacred. To link it to one hundred years of war against Palestine is to provide succor to the barbarians at the gate.
Israeli media platforms – the webpages, the rolling news channels – provide a constantly updated count of days from that moment. They endlessly replay and (only partially) examine the event through stories which fit the consensus narrative. October 7 has become shorthand for unparalleled tragedy suffered by Israelis, a sacred mantra. It has been chiseled into stone and cast in bronze. As Israeli journalist Gideon Levy has put it, October 7 has become Israel’s longest day, one that has not yet ended. It has also become part of a long addiction to a narrative of victimhood, a habit which the State of Israel seems reluctant to kick.
Israel is a young country concerned with building a shared narrative of the past. Memorialization plays a large part in this. Milestones in the national calendar include the Remembrance Day for Fallen Soldiers, Jerusalem Day which celebrates the ‘reunification’ of the city, and Independence Day. There are days marked in the calendar to honour Zionist icons and there is Holocaust Remembrance Day. Now, a new day has been consecrated.
The coming anniversary follows on from a year of almost constant commemoration in the Israeli media. Tales of tragedy and heroism relating to October 7 dominate the daily news landscape. Personal sorrow and national trauma are highly visible. Levy, never one to mince his words, asserts that Israel has been wallowing in October 7 non-stop. The latest manifestation of this is the heated (but limited) debate in Israel concerning rival ceremonies to mark the first anniversary of October 7. Levy has questioned the very need for a ceremony to mark the day: ‘Is there anyone who doesn’t remember? And has anyone learned lessons from it?’
So, what is the point? It seems natural to wish to commemorate the victims of October 7, certainly from the viewpoint of the families. But perhaps the vehement arguments over the format of the commemoration point to an anxiety linked to how the nation sees itself. In part, Israel’s national self-identity is based upon the Revisionist Zionist notion of the Iron Wall, which conceives of a strong independent state that has no choice but to live by the sword. However, coexisting with this there has always been a sense of an identity rooted in the idea of victimhood. An idea reinforced by Israeli politicians’ regular invocation of the Holocaust.
Let us not be mistaken: the events of October 7 were tragic for those who died on that day, for the hostages and their families since then. They are victims. But so too are the Palestinians in Gaza and beyond.
Whilst Israel’s national trauma is highly visible within the Israeli media, there is at the same time an absence of coverage of the suffering of Gazans. Beyond officially sanctioned IDF footage and the contributions of embedded local journalists, the situation in Gaza is not broadcast. Israelis inhabit a very different media reality to the rest of the world. In Israel, alongside commemoration and memorialization there has always been erasure and forgetting. There is an Independence Day but there was no Nakba.
The current opposition to Netanyahu within Israel is an opposition to the man and his policies, particularly regarding the hostages. It does not represent a fundamental questioning of Zionism or the beginnings of a discussion as to the links between the massacre of October 7 and the years of occupation. Based on monitoring of the Israeli media over the past year, it’s possible to conclude that Israelis have no current interest in complex truth, in cause and effect. They do not want a form of commemoration that stimulates discussion and critical reassessment. Instead, there’s a clear preference for a form of remembering that creates myth; one that reinforces a self-image rooted in a victim mindset that serves to justify an act of revenge on a genocidal scale.
There seems to be an overwhelming need for Israel to perceive itself as an innocent victim in a world where October 7 came out of nowhere, or was a result of the unchanging nature of the indigenous population. Netanyahu articulated this viewpoint recently when chiding the UK government for suspending some arms export licenses to Israel. In his view, Britain should be supporting Israel, ‘a fellow democracy defending itself against barbarism.’ As he put it, ‘Just as Britain’s heroic stand against the Nazis is seen today as having been vital in defending our common civilization, so too will history judge Israel’s stand against Hamas and Iran’s axis of terror.’ For Netanyahu, adoption of the role of heroic victim, a David fighting back against the odds, provides the legitimacy to complete the stated project in Gaza: the ‘elimination’ of Hamas, no matter what cost.
Israel explains Gaza to the world via an hasbara (or propaganda) project in which the state constantly seeks recognition of its victimhood. The sense of moral superiority, the absence of empathy and the obsession with past victimization together amount to a national victim mindset; a state of denial that the vast majority has bought into so that it can cope with the moral quagmire of life post-October 7. Zionism has become a cult that is dependent upon victimhood. This is not dismiss tragic events but it is one way of attempting to explain a collective indifference to Palestinian suffering and external criticism; to comprehend the moral isolation of Israelis as evidenced on a variety of media platforms.
It turns out that you don’t just need external legitimacy provided by the Biden administration and German philosemitism in the forms of diplomacy and arms. You need to see yourself as the heroic and misunderstood victim in order to keep feeding the monster of Zionism, to provide the motive for a genocidal revenge which may lead to other outcomes.
For the ugly truth is that the obscenely disproportionate action in Gaza is one which goes well beyond any right to self-defense.
The IDF has shifted most of the Gazan population to the south and created a buffer zone together with ‘clean’ corridors, Philadelphi and Netzarim, which divide and enclose Gaza. The accompanying erasure of places and people, a recent Haaretz editorial observes, has created the infrastructure to enable Israeli resettlement in Gaza. These are not security measures, but are part of an ongoing settler-colonial project which covets all the occupied territories. These actions are consistent with the policies of a country which has not yet declared where its borders are, which continues to steal, build, settle and oppress whilst denying any link between an established state of apartheid and the growth of Hamas.
Of course, commemoration is important to address the grief of the families and collective trauma. However, judging by the current discourse of denial in Israel and arguments surrounding the plans, October 7 this year will be a wasted opportunity.
The commemoration of an event as if it were an unforeseeable act of barbarism occurring in a vacuum suggests that the sanctification of October 7 will become another pillar supporting the Israeli temple of perpetual victimhood. Ideally, remembrance should be an opportunity for mourning and self-examination, for a linking of cause and effect. A commemoration which bolsters a national self-identity based on victimhood will do no one any favors. Ultimately, Israel’s victim mindset sits uneasily with overwhelming military might and international support and funding. It facilitates the continuation of uncritical internal support for the genocidal operation in Gaza, and ongoing collusion in de facto annexation and apartheid.