The level of militant lust for revenge in Israeli society is uncharted these days. The latest example came on Friday, when Israeli Channel 12 journalist Danny Kushmaro released a 27-minute report on Israel’s destruction in southern Lebanon. The title of the presentation was “This is not the Third Lebanon War, it is the last one.”
Channel 12 is the most-watched commercial channel, it’s considered centrist and mainstream. In the report, Kushmaro is embedded with Golani infantry soldiers riding into a village in southern Lebanon, called Ayta Al-Sha’b. The village is almost entirely razed to the ground, but there are still some buildings left. Kushmaro’s report is replete with vitriol, where he repeatedly refers to “these evil people”, whom he chides for “hating Israel”.
At the end of the story, Kushmaro is offered the task of pressing a button to denonate a building.
If you want to find actual Israeli journalists covering this, look at bt’selem or 792
Thanks for this recommendation. Diverse perspectives are important in underscoring that the Israeli people are not a monolith, and that they are distinct from the state of Israel.
I often see people online speaking about Israelis as though all of them are in favour of the ongoing genocide, when this is simply not the case. That’s not to say that Netanyahu’s control of the media hasn’t led to a depressingly high proportion of Israelis to see themselves as righteous victims — years of state propaganda has unfortunately had an impact. However, there are journalists and activists (Jewish or otherwise) who are working to challenge this rhetoric.
Yeah, the vast majority of Israelis do support the genocide (per polling in the past year).
There’s some smaller group that want a ceasefire just to get the hostages home. There’s a smaller group of people who are opposed to the genocide because they value the lives of their Palestinian neighbors. There’s a smaller group of Israelis that are antizionist (revolutionaries opposing the existence of a Jewish ethnostate).
The polls suggest that less than ten percent oppose the genocide