March 1, 2026
Alongside familiar feelings of fear and uncertainty, the newly escalated conflict with Iran has forged a renewed mood of national unity, in which the usual political and social divisions of Israel’s fractured society appeared to have been subsumed by a collective sense that a conflict long willed by so many had finally arrived.
Speaking from inside a shelter as the sounds of missiles and explosions shook the city, Orly Hareuveny, a physiotherapist, told Middle East Eye that Israelis had become so accustomed to war that it was now a distinct characteristic of Israeli life - “the same as the weather is for people in England”.
Hareuveny considers herself a leftist and a supporter of co-existence with Palestinians, political views that have been marginalised in the Israel of Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right coalition and its three-year genocidal war in Gaza.
This is so sadly predictable, but also, that comment:
Is so sad.
They reap what they sow. They cannot play the victim while supporting their idea of peace (destroying their list of enemies, which just keeps getting bigger)
I wasn’t trying to be specifically sympathetic to Israelis, I was trying to point out that there’s a loss of humanity living in a state of constant war and conflict. And yeah Israel is reaping what they’ve sown, but when conflicts last for so long it becomes a generational curse, (and this is a bit cliche but) in the “hurt people hurt people” kind of way. It’s fucked up. Shit’s on autopilot.