Report from Israel: Israelis Aren't Out for Vengeance, But For Safety and Security

One constant refrain I have seen in the media since Hamas' Oct. 7 massacre is that Israel is seeking "revenge" in Gaza, or "retaliating" for Oct. 7. Israel, by contrast, asserts two primary motivations--return of its hostages, and the defeat of Hamas to restore Israeli security.

Having just returned from Israel, on the same lawprof trip that Josh Blackman went on, I saw firsthand that Israel's account of things is the one widely embraced by the Israeli public. As soon as you step off the airplane in Israel, posters with photos of the hostages are everywhere. In talking to Israelis, it's obvious how deeply the hostage situation cuts. Israelis don't just know that there are 120 hostages, they know their individual names and stories by heart.

As for security, people underestimate how much of a shock 10/7 was to Israelis. There were the multiple failures of the intelligence services and the army. There was the depraved brutality of Hamas. But most of all, there was the uncertainty and a loss of a sense of personal security. That morning, the country was in chaos. No one knew how bad the attack was, or what it would lead to. Would Hamas break through to the southern cities of Ashdod, Ashkelon, and Be'er Sheva? Would there be a simultaneous attack from the West Bank, threatening not just border towns but Israelis in the "center," including Tel Aviv and Jerusalem? Would Hezbollah join the attack, and launch thousands of precision missiles at Israeli cities? Iran? No one knew, and it was clear that the IDF was woefully unprepared for any such scenarios, given that it clearly was caught with its pants down in the South.

So Israelis desperately want the hostages returned, and for their sense of security to be returned. Residents of the South and North who had to evacuate after 10/7 especially want to to be able to safely return to their homes.

What Israelis, in general, are not after is vengeance. Considering that Israel was in month nine of a war with support both wide and deep among the Jewish public, there was little if any of the rabble-rousing nationalism and militarism one might expect in such circumstances. Every Israeli we spoke to volunteered that Hamas must be defeated, but that thereafter, "we have to find a way to live with" neighboring Palestinians. While I'm sure there is a minority who have more aggressive views, even "support the troops" or "we will succeed together"-type signs were vastly outnumbered by hostage posters. Israelis are resigned and determined, but not bloodthirsty.

It's also true that I saw very little over concern about Palestinian civilian casualties, even among the people we met who are on the left, even far-left, politically, who would normally be vocal about such things. This, it seems to me, is a product of several factors.

First, Israelis see the war as one of survival. Israel can't survive if the South and North are uninhabitable, nor if the public in the rest of the country lives in permanent dread of sudden, brutal, terrorist attacks. When your survival is at stake, you tend to be less concerned with the fate of others.

Second, Israelis' sympathy for the civilian population of Gaza is strained by the behavior of civilians there. During the Hamas invasion, mobs of Palestinian civilians entered into southern Israeli towns, looting, murdering, and raping. In some cases, Hamas had to protect its hostages from civilians who sought to murder them on the spot. When the hostages were brought into Israel, including sick, elderly people and small children, civilian crowds cheered. And when Hamas had to figure out how to hide the hostages, it paid civilians to do so, who, according to released hostages, participated eagerly. One civilian was even murdered by a doctor in Sheba hospital. Meanwhile, while many thousands of Palestinians had some clue as to where the hostages were being held, it seems that Israel has received precious little assistance or tips from them, even, again, about children and aged hostages.

Third, as Josh pointed out earlier today, while many of us think international law standards are in practice weaponized bullshit, Israeli lawyers, especially IDF lawyers, really believe in it, and really do their best to comply. Every unit has a lawyer attached to it, and any significant operation must be discussed with and approved by those lawyers. Many operations are modified to meet the lawyers' objections. (Aside: The biggest issue is "proportionality," ie, an operation's military value must be "proportional" to the risk to civilian welfare. This strikes me outside of extreme situations as an entirely subjective and thus absurd legal standard, but all indications are that the IDF's lawyers really do try to adhere to it as best they can.) If Israel is fighting a war for survival and is doing its best to comply with international law, resulting civilian deaths are on Hamas's, not Israel's, conscience.

Fourth and finally, Israel has a people's army. Most of the soldiers fighting in Gaza are reservists who come from all over the country, and have the entire spectrum of political and ideological views. Gaza is only 1.5 hours or so from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, and the reservists are often home on leave or go home when their tour ends. There's a lot of chatter in anti-Israel circles about Israel being indiscriminately violent and Gaza and so on. But what Israelis are hearing from their friends and family in the IDF, left, right, and center, is that the IDF is doing everything it can reasonably do to avoid unnecessary civilian casualties. Indeed, they are hearing that soldiers are being wounded and even killed because of the precautions they took to avoid harming civilians.

Of course, I'm not on the ground to confirm this narrative. But when an Israeli's left-wing kibbutnik brother-in-law and his right-wing Likudnik nephew both tell him that the IDF is going out of its way to reduce civilian casaulties, at the expense of IDF casualties, that Israeli will be inclined to believe it--even if the kibbutznik is praising these actions, and the Likudnik is decrying them as unfair to the soldiers who get killed or injured.