October 7 and the Path Dependency of Genocide

Any alternative interpretation must address the deterministic view that Israel’s reaction to the October 7 attack was path-dependent thanks to its colonial and racist nature. Hamas’s invasion of Israel not only claimed the lives of hundreds of civilians but also threatened the legitimacy of some of the most powerful political actors and institutions in the Israeli state. Netanyahu’s long reign rested heavily on his ability to convince the Israeli public that the occupation was not an urgent issue. Under his “conflict management” doctrine, he assured both supporters and critics that security could be maintained in a state of permanent indecision, with ongoing Palestinian repression.

The IDF, too, has adapted itself to this framework, concentrating its forces on supporting settlers in their slow-motion ethnic cleansing of the West Bank and occasionally murdering Palestinians in Gaza, primarily through air strikes. What it had ceased doing altogether was fulfilling its perceived original mission — defending Israelis — leaving the border dangerously exposed to what proved to be a very real threat from Gaza.

For both the Israeli military and intelligence apparatus and the political establishment, October 7 could have been a catastrophe. Netanyahu, the self-proclaimed “protector of Israel,” had failed spectacularly; his promise that Israelis could enjoy safety and prosperity alongside a permanently besieged, militarily-assaulted, and politically repressed Palestinian territory had collapsed. IDF generals were proven unprepared for their most basic responsibilities. Moreover, the institution itself had failed and could have faced major reforms. October 7 could have triggered a collapse in legitimacy and the removal of both Netanyahu and IDF leadership. It did not. Instead, it solidified their positions in the new configuration of the Israeli regime that has since emerged.

I propose that this political and institutional preservation was — and remains — the primary goal of the Israeli state and political system in its war on Gaza. The fact that pursuing genocide was even a viable political option, let alone the path ultimately chosen, is undoubtedly rooted in Israel’s colonial legacies. Still, the decision itself was made by political actors who believed — often for contradictory reasons — that continuing the war and the destruction of Gaza could preserve their political power.

They did so by sustaining and consolidating a governing coalition, elevating the IDF to the center of political decision-making and resource distribution, and building an early-stage consensus in support of the war, thereby making it far harder for opposition forces to mount resistance to a genocide that they had themselves aided and abetted in bringing about.

Creating a Consensus From Contradictions

While fighting was still underway in southern Israel following Hamas’s attack — with most of Israeli society in shock or in various states of genuine self-defense — Netanyahu and the IDF had not only found time to name the war (“Operation Iron Swords”) but also to define its official goals. The first was “the elimination of Hamas and its military capabilities”; and the second, “the return of all hostages taken during the attack.” These goals were inherently contradictory. Hamas would not release the hostages without an acknowledgment of Israeli defeat or, at a minimum, assurances of its own survival.

This contradiction is only problematic if we take Netanyahu and his generals at their word that they genuinely sought either to eliminate Hamas or to free the hostages. Their real objective, at that point, was to transform what could have been an internal legitimacy and power crisis into an external one. The war goals were aimed only at building public consent for the war itself.

The “elimination of Hamas” played to the existential fear most Israelis felt in the immediate aftermath of the attack, which the Right correctly understood as providing license for the campaign of annihilation against Gaza — a reading confirmed by a series of explicitly genocidal statements made by Netanyahu and his allies in the war’s opening weeks. “Release of the hostages,” however, was aimed at center-left elements of Israeli politics, to whom Netanyahu promised that the war’s goal was to bring back the hostages. Crucially, this political camp — which had led mass protests against the prime minister’s populist judicial reform — has historically aligned itself with the IDF, which it sees as an apolitical, liberal embodiment of Zionism — a counterweight to Netanyahu’s right-wing nationalism.

In this worldview, retrieving civilian hostages was understood much like the Israeli commitment to return captive soldiers — as a pre-political, immutable truth about the imagined liberal Israel. This belief was always misguided, but it now made them far more susceptible to the illusion that the army could serve as a mitigating factor within Netanyahu’s war effort. The rhetorical and political formula that tied the two goals together was that somehow “military pressure” would lead Hamas to release the hostages.

This formula successfully united a deeply divided Israeli society into a broad coalition supporting the war. The clearest example was the inclusion of Netanyahu’s rival, Benny Gantz, and his National Unity party (HaMahane HaMamlakhti) in a unity government to carry out the Gaza campaign. Gantz’s inclusion, as a former head of the IDF, cemented new stabilizing alliances between rival factions of the Israeli elite — alliances that gained the imprimatur of virtually all Zionist forces in Israeli society and the Knesset.

This success rested on two key elements: first, the swift and decisive decisions by Netanyahu and the IDF, and their ability not only to rally the public around the flag but also to leave the meaning of that flag vague or contradictory enough for each group to project its own vision onto it; and second, the relative weakness of the Israeli opposition, which either bought into government and IDF propaganda, clung to liberal delusions, or was too disorganized to mount an effective antiwar campaign in the war’s early stages. However, this inability can be attributed, at least in part, to the government´s brutal political repression, particularly targeting the Palestinian citizens of Israel.

