The Israeli Left struggles to come to terms with the Hamas massacre

But the retaliation against Gaza has driven human rights groups to reaffirm the need to safeguard all civilian life, offering a conscience in a climate of vengeance.

With the shock, horror and Holocaust imagery stemming from Hamas’s October 7 invasion of Israel, the Israeli Left and backers of reconciliation with the Palestinians have been jolted. Some of those who once defined themselves as peace supporters are now turning a blind eye to mass death and destruction in Gaza.

Along with calls by pundits to level the crowded coastal enclave ruled by Hamas, their change of heart is part of an overall atmosphere that has put Israel’s internationally respected human rights groups and activists on the defensive more than ever before regarding both Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

The emerging repentant leftists thought of themselves as left-wingers because they opposed the occupation, favoured dialogue (at least in theory), and hoped for peace, including with the Gazans. But after Hamas’s massacres, atrocities, torchings of trapped families, beheadings and kidnappings of children and the elderly, there is a growing sense that Israel is entitled to do anything to Gaza’s population regardless of whether it tears to shreds the laws of war.

An example of this train of thought was published in the Yediot Ahronoth newspaper on Friday, in an article headlined, Breaking Point of a Leftist. Dror Feuer, a journalist, editor and former television presenter, gave voice to the feeling of many that he, too, could easily have been slaughtered by Hamas and that, even though he and his children are relatively safe in Tel Aviv, he constantly relives the murders and horrors of October 7.

“My heart, I admit, is sealed off to the suffering of the residents of Gaza. As a mild leftist it is hard for me to think such thoughts, and to write them, but what else is left? After what happened, the only humanitarian crisis I care about is ours.”