Fear and a far-right lurch: How October 7 reshaped Israel

Three years on, the trauma of October 7, 2023, continues to reshape Israel’s politics, wars and place in the world.

People gather after the news that Israeli soldier Ori Megidish, who was taken captive by Hamas, had been released following an Israeli ground operation [File: Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters]

For the vast majority of Israelis, modern history is divided between the period before the Hamas-led attacks of October 7, 2023, and after. In the three years since Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza following the attacks, Israeli society has undergone fundamental changes.

A sense of collective trauma has been amplified through political rhetoric and media hysteria to hitherto unseen levels in modern Israel, observers say.

list 1 of 4 Israel pushes for hangings and ‘show trials’ for ‘October 7 detainees’

list 2 of 4 Israel fires military commanders over October 7 failures

list 3 of 4 The difficult lives of Gaza’s babies born on October 7

list 4 of 4 Israel’s labour force transformed since October 7

Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians, and Israel has expanded its attacks to several regional states.

The war on Gaza and a series of settler pogroms in the occupied West Bank, fuelled by the Israeli far-right, have contributed to Israel’s growing isolation from much of the world.

Israeli troops and tanks gather in a field near the kibbutz Beeri in southern Israel on October 14, 2023, close to the site of the Supernova music festival stormed by Hamas-led fighters on October 7, 2023 [Thomas Coex/AFP]

Daniel Bar-Tal, an Israeli political psychologist at Tel Aviv University, said October 7 shattered the myth of Israeli military invincibility.

Before October 7, 2023, a powerful sense of confidence regarding Israel’s supposed technological and military superiority was common.

That ended when Hamas and other groups stormed into Israel: Nearly 1,200 people were killed, and Palestinian groups took about 250 others captive.

The Israeli public had been generally isolated from the consequences of the military’s violent actions in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, and Bar-Tal said many were shocked that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu might have had prior intelligence about Hamas’s plans.

Inside Israel, the psychological impact of the attacks was palpable. “It disrupted [everything] immensely. It is a crisis that doesn’t leave the population,” he told Al Jazeera.

Palestinians, in particular, have lived with Israel’s genocidal response ever since.

Politicians have exploited the fear and trauma of the October 7 attacks to further their own ends, and are using them to target Palestinians as a whole.

“There is no doubt that many Israelis were gripped by genuine fear after October 7, but there is also no doubt, in my view, that political forces have exploited that fear to erase virtually every achievement made over the years in Jewish-Palestinian relations,” Israeli sociologist Yehouda Shenhav-Shahrabani said.

Countless polls suggest that Israeli society has lurched even further to the right over the past three years. Mainstream newspaper headlines have asked the question whether the left, which was the main bulwark for a two-state solution in Israel, still exists.

A huge number of Israelis continue to support the execution of Palestinian prisoners charged with “terrorism” and the continued expansion of illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.

In a May 2025 survey of Israelis by Penn State sociologist Tamir Sorek, an overwhelming majority of respondents said they supported expelling Gaza’s residents. A significant minority also backed the “mass killing” of all residents of cities invaded by Israeli troops, as the biblical Israelites did at Jericho.

“October 7 was undoubtedly a watershed moment in contemporary Israeli politics,” noted Shenhav-Shahrabani. “I would say that it has taken us back a hundred years – in our collective consciousness, in our willingness to engage with one another, and, above all, in the level of mutual trust. This is an enormous setback, one that will be extremely difficult to overcome.”

Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir celebrates after Israel’s parliament passed a law making the death penalty a default sentence for Palestinians convicted in military courts of deadly attacks [File: Oren Ben Hakoon/Reuters]

Israel’s former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant has described Palestinians in Gaza as “human animals” and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir boasted of handing out thousands of government arms to settler groups already known for their often-deadly pogroms against Palestinian towns and villages in the occupied West Bank.

“The messianic and racist right has seized upon the catastrophe, not merely to justify its existing positions, but to push the boundaries of what can be said and done in Israeli politics,” said Shenhav-Shahrabani.

He acknowledges that October 7 did not create the Israeli right, but it had normalised positions previously considered extreme.

“Fear is undoubtedly a major factor in this transformation. But fear alone does not explain it. Fear is also being politically mobilised,” he said.

