Almost two years

It’s almost two years since the October 7 massacre in the Gaza Envelope, two years since the beginning of the slaughter in the Gaza Strip.

Two years that we have all been caught in a relentless, deadly grinder – for us, mostly in the soul; in Gaza, mostly in the body.

Two years during which everything has changed, nothing resembles what was before, yet we don’t stop for a moment to reflect, absorb, and possibly choose a different path.

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Within my people I reside, tossed in the grinder like everyone else – fearful, threatened, swinging between barely functioning and not functioning at all, sleeping poorly and waking up in the morning with the question: what will befall us today? Fearing every new “cleared for publication” rumor, wondering when the regime will seize private bank accounts, working towards a foreign passport, just in case, praying I’ll recognize when the writing on the wall is coming true so that we must flee on time… and the list goes on. In my opinion, we are all there to some extent, even those less aware of this fact.

And on top of everything that is happening here, inside Israel, there are a few thousands of us who carry an additional burden, the burden of bearing witness to Gaza’s destruction and the violent policies in the West Bank. We, who watch the destruction of Gaza that is happening in our name, who are painfully aware of the daily rising death tolls, who witness the horrifying human testimonies of indiscriminate killings and terrible losses of children, parents, and loved ones, losses experienced by every single person in the Strip; we who understand that Israel deliberately targets hospitals, schools, journalists, and every public institution that could still provide aid, support, or a sense of normal life; we who do all we can to try to stop this, resist it, call it by its true name so everyone sees — through protests, demonstrations, social media, groups, newspapers, protective presence, fundraising for rebuilding ruins, delivering clothing and equipment to those robbed and destroyed… a hard and painful burden to carry.

A Country, interrupted

Amid all this, I’ve long felt a dissonance. Something constantly buzzing at the back of my mind. Somehow, the routine of the past two years – where one event relentlessly follows another: the regime coup events, the October massacre, the fighting in Gaza, the attacks from Iran, and all the events in between – throws us all into constant reactivity. We respond to every violent act, every fascist statement, every threatening show of force, every senseless remark – never allowing anyone to pause, lift their head, and see the bigger picture.

And at some point, I realized – that’s it. That’s what’s been jarring me constantly, buzzing in the space of my consciousness, so hard to pinpoint.

Gadi Elgazi, a historian and longtime left-wing activist, wrote this in a very precise way a few days ago:

“We can and must analyze every detail of each case of killing civilians, children, whole families, assassinations of journalists, bombing of hospitals, burning of tents. Not only because of the denial and disregard, but also to identify commanders and perpetrators. But it is also essential, in my opinion, to step back, set aside the details, and see the picture as a whole. There is a logic to the seemingly inexplicable cruelty, and it is fundamentally no different from the message of the strike squads in the West Bank – the armed cowboys affectionately called the ‘Hilltop Youth.’

All the killings add up to one simple message the army sends to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip: there is no safe place for you. No shelter, no home, no refuge. Your lives are exposed and death is everywhere. Leave.

The killing is part of a rolling genocide, but it is also a simple message learned by the class of ’48 in the mandatory lesson ‘This is how a village is cleansed of its inhabitants.’ Bombing and killing to unsettle, to push, to incite, to expel. For now, the pressure cooker is still closed, but the fire has already been lit and the town is burning.”

The Shock Doctrine

In her book The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein argues that major social crises – such as wars, coups, or natural disasters – are exploited by economic and political elites to amass more power at the expense of the public, who, caught in a state of shock and mental-emotional distress, are weakened and less able to resist harsh and sudden changes. The powerful use this “market of despair” to deepen inequality and strengthen their control.

Sounds familiar, right?

Klein goes further to say that governments don’t just take advantage of crises to impose economic and social changes – they sometimes deliberately create crises to enable these shifts. In other words, crises are not only “opportunities” but can also be manufactured or planned as part of a strategy to gain control, dismantle existing systems, and implement dramatic reforms. Extreme events become a political-economic tool in the struggle for power.

Here are some focused examples from the last two years in Israel around war and ongoing shock, just to give you the gist:

1. Erosion of basic freedoms, oversight, and transparency – emergency laws and regulations (Iron Swords) extended by the Knesset until December 2025.

2. Damage to the state’s commitment to its citizens – in 2025, Israel increased its defense budget to 140 billion NIS, nearly double the pre-war plan, resulting in cuts or freezes in budgets for civilian ministries like education, health, and welfare.

3. Mental and social harm – over 50% of young people reported worsening mental health due to the fighting, and 28% had to leave their jobs.

4. Economic harm for all – the ongoing fighting has widened the state budget deficit, with warnings about Israel’s credit rating and rising debt risks, possibly leading to further cuts to civilian sectors.

It is factually clear that the ongoing shock created by the continuous fighting, following the initial trauma of the October 7 massacre and the shock of hostages being neglected and left to die by Hamas, allows the government to harm us all in various ways – something that probably wouldn’t be possible if we weren’t all exhausted, grieving, and fighting nonstop.

Remember when the news used to be about what’s really going on in the world?

Today, most news focuses on the government – who yelled, who screamed, how someone behaved, where someone stayed more abroad than at home, who traded votes for favors, which mountain someone climbed, who locked whose doors, who lied, spread fake news, where they partied, if they paid for an expensive meal or not, what they said to hostage families, who belongs to some cult that’s raping children, who ordered whom around, who’s partying while abandoning us all, how much someone got paid by an enemy state... God, it’s so exhausting. And distorting. It distorts the real picture so we don’t see the truth – we live in a distorted reality, a deliberately blurred world, constant gaslighting so we won’t see.

Even though the media collaborates with the regime to distort, blur, and gaslight, we must see. We must learn to handle both the awful individual cases and look at the big picture. I can’t describe that big picture fully here, but we must see it to understand the context and connect the dots.

Because within this big picture of extreme nationalism, or fascism; of ongoing occupation that has crushed another people’s lives for decades in a clear, systematic way; of violent, arrogant Jewish supremacy that refuses to see anyone that doesn’t look like them; and of readiness for genocide without blinking – focusing on the individual incidents becomes almost grotesque.

Because what meaning is there in being outraged over a Palestinian held in administrative detention within a system whose policy is to harm Palestinians as much as possible? Or being angry about the horrific destruction of communities in the Jordan Valley within a policy of uprooting and expulsion? How valuable is our shock at the ongoing bombings and killing in Gaza when it happens within a regime that simply wants as much territory with as few people as possible? And how much can we talk about PTSD when our children keep enlisting and killing other children just because they obey a regime whose policy is exactly that?

Helping individuals is immediate, humane, and necessary, but we cannot sink into it so deeply that we ignore the big picture. If there’s any chance for change here, it will come only from seeing that big picture – and opposing it.

Halt. Look around. Refuse to cooperate.

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Ayala Shalev is the editor of That's About Us.