War as a Power Source

Once the war was underway, it became even easier to justify such repression of political dissent. Yet in truth, there was not much dissent to suppress in the first place. The military campaign in Gaza allowed Netanyahu to gradually recover his political standing. It also drew his coalition partners — the settler leadership and the ultra-Orthodox — into deeper alliance with his Likud party. For the settlers, the war delivered the genocidal policies they had demanded, along with the opportunity to rebuild settlements in Gaza atop the ruins of Palestinian cities.

The war also heightened pressure on the IDF personnel, sparking renewed calls to draft ultra-Orthodox youth into military service. Ultra-Orthodox elites, whose influence depends in part on preserving their community’s exemption from service, were categorically opposed to such measures. Somewhat ironically, the IDF´s push for conscription was backed by liberal parties, historically critical of ultra-Orthodox “draft dodging,” and unwilling to leverage this internal right-wing tension. Netanyahu, however, proved himself a staunch ally of ultra-Orthodox leaders by refusing to advance harsher draft policies — deepening their reliance on him and, in turn, their support for the war.

The war has also destabilized much of the Israeli workforce, making workers — especially reservists — more dependent on state resources and wartime stipends. Many of these reservists, particularly in field units, come from the lower middle class, a core Netanyahu constituency. For some, the war has provided greater income and financial security as semiprofessional soldiers than in their previous, often precarious, civilian jobs. This economic dependence has further stabilized Netanyahu’s coalition, allowing him to navigate relations with other right-wing elites from a comfortable position while extending material benefits to workers participating in the war effort, even amid the broader economic downturn the war has caused.

A similar dynamic has unfolded within the IDF leadership. No senior officers were dismissed (though some resigned later), and the IDF as an institution has become central to nearly every aspect of the Israeli governance. It now manages the distribution of war-related benefits, commands an expanding budget while other public services face cuts, and holds unpresented political clout. The military also played a pivotal role in drawing liberal elites into the genocidal coalition. Branches such as the Air Force and intelligence services retained credibility through successes against the “Axis of Resistance” in confrontations with Lebanon and Iran — victories that, in turn, boosted demand for Israeli’s defense industries, now poised to expand both their share of the global arms trade and their role in the national economy.

As with the contradiction in the war’s stated goals, the press has often portrayed the IDF and the right-wing government as rival power centers. There is some truth to this — they do diverge on certain strategic issues — but the tension between these two poles has produced a stabilizing force. It allows different factions within Israel’s political system to argue over war goals and tactics while maintaining broad support for the campaign, since “their side” appears to have a seat at the table.

This is a fantasy. In reality, there is no “war” in the conventional sense — only a campaign of annihilation that has already inflicted more damage on Gaza and on Israeli society than can be repaired in our lifetime. The genocide may not have been the war’s initial driving force, but it has always been its logical end point.

The Antiwar Movement and Its Future

Against this backdrop, a relatively small but steadily growing antiwar movement operates in Israel. It is anchored by Palestinian political parties, the “Standing Together” movement, and smaller but persistent civil society and leftist organizations — such as those organizing protests displaying the names and faces of murdered Palestinian children. A notable addition from the political mainstream is “Soldiers for the Hostages,” a group of just under four hundred IDF reservists who have refused to continue serving in the war. These forces, myself included, are calling for a complete cessation of war.

We also believe it is the only path to securing a hostage deal. This entails urging reservists to refuse service, mobilizing unions and associations to strike, and undertaking actions aimed at disrupting the machinery of genocide — whether by breaking its daily routine or intervening against specific acts of settler or IDF vandalism and violence.

The demand to end the war in exchange for hostage release extends far beyond these groups. It includes the families of hostages, most of the parliamentary opposition, trade unions, and large parts of Israeli civil society. Yet neither the government nor the military has ever intended to reach such a deal. Hence, their opposition remains confined within the narrow boundaries of political debate set by Netanyahu himself on October 8, 2023. Many of these actors endorsed the genocide in its early stages, during which the IDF killed more than 20,000 Palestinian children. Opposing the war outright — not merely taking a position within the limited field of debate permitted by the political and military establishment — requires reckoning with that reality.

For now, such a reckoning appears beyond their reach. Without a coherent reassessment of their past complicity or a new strategy, this coalition has grown weaker, as seen in its leaders’ refusal to call on reservists to refuse to serve in Gaza. Another telling example is the Israeli labor federation, the Histadrut, which briefly led a strike against Netanyahu’s government, has refused to heed the hostage’s families’ call for another strike. Still, it is worth noting that some of these liberal groups joined the “Standing Together”–led August protest against the starvation of Gaza, suggesting that elements within the camp are shifting toward a more principled and effective opposition.

This analysis suggests that the stability of the pro-war coalition rests less on Israel’s overtly ethno-nationalist currents than on its pseudo-democratic ones. Legitimacy and public support for the war — and, subsequently, for the genocide — were generated through relatively free public debate and limited pluralism within state institutions, especially between the government and the IDF. This allowed controlled dissent to function as a mechanism of legitimization. Once initial support for the war was secured, the internal dynamics of the campaign made it increasingly difficult for groups — now implicated in crimes and in some cases financially dependent — to withdraw.

From this perspective, it is more useful — especially for both Israelis and Palestinians, but also for the broader international left — to assume that political processes and coalitions can be influenced, rather than treating them as predetermined products of colonial history. This means recognizing that the present reality in Israel-Palestine is our responsibility and within our capacity to change.