October 7 attack shapes Israel’s elections and fuels political blame

Three years on, October 7 is central to Israeli politics as Netanyahu faces pressure and deflects blame for his failures.

A protester wearing a mask depicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a sign with the word 'Liar' in Hebrew [File: Ronen Zvulun/Reuters]

The three-year anniversary of the October 7, 2023, attack is approaching in Israel, and despite everything that has happened since – including wars in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran – the memory of the assault continues to play a defining role in how Israelis view their place in the Middle East.

And with elections looming in late October, the Hamas-led assault, which killed 1,139 Israelis and led to about 250 more being taken captive, looks set to play a pivotal role in determining their outcome.

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s failure to hold an independent inquiry into his government’s failings ahead of the attack, despite similar inquiries focused on the conduct of the army and intelligence services, continues to dog him ahead of the elections.

Critics, including electoral rival and former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, have accused Netanyahu of ignoring warnings about Hamas in the run-up to October 7, presiding over a security doctrine that assumed the group had been deterred, and failing to ensure the country was adequately prepared for the attack. Former Chief of Staff and a leading opposition candidate Gadi Eisenkot has gone further, making an independent inquiry into the failures of October 7 a central plank of his party’s electoral platform.

Netanyahu’s principal response has been in keeping with what many critics argue is the defining characteristic of his premiership: to deflect blame onto others. The stakes are high for the prime minister; he is currently on trial for corruption, and losing the election could make it harder for him to avoid prison.

Netanyahu has begun to push the claim that senior defence officials deliberately chose not to wake him up before the October 7 attack after they began to see suspicious activity in Gaza. “They knew that, as prime minister of Israel, I would have immediately given the order to put the entire military on alert,” Netanyahu said, outlining how he would have prevented the invasion.

Elsewhere, his wife Sara Netanyahu has cited opposition leader Yair Golan’s widely praised response to the attack – running from his bed and driving to the site – as apparent evidence of his foreknowledge of Hamas’s plans.

“Sara and Benjamin Netanyahu are just adding to the conspiracies that are already out in the public arena,” Neve Gordon, an Israeli academic at Queen Mary University of London, said, likening the tactic to similar strategies employed by populists worldwide. “People say it was planned, that the generals were somehow complicit and all of this is speeding up as the elections draw closer and is designed to confuse and reinforce the prime minister’s base.”

Israeli troops and tanks gather in a field near the kibbutz Beeri in southern Israel on October 14, 2023, close to the spot where 270 revellers were killed in the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023 [Thomas Coex/AFP]

Israeli media outlets have helped embed the trauma of October 7 within the country through an almost endless repetition of the events of that day, while the attack has also been invoked to justify everything that has come since, including the genocide in Gaza, and the killing of more than 73,000 Palestinians.

“The October 7 massacre was immediately interpreted as a new Holocaust, and the criminal genocidal reaction was interpreted as legitimate, without recognition of the suffering of innocent people,” Lev Grinberg, a professor of sociology at Ben Gurion University, said. “No one wanted to see the images of Palestinian suffering, and the media collaborated with the neglect of the casualties and damages, hiding the images from the public.”

“For most Israelis, [October 7 is] the worst in the country’s history … haunting public opinion and Israelis’ very basic sense of safety,” London-based Israeli academic and media analyst Ayala Panievsky said, describing the trauma of the attack and what she characterized as the institutional failure across the government and security services that met it.

“The fact that these elections will be about October 7 is not surprising really. The problem is that, to this day, none of the horrors that followed in Gaza penetrated the public conversation in Israel,” she added.

“That’s the only story told in the Israeli media. So there is little interest and little information out on Gaza, and this is not at all part of the conversation around the upcoming elections right now,” she said.

