The costs for Israelis of Israel's longest war

This story is part of NPR's coverage of two years since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the ongoing war in Gaza. For more reporting, analysis and different views of the conflict, go to npr.org/mideastupdates.  

JERUSALEM — On a street named Gaza lives Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a top-floor apartment near a sushi restaurant.

Outside, one recent afternoon, a father stood holding a megaphone.

"Bibi and Sara," he calls out to the prime minister, using his nickname, and his wife. "It's Rom's dad."

Ofir Braslavsky's 21-year-old son Rom still is being held hostage in Gaza, two years after Hamas led an attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, sparking the devastating Gaza war.

An Israeli woman holds up a placard showing a photo of Rom Braslavsky, who is held hostage by Hamas in Gaza, outside Damascus Gate in Jerusalem.

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Eyal Warshavsky

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As Netanyahu intensified the war this year, families of hostages have intensified their own war with Netanyahu — pressing him to strike a deal with Hamas to get their loved ones back before it's too late.

These families are among those in Israel who have paid the most agonizing personal cost of two years of prolonged war.

"I'm not going to let you kill my son and bring him back in a body bag," Braslavsky shouts.

The cost of unprecedented national division during wartime

Camped outside Netanyahu's home with other families of hostages was Mor Goddard, who survived the Hamas-led attack on her kibbutz on the Gaza border but lost her parents — and more.

"I lost my trust in the country, my trust in the army. Terrorists entered my house, tried to open the safe-room door, and when they didn't succeed, they set the house on fire. And nobody came," Goddard says. "I know what the feeling of abandonment is. Hours when nobody comes. Hours when I hear my friends and parents being murdered."

Every day since, she has mourned the road her country has taken in its war against Hamas to retrieve the body of her father, held by Palestinian militants in Gaza as a bargaining chip, and the other hostages.

"I think that from Oct. 8 until today, [Israel is] acting out of revenge, and not out of values," she says. "It's like a snowball that rolls and rolls and rolls, that you cannot stop."

This is one cost of the prolonged war: Not all Israelis believe in it any more. A recent poll by the Israel Democracy Institute found some 66% of Israelis want it to end.

"The consensus that ... started this war has very much eroded through the time," says Oren Tene, a psychologist and head of the Public Mental Health Institute at Tel Aviv Medical Center. "When a nation goes to war and is not unified in belief that we are doing the right thing, then the propensity for suffering is much higher."

The cost of a national mental health crisis, including among soldiers

In the last two years, Israel's military has battered its enemies and reshaped the region, with its troops invading parts of Lebanon and Syria, and striking Yemen and Iran, all while carrying out a deadly military campaign in the Gaza Strip.

At home, Tene has tracked a rise in the use of anti-anxiety medications like Valium and Klonopin. The 12-day war with Iran in June was especially traumatizing, as Iranian missiles pounded Israeli cities and families slept in bomb shelters. He's seen an influx of patients.

An Israeli army soldier stands before the memorial of a victim of the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks at the Nova Festival grounds in Reim, in southern Israel, on the second anniversary of the attacks on Tuesday.

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"They don't sleep well. They can't concentrate, they feel worried all the time. They don't know if they have a future here," he says.

After the Oct. 7 attack, Israel relaxed gun license rules, and issued thousands of firearms a day to civilians shaken by