"This is the hardest night in Gaza," a Gaza network personality tweeted midweek, attaching a short video of the shelling. Hundreds of Israelis, not only from the right side of the political map, responded with a mixture of anger and ridicule: "This is the hardest night - so far. Wait, wait."
For decades we have been accustomed to the fact that alongside attacks on our enemies in the south, north and central mountains, there are also noisy demonstrations condemning the war and condemning the inevitable harm to non-involved civilians.
The scale of the atrocity that took place on 7 October, the horrific and deliberate targeting of civilians, the concern for the safety of the abductees – all these have led the vast majority of the Israeli public to agree with an unprecedented statement: civilians in Gaza are no longer our problem.
For years, very prominent voices in the Israeli sphere have been careful to present the "dilemma" of military activity: the need to defend the security of the state alongside the need to protect its moral character. Israel has no right to defend itself at any price, and it would be better to endanger its soldiers, and even its citizens, in order to avoid harming enemy civilians.
This discussion cost Yair Golan his military career, elevated Itamar Ben-Gvir to (brief) greatness, and the claim of prioritizing enemy life was so widely accepted that Benny Gantz, the man who aimed himself at the heart of the Israeli mainstream, said in 2015 that during an attack on a hospital during Operation Protective Edge, "we did not harm civilians, but we endangered Golani soldiers to do so." And now, to our astonishment, it turned out that the attempt to hold the rope at both ends – both to fight the enemy and to care for him – turns the rope into a noose.
Even those who are in no hurry to say that "there are no non-involved people in Gaza" understand that caring for their uninvolved people has cost us the unbearable price of our non-involved lives.
It's not that we don't care if innocent civilians die on the other side – we just realized that this moral tendency couldn't be our compass anymore. We would love for all the non-involved people in the Gaza Strip, if there are any, to be saved, but it is no longer our job to save them. The State of Israel does not worry about the entire world – it cares about the citizens of the State of Israel, and yes, if necessary, even at the cost of the lives of enemy civilians.
It's not just that we don't have a security alternative, we don't have a moral alternative. In the face of the barbaric violence of the attackers, it became clear to us that the "moral character" of the state is measured not by targeted killings, but first and foremost by its ability to prevent babies from being slaughtered in their beds.
The Jewish state will not sacrifice itself on the cross in order to avoid toppling another high-rise building, and it is no coincidence that the clear voice that emerges from the hundreds of thousands of soldiers in the assembly grounds demands to "tear up their shape," "flatten Gaza," and hold a huge nature party on the empty lot.
This week, Jalal Bana published a fascinating column explaining why the proposal to transfer the residents of Gaza to another Arab country is unrealistic in the eyes of the Arab world.
The claim of prioritizing enemy life was so widely accepted that Benny Gantz, the man who aimed himself at the heart of the Israeli mainstream, said in 2015 that during an attack on a hospital during Operation Protective Edge, "we did not harm civilians, but we endangered Golani soldiers to do so."
There is no doubt that Israel needs to know the Arab and Palestinian pressures, but it should also be clear that with all due respect, this is not our problem. Do the Palestinians want to keep the embers of the "right of return" alive? Are the Arab states afraid of an ignorant and unproductive population that will be a burden on the economy? These things do not restrict Israel from acting in accordance with its interests.
The horror that occurred on Simchat Torah shook us all, and pulled the rug out from under several worldviews. All of us – all the players in the political and security debate – are forced to reexamine reality with sober eyes. When it comes to the question of the morality of war, something has changed in us. The Jewish journalist Kurt Tucholsky stated in the early years of Nazism that "a country is measured not only by its actions, but also by what it is willing to endure."
Israel is finally forced to decide what it is not willing to bear.
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