Wednesday marks the third anniversary of the October 7 terror attacks on southern Israel — and 20 days before an Israeli election in which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s record is the clear ballot question.
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record → mark → which
To survey the mood in Israel, the Post’s Adam Zivo spoke to Eylon Levy, one of the Jewish state’s best-known faces internationally.
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Zivo → survey → faces
A former spokesman for the State of Israel in the days after October 7, he has hundreds of thousands of followers on social media and hosts From Here to There, the flagship international affairs show of Channel 16 in Israel, as well as the Israel Electioncast podcast.
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he → have → Israel
Israelis are going to the polls at the end of October, and the election is overshadowed by the question of October 7.
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election → go → October
The government, or Netanyahu’s Likud party at least, wants it to be about the war triggered by October 7, while conveniently overlooking the massacre itself.
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it → want → massacre
This was a moment that brought Israelis back to a moment of primal vulnerability and a reminder of the existential threats facing this country, and it was a moment of weakness that has led to Israel’s greatest moment of regional dominance, but with enormous challenges on the horizon, like a looming confrontation with Turkey, which has filled the power vacuum left by the Iranian regime.
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which → bring → regime
There is a lot of anger about the massacre, and about the way the war has been managed, about the promises of total victory that have failed to materialize, about the very unequal distribution of the burden of military service.
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that → be → service
These are the issues that are going to dominate these elections.
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that → go → elections
But can you give me some personal stories from those around you that can help Canadians visualize what it’s been like for the average Israeli in the leadup to October 7?
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it → give → October
On an emotional level, it has been beautiful to watch the former hostages rebuilding their lives.
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hostages → watch → lives
Just recently, Eliya Cohen, who was held in Hamas captivity for 505 days, mostly in the tunnels, got married.
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who → hold → tunnels
He had been planning to propose to his girlfriend Ziv Abud before the October 7 massacre.
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He → plan → massacre
They hid inside a roadside bunker.
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They → hide → bunker
He was abducted, and she was under a pile of bloodied bodies.
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she → abduct → bodies
He had sat awake for her.
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He → sit → her
He had sat shiva.
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He → sit → shiva
He had convinced himself that she was dead, and he was going to have to move on without her — while she was publicly campaigning for his release.
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she → convince → release
And they recently got married, and they’ve just published a book of their own about what it is to rebuild your life and to rebuild a relationship after you’ve already mourned it and assumed that it was gone.
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it → marry → it
Emily Damari, who had to hide the fact that she was lesbian from her captors in Gaza, obviously because that would put her in danger, she just got married to a woman she met after she was released.
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she → have → woman
So very emotional to see these hostages, who everyone had prayed about so dearly, rebuilding their lives.
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everyone → see → lives
It’s refusing to disarm.
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It → refuse → ?
It’s refusing to relinquish power, and there is international pressure on Israel to begin withdrawing in accordance with a phased disarmament of Hamas.
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It → refuse → Hamas
But what that means is that Israeli troops begin to pull back from Gaza, while the rest of Gaza is still controlled by the terrorist organization that beheaded people on October 7.
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that → mean → October
The Lebanese government has failed to confront it and take that seriously, and there is still the threat of drone attacks against communities in the north.
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government → fail → north
So there is, even though Israel has really triumphed over those terrorist armies in ways few could have imagined before October 7, a feeling that there are still loose ends that leave the country’s borders very fragile, very vulnerable, and therefore that October 7 is still a matter of unfinished business.
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October → be → business
Looking at things retrospectively, how would you say Israeli society has changed over the past three years?
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society → look → years
It’s a very good question because these are the sorts of changes that you can’t necessarily visualize while you are in the middle of them.
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you → ’ → them
I’ll say that politically, there has been a much sharper debate about the difference between those who serve the country and those who do not, and the need to realign this country’s politics and priorities around the productive middle class who contribute taxes and military service at the expense of groups like the ultra-orthodox that have very basic secular education
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that → say → education
We have a reality now where young guys have often served over 500 days of reserve duty.
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guys → have → duty
They have not been able to hold down jobs, families, careers, startups because they keep getting called back into military service as tens of thousands of perfectly healthy young men do not serve, simply refusing orders to show up at the enlistment bureau because they claim a religious exemption.
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they → hold → exemption
Now it’s a major political breaking point.
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it → ’ → ?
So politically, the costs of the war, the financial and military costs of the war, have sharpened a debate about who does this country serve, and does this country serve those who serve it, or does it serve the special interest groups that are able to exploit their political power to get freebies for themselves at the expense of everyone else?
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that → sharpen → everyone
I would say, from a diplomatic level, which is you know what interests a lot of people outside the country, Israelis have become a lot more hawkish.
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Israelis → say → country
So if before you would have had a discourse about the need to make painful concessions for peace, to take risks for peace, that’s just not there anymore.
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that → have → peace
You cannot talk about the two-state solution without being laughed out of the room, because Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005, in the promise that the Palestinians could show what they would peacefully do with territory, and instead of getting Singapore we got nearly 20 years of rocket attacks.
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we → talk → attacks
And in all those years, when Israelis turned to the international community and said, “Hey, what guarantee do we have that that won’t happen in the West Bank,” they received no answers, absolutely no useful answers about how the disaster of Gaza would not be replicated from an area 20 times bigger overlooking Tel Aviv, surrounding Jerusalem.
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disaster → turn → Jerusalem
And then on October 7, it turned out that the threat wasn’t just rocket attacks; it was full barbarian hordes that were going to come in, abduct little children, commit barbaric sexual atrocities, and then wage a guerrilla war from tunnels underneath people’s feet, and so Israelis have realized that we have much less wiggle room and room for error, and that the stakes are really, really high, and that has led definitely to a rightward shift in terms of security, where people simply will believe the enemy at its word, and are less likely to give it the benefit of the doubt, and believe that we can afford to live in convenient illusions
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we → turn → illusions
That perhaps has been one of the driving lessons of October 7: we cannot afford to inhabit convenient illusions, and sometimes we have to stand up to pressure from our friends when our national interests are at stake.
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interests → afford → stake
And I think that’s going to shape Israel’s conduct towards the rest of the world.
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that → think → world
Whoever wins the next election, this is not just a Netanyahu issue.
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this → win → election
…and 102 more, not listed.
The Aporia