三年过去了，10 月 7 日对以色列政治而言意义重大，内塔尼亚胡面临着巨大的压力，并试图转移人们对他失败的指责。

一名抗议者戴着印有以色列总理本雅明·内塔尼亚胡头像的面具，举着一块写有希伯来语“骗子”字样的牌子。[图片：Ronen Zvulun/路透社]

2023 年 10 月 7 日袭击事件三周年纪念日即将在以色列到来，尽管此后发生了种种事件——包括加沙、黎巴嫩和伊朗的战争——但对那次袭击的记忆仍然在以色列人如何看待他们在中东的地位方面发挥着决定性作用。

10 月下旬即将举行选举，哈马斯领导的袭击造成 1139 名以色列人死亡，约 250 人被俘，这场袭击似乎将在决定选举结果方面发挥关键作用。

列表 1/4 梦想破碎：加沙截肢者在封锁和废墟中挣扎求生

以色列国防部长称，以色列仍希望将巴勒斯坦人从加沙地带驱逐出去（共4条记录，此为第2条）。

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以色列对加沙的围困迫使牙医在街头行医（共4条，此为第4条）

尽管针对军队和情报部门的行为进行了类似的调查，但以色列总理本雅明·内塔尼亚胡在袭击发生前未能就其政府的失职行为展开独立调查，这一事件在选举前仍然困扰着他。

包括内塔尼亚胡的竞选对手、前总理纳夫塔利·贝内特在内的批评人士指责内塔尼亚胡在10月7日袭击事件发生前无视有关哈马斯的警告，其安全政策假定该组织已被威慑，并且未能确保国家为此次袭击做好充分准备。前总参谋长、主要反对派候选人加迪·艾森科特的立场更为强硬，他将对10月7日袭击事件的失败进行独立调查作为其所在政党竞选纲领的核心内容。

内塔尼亚胡的主要回应与许多批评人士所说的他总理任期的标志性特征一脉相承：将责任推卸给他人。对这位总理而言，形势严峻；他目前正因腐败罪名接受审判，而败选可能会让他更难避免牢狱之灾。

内塔尼亚胡开始宣称，高级国防官员在10月7日袭击发生前，明明发现加沙地带有可疑活动，却故意不叫醒他。“他们知道，作为以色列总理，我会立即下令全军进入戒备状态，”内塔尼亚胡说道，并阐述了他原本会如何阻止这场入侵。

另一方面，他的妻子萨拉·内塔尼亚胡则援引反对派领导人亚伊尔·戈兰对袭击事件的广受赞誉的回应——从床上跑起来开车赶到现场——作为他事先知晓哈马斯计划的明显证据。

“萨拉和本杰明·内塔尼亚胡只是在加剧公众舆论中已经存在的阴谋论，”伦敦玛丽女王大学的以色列学者内芙·戈登说道，她将这种策略比作世界各地民粹主义者使用的类似策略。“人们说这是预谋好的，将军们也参与其中，而且随着选举临近，这一切都在加速进行，其目的是为了迷惑和巩固总理的支持者。”

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日哈马斯领导的袭击事件中270名狂欢者丧生的地点。[Thomas Coex/AFP]

以色列媒体通过几乎无休止地重复10月7日发生的事件，加深了该国的创伤，同时，这次袭击也被用来为之后发生的一切辩护，包括加沙的种族灭绝和杀害超过73000名巴勒斯坦人。

“10月7日的大屠杀立即被解读为一场新的纳粹大屠杀，而这种罪恶的种族灭绝行为却被解读为合法的，无视无辜民众遭受的苦难，”本古里安大学社会学教授列夫·格林伯格说。“没有人愿意看到巴勒斯坦人遭受苦难的画面，媒体也助长了这种对伤亡和损失的漠视，向公众隐瞒了这些画面。”

“对大多数以色列人来说，[10月7日]是该国历史上最糟糕的一天……它萦绕在公众舆论和以色列人最基本的安全感中，”常驻伦敦的以色列学者兼媒体分析师阿亚拉·帕涅夫斯基说道，她描述了袭击带来的创伤，以及她所说的政府和安全部门在应对袭击时存在的制度性失败。

“这次选举将围绕10月7日展开，这其实并不令人意外。问题在于，时至今日，加沙随后发生的惨剧仍然没有在以色列的公众讨论中引起关注，”她补充道。

“以色列媒体只报道这一则新闻。因此，外界对加沙局势几乎不感兴趣，也鲜有相关信息，这完全不属于目前围绕即将到来的选举的讨论范畴，”她说道。