ENEMIES AT HOME ARE TEARING ISRAEL APART

“Our fighters have enemies outside that need to be fought,” the politician said at a right-wing rally in central Tel Aviv. Then she paused.
Evening was falling. The humid city was quickly filling with traffic, crowds and artificial light. Limor Son Har-Melech, a member of the Knesset for the religious Zionist party Otzma Yehudit (or Jewish Power), looked sorrowful, before a wave of fury washed over her and she continued.
“Our fighters have enemies outside that need to be fought, but also enemies at home!”
The war against Hamas began 10 months ago. It’s been more than 300 days since the terrorist group murdered about 1200 people and abducted 251 hostages from Israel. About 40,000 Israel Defence Forces combat troops have invaded northern and southern Gaza, and at least 70,000 tonnes of bombs have been dropped on that territory, killing almost 40,000 more people according to the Gaza health ministry, run by Hamas.
But Israeli citizens do not typically say now that they fear Hamas or Hezbollah or Iran, or any of the threats arrayed against them on several fronts in the regional conflict that began on October 7. Instead ­Israeli society is turning inward to confront those “enemies at home”.
Who they are depends on your tribe, your politics and your ­religion. If, like Son Har-Melech, you are a member of the settler movement in the West Bank, your enemies are the Palestinians there and anyone who tries to stop you controlling that land.
If you are a member of Tel Aviv’s secular liberal intelligentsia, your enemy is Benjamin Netanyahu, the seemingly indestructible Israeli Prime Minister, and the religious politicians who prop up his governing coalition.
If you are in the ultra-Orthodox community, a rapidly growing minority that accounts for 12.9 per cent of Israel’s population, your enemy is the Supreme Court, which ruled last month that the young men in your community will no longer be exempt from military service.
And if you are a Palestinian ­citizen of Israel, you fear the government, the media, and violent reprisals for October 7 from your Jewish neighbours.
The outside threats are real and imminent though.
Last week Israel carried out two complex assassinations of terrorist leaders in enemy capitals in a matter of hours. Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr, was killed in Beirut on Tuesday, and Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, was killed the next day in Tehran.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Hezbollah’s secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, both vowed to take ­revenge on Israel.
Some Israelis in Tel Aviv and Haifa stocked up on water and canned goods; they worked ­remotely if they could. The government issued its ministers with emergency satellite phones. In Jerusalem on Friday the tourists who usually queue for hours to visit the Church of the Holy Sepulchre had vanished. Airlines began cancelling flights to ­Israel on Wednesday.
But last Monday an incident occurred that Ami Dror, one of the leaders of the widespread protests last year against the Netanyahu government’s judicial reforms, said “looked almost like the first phase of a civil war”. He added: “Only luck prevented people being shot. Only chance.”
Protesters, including Tally ­Gotliv and Svi Sukkot, two politicians from Netanyahu’s governing coalition, stormed a military compound in southern Israel and fought with soldiers there. They were opposing the arrest of nine reserve soldiers charged with the sexual and physical abuse of a ­Palestinian detainee.
Netanyahu condemned the ­incident but Bezalel Smotrich, his hard-right nationalist Finance Minister, released a video message calling the arrested men “heroes”. Itamar Ben-Gvir, the far-right ­National Security Minister, called their detention “nothing less than shameful”. Son Har-Mellech, who is from the same party as Ben-Gvir, told the rally on Thursday that she was there to “protect the soldiers” from prosecution. Her threats against prosecutors were cheered by the crowd.
Centrist and left-wing Israelis saw Monday’s incident as the ­invasion of violent religious militias into military bases.
Opposition leader Yair Lapid said in despair: “We are not on the brink of the abyss, we are in the abyss.”
Labour MP Naama Lazimi said that the scenes were a sign that the Israeli government believed it was “above the law” and bringing a “West Bank settler mindset into wider society”.
Dror, who continues to be an influential activist on the Israeli left, worries that his country could end up like Lebanon, a formerly peaceful and pluralistic society ­destroyed by ethnic and sectarian conflicts. “Like Lebanon, if the rule of law stops in Israel, it will be anarchy. Everyone will get a gun, and whoever has the most guns will win.”
Dror didn’t fear Hamas, Hezbollah or Iran, he said. The titanic hatred that these actors felt against Israel was nothing new; Israelis were used to it. Monday’s riots were more distinctive and therefore more worrying: “This internal fight is much more dangerous. It’s like cancer. If you allow it to grow it takes over the whole body.”
The fractures in Israeli society were on full display around Tel Aviv on Thursday. Not only was there Son Har-Mellech’s splenetic right-wing gathering, other rallies and demonstrations and vigils took place in the city. At Bnei Brak, a community of 200,000 ultra-­Orthodox Jews on the coastal plain around Tel Aviv, hundreds of young Haredi boys shut down Highway Four. The police watched as they sang, danced and chanted against being enlisted into the ­Israel Defence Forces. “We prefer to eat the rocket of Hezbollah than join the army,” one tiny boy said.
That night marked 300 days since the hostages were taken captive by Hamas. US officials believe that about 50 are still alive in Gaza. One large demonstration, intended to be apolitical, was held outside the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. Thousands of Israelis gathered to hear a recording of 24-year-old Eden Yerushalmi’s call to the emergency police hotline on October 7.
“They’re going to kill me. I’m dead,” Yerushalmi, who is thought to be in captivity in Gaza, said. Her desperate voice bounced around central Tel Aviv, as a woman in the crowd clutching an M16 rifle wept.
But the plight of the hostages doesn’t bring Israelis together. The families of the captives are split over whether to push for a deal for their release, or support Netanyahu’s aim of “total victory” over Hamas. Outside the defence ministry, a short walk from the museum, ­Yehudit Mevorach, 28, held a picture of her brother Avinatan Or. He was somewhere in Gaza, she hoped.
“The war should be stronger,” she said. “All the people in Gaza are part of this crime.” She said her family had told Netanyahu to ­ignore the international community and fight to bring her brother back.
The hostage families mirror ­Israeli society, split between left and right, religious and secular. They want their relatives returned but common ground remains elusive.
The Times