A Palestinian home is entirely dismantled, except for the floor, in the occupied West Bank village of Ras Ein al-Auja, nearly all of whose residents have been forced out by pogroms enacted by Israelis from illegal settlements [Courtesy of Looking the Occupation in the Eye]

‘Repression… became more violent’

Anti-Palestinian views did not begin with October 7, 2023, either. Such abuses go back to the foundation of the state of Israel in 1948, the subsequent forcible displacement of some 750,000 Palestinians, and the erasure of Palestinian villages from the land.

In the years since, a growing number of international bodies and rights groups have described Israeli rule over Palestinians as apartheid. Systematic violence, including military assaults on blockaded Gaza, deadly West Bank pogroms and ongoing settler attacks and land seizures, which largely go unpunished, has also been widely documented by rights groups, particularly after October 7.

B’Tselem has noted an explosion in violence across the occupied West Bank, recording 1,107 Palestinians killed in “a single political project” between the Israeli military and settlers that appears aimed at forcing out the local population.

“October 7 allowed processes that were already under way to gain momentum and escalate,” Yair Dvir, from B’tselem, told Al Jazeera.

“The infrastructure of apartheid, repression and control over Palestinians became more violent, while the broader trajectory of eliminating Palestinian collective existence became clearer and more normalised – through the genocide in Gaza, the ethnic cleansing and dismantling of Palestinian society in the West Bank, and the intensification of discrimination and dehumanisation against Palestinian citizens of Israel.”

三年过去了，2023 年 10 月 7 日的创伤仍在继续重塑以色列的政治、战争以及其在世界上的地位。

在以色列地面行动后，以色列士兵奥里·梅吉迪什（Ori Megidish）获释，此前他被哈马斯俘虏。消息传出后，人们聚集在一起。[图片：Evelyn Hockstein/路透社]

对绝大多数以色列人来说，现代史被划分为2023年10月7日哈马斯领导的袭击事件之前和之后两个时期。自以色列在袭击事件后对加沙发动种族灭绝战争以来的三年里，以色列社会发生了根本性的变化。

观察人士表示，在现代以色列，政治言论和媒体歇斯底里情绪将集体创伤感放大到了前所未有的程度。

以色列力推对“10月7日被拘留者”处以绞刑和“作秀审判”（共4条记录，第1条）

以色列因10月7日行动失职解雇多名军事指挥官（共4条，此为第2条）

列表 3/4：10 月 7 日出生的加沙婴儿的艰难生活

以色列劳动力自10月7日以来发生变化的4项指标之4

以色列对加沙发动的种族灭绝战争已造成超过 74,000 名巴勒斯坦人死亡，以色列还将袭击范围扩大到几个地区国家。

在以色列极右翼势力的煽动下，加沙战争和被占领的西岸地区发生的一系列定居者迫害事件，加剧了以色列与世界大部分地区的孤立。

2023年10月14日，以色列军队和坦克在以色列南部贝里基布兹附近的一片田野里集结，该地靠近2023年10月7日被哈马斯领导的武装分子袭击的超新星音乐节举办地。[Thomas Coex/AFP]

特拉维夫大学的以色列政治心理学家丹尼尔·巴尔-塔尔表示，10 月 7 日打破了以色列军事不可战胜的神话。

在 2023 年 10 月 7 日之前，人们普遍对以色列所谓的科技和军事优势抱有强烈的自信。

哈马斯和其他组织攻入以色列后，局势就此结束：近 1200 人丧生，巴勒斯坦各组织俘虏了约 250 人。

以色列公众普遍与军方在加沙和被占领的西岸地区的暴力行动的后果隔绝开来，巴尔塔尔表示，许多人感到震惊的是，以色列总理本雅明·内塔尼亚胡可能事先掌握了有关哈马斯计划的情报。

