Post October 7 Israel has an unofficial new anthem—its religiosity & optimism are key to understanding what's emerging here
Post October 7 Israel has an unofficial new anthem—its religiosity & optimism are key to understanding what's emerging here
And two articles posted this week show how differently Israelis and Palestinians have reacted to this war. To say that peace has grown no closer would be a radical understatement.
We’re focusing this week on Israelis’ indomitable Israeli spirit. Israeli television has produced some genuinely fabulous clips of interesting stories—we highlighted two of those earlier this week and will return to them.
The big news today, of course, is the Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling (in a group of nine that included some of the court’s conservative members) that the ultra-Orthodox exemption from the draft is illegal, and that the government’s funding of their yeshivot has to stop.
This is another huge crack in the coalition government, and how that plays out, we will see.
But this is also an apt time to reflect once again on why so many of us were opposed to defanging the Supreme Court. This is precisely why the Haredim supported the Judicial Reform … they care not at all about any other issues—but if you think that the Haredim should serve, then you should believe that the court’s defanging was a bad idea.
So why did so many smart people support it? We’ll come back to that on Thursday.
Today, before we get to Israelis’ spirit, we look at an interesting comparison of the attitudes of Israelis and Palestinians in light of the war and then turn to what’s become an unofficial anthem of post-October 7 Israel.
Here’s what’s below:
The New York Times and the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research both produced interesting profiles of Israelis and Palestinians this week. We put them side by side for comparison.
That indomitable Israeli spirit was well on display at a Coldplay concert in Athens recently. The video has gone viral on Israeli social media, so we’re sharing it.
The song that has become the unofficial anthem of post October 7 Israel.
I was struck by two pieces that made their way across my screen in the past few days. The first, an article in the New York Times with the headline, “Blaming Hamas for Gazans’ Suffering, Many Israelis Feel Little Sympathy,” focuses on Israelis near the Gaza border and in other Negev towns, but the truth is that I feel it captures what I hear among my friends, who are sociologically very different.
I’ve been far from a fan of the NYT coverage of this war, but this article actually captures (to my mind, at least) the attitudes of many of the Israelis I know.
The other article, about a recent poll of Palestinians in Gaza, by the highly regarded Dr. Khalil Shikaki, considered the pre-eminent polling expert of the Palestinian population, shows the other side of how far apart Israelis and Palestinians have grown. The gap between the populations before the war was nothing relative to what it is today.
Note the key points, summarized in the blue box above:
Two-thirds of the public continue to support the October 7 attack
80% believe October 7 put the Palestinian issue at the center of global attention. About half of Gazans expect Hamas to win the war and return to rule the Gaza Strip; a quarter of Gazans expect Israel to win.
Increased demand for the resignation of President Abbas is accompanied by a rise in Hamas’ and Marwan Barghouti's popularity.
Increased support for armed struggle is accompanied by a drop in support for the two-state solution
More than 60% support the dissolution of the PA
Taken together, the articles show the hardening of sentiments on both sides of the border. The two-state solution was more than a bit of a pipe-dream before the war; now, one would have to say it’s dead. Whether its devotees—inside Israel as well as outside—can internalize that remains to be seen.
That does not mean that the status quo is sustainable—it just means that those of us who do not share the values of the Palestinian or Israeli radicals don’t yet have a good idea for an alternative.
WEDNESDAY (06/26): In last week’s podcast we heard from Seth Farber who explained the drama over the elections for Chief Rabbi, why those elections have been delayed and what is at stake. In this week’s podcast, we’ll learn about one of Israel’s most iconic and revered personalties, and the first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi before Israel was established, Rabbi Avraham Isaac Kook.
THURSDAY (06/27): We’ll close out the week with a video about a woman named Yael Mazarib. As you’ll hear in the video, she is first and foremost, Yael, and a commander in the IDF. What makes her story so fascinating is that she is also a part-Bedouin woman raised in Zarzir. While her ancestry may be “mixed,” there’s nothing ambiguous about her love for this country or her devotion to it.
This Instagram video has gone viral among Israelis on social media, so we’re sharing it. Here’s a rough translation of the Hebrew you’ll see.
”A short while ago in Athens: at the end of a recent Coldplay concert, more than 10,000 Israelis who coordinated in advance shout together ‘Bring them home!’”
Eyal Golan (born Eyal Bitton in April 1971 to a family of both Moroccan and Yemenite descent) is an uber-popular Israeli singer whose music is based in what is called the Mizrahi pop fusion genre, and which has been instrumental in bridging the worlds of Mizrahi and Ashkenazi music.
More than a bit of a heart throb in Israel (though also not uncontroversial), he is without question one of the most successful singers in Israel.
The song below (Eyal Golan’s team did the video and the English translation) is far from new. It’s been out since shortly after the war began, but we’re sharing it this week as part of our look at Israelis’ spirit.
You may well have heard it, as it’s become and almost unofficial anthem. It’s quite different from classic Eyal Golan music. This isn’t the love-sick, heart-broken Mizrahi ballad—it’s much more classical Israeli, but if you know a bit about Mizrahi culture, you’ll still hear the classical Mizarahi popular religiosity (and recall that Mizrahim are the majority of Israeli Jews) as well as the distinctly Mizrahi dialect, with unique pronunciations of the letters chet ח and ayin ע (listen to the “chai” in Am Yisrael Chai).
It’s called Am Yisrael Chai (“The Jewish People Lives”) but is also commonly referred to by the words that repeat, עם הנצח לעולם לא מפחד, am ha-netzach le-olam lo mefached— “the eternal nation is never afraid.”
Court decision was the best news I've heard all week (& waiting for similar in a local primary election today...).