Hamas’s brutal attack on Oct. 7 shocked the nation of Israel. In one day, many of us not only lost our sense of personal security but also the unconditional confidence we had in the resilience of the strong state of Israel and of our ability to defend ourselves without foreign assistance. The state of Israel must provide its residents with a sense of security, but the toll of this action may be heavy.
Many of us, especially those who participated in wars (I fought in the first Lebanon war in 1982), understand the price of “boots on the ground” as the United States experienced most recently in Iraq and Afghanistan. The fear of it permeates every home in Israel, where its military is truly the “people’s army” because military conscription in the Israel Defense Force is required for all eligible citizens.
But alongside the great anxiety for our safety as citizens and soldiers and for our security, another anxiety has begun to seep in not for the very existence of the state of Israel but for the survival of its democracy.
Since the beginning of the year, hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens have taken to the streets each week to protest anti-democratic legislation by the Netanyahu government. Our concern was that it was an attempt to corrupt the legal system and weaken the supremacy of the rule of law by undermining the Supreme Court of Israel, the only protector of individual and minority rights.
We feared that the act to change democratic rules would push, among others, Arab citizens — who make up one-fifth of the population — outside the realm of Israeli democracy.
After Hamas’s attack, Israelis united. Organizations switched from holding rallies and demonstrations against the Netanyahu government to assisting evacuees from kibbutzim and small towns bordering the Gaza Strip; transitioning to active-duty military service; and volunteering to obtain information about the more than 200 hostages taken by Hamas.
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In some cases, left-wing activists who have been the target of right-wing propagandists such as Yair Golan, former deputy chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, overnight became national heroes after risking their lives to help rescue victims of the attack. Representatives from the opposition, led by Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, called for a unity government to be formed, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed onto in the days following the attack.
The winds of war brought with them social solidarity but also persecution and silencing, especially of Arab citizens, by treating all Palestinians as if they were supporters of Hamas. If victory over Hamas should come at the cost of the destruction of Israeli democracy, this will be a Pyrrhic victory.
We Israelis as a society must not allow the enemies of democracy to achieve — under the auspices of war — what they sought to achieve earlier with legislation: The elimination of Israeli democracy. Expulsion of the Arab minority and its representatives from Israeli democracy would mean that the state of Israel would no longer be democratic.
A country in which there is a minority without rights, without representation, without the ability to even express sympathy for those who were killed is not a democracy. It should be noted that some of the victims of the terrorist attack were Arab citizens of Israel. Hamas came to kill and kidnap Israelis, regardless of whether they were Jews or Arabs.
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In the past two weeks, while Israel has been receiving overwhelming support from the United States, Russia and China have made their positions plain with their deafening silence. They have made it clear that they are not on the side of Israel by refraining from condemning Hamas’s brutal attack and have continued warm relations with Iran, which backs Hamas.
Today more than ever, we, the liberal majority in Israel, understand that the world is divided between peace-supporting democracies and war-mongering dictatorships. This time of war is also Israel’s testing time. Israel should defeat Hamas, which is also an enemy of most Palestinians. However, it must not end the war with an external victory over Hamas, combined with a domestic loss in the battle for democracy.
Nadav Tamir is executive director of J Street Israel.