在以色列国内，袭击事件造成的心理冲击显而易见。“它极大地扰乱了一切。这是一场挥之不去的危机，”他告诉半岛电视台。

特别是巴勒斯坦人，自那以后就一直生活在以色列种族灭绝式回应的阴影下。

政客们利用10月7日袭击事件造成的恐惧和创伤来达到自己的目的，并以此来攻击全体巴勒斯坦人。

以色列社会学家耶胡达·申哈夫-沙赫拉巴尼表示：“毫无疑问，10月7日之后，许多以色列人陷入了真正的恐惧之中，但在我看来，毫无疑问，政治势力利用这种恐惧抹杀了多年来在犹太-巴勒斯坦关系方面取得的几乎所有成就。”

无数民调显示，过去三年里，以色列社会进一步右倾。主流报纸的头条新闻都在质疑，曾经是以色列两国方案主要支柱的左翼力量是否还存在。

大量以色列人继续支持处决被控“恐怖主义”的巴勒斯坦囚犯，并继续在被占领的西岸地区扩建非法定居点。

宾夕法尼亚州立大学社会学家塔米尔·索雷克 (Tamir Sorek) 于 2025 年 5 月对以色列人进行的一项调查显示，绝大多数受访者表示支持驱逐加沙居民。此外，还有相当一部分人支持对被以色列军队入侵的城市的所有居民进行“大规模屠杀”，就像圣经中的以色列人在耶利哥所做的那样。

“10月7日无疑是当代以色列政治的一个分水岭，”申哈夫-沙赫拉巴尼指出。“我认为它使我们倒退了一百年——无论是在我们的集体意识方面，还是在我们彼此交流的意愿方面，尤其是在相互信任的水平方面。这是一个巨大的挫折，而且将极其难以克服。”

以色列极右翼国家安全部长伊塔马尔·本-格维尔在以色列议会通过一项法律后庆祝，该法律规定，对在军事法庭被判犯有致命袭击罪的巴勒斯坦人，死刑是默认刑罚。[图片：奥伦·本·哈孔/路透社]

以色列前国防部长约阿夫·加兰特将加沙的巴勒斯坦人描述为“人畜”，而国家安全部长伊塔马尔·本-格维尔则吹嘘向定居者团体分发了数千件政府武器，这些定居者团体因经常对被占领的西岸巴勒斯坦城镇和村庄进行致命的种族清洗而臭名昭著。

“弥赛亚主义和种族主义右翼利用这场灾难，不仅是为了证明其现有立场的合理性，而且是为了拓展以色列政治中言论和行为的界限，”申哈夫-沙赫拉巴尼说道。

他承认10月7日并没有催生以色列右翼，但它使以前被认为是极端的立场正常化了。

“恐惧无疑是这一转变的主要因素。但单凭恐惧本身并不能解释这一切。恐惧也被用于政治动员，”他说道。

在被占领的约旦河西岸村庄拉斯艾因奥贾，一栋巴勒斯坦房屋除了地板外已被完全拆毁。该村几乎所有居民都因以色列人从非法定居点发起的种族清洗而被驱逐。[图片由“直面占领”组织提供]

“镇压……变得更加暴力”

反巴勒斯坦情绪并非始于2023年10月7日。此类暴行可以追溯到1948年以色列建国之时，随后约有75万巴勒斯坦人被强行驱逐，巴勒斯坦村庄从土地上消失。

此后数年，越来越多的国际机构和人权组织将以色列对巴勒斯坦人的统治描述为种族隔离。人权组织，特别是10月7日事件之后，广泛记录了以色列对巴勒斯坦人实施的系统性暴力，包括对被封锁的加沙地带的军事袭击、在西岸发生的致命种族清洗以及持续不断的定居者袭击和土地掠夺（这些行为大多未受到惩罚）。

B'Tselem 注意到被占领的西岸暴力事件激增，记录显示，在以色列军方和定居者之间“一项旨在将当地居民驱逐出去的政治行动”中，有 1107 名巴勒斯坦人丧生。

“10 月 7 日，一些已经开始的进程得以加速发展并升级，”来自 B'tselem 的 Yair Dvir 告诉半岛电视台。

“对巴勒斯坦人的种族隔离、镇压和控制的基础设施变得更加暴力，而消除巴勒斯坦集体存在的更广泛轨迹也变得更加清晰和正常化——通过加沙的种族灭绝、对西岸巴勒斯坦社会的种族清洗和瓦解，以及对以色列巴勒斯坦公民的歧视和非人化加剧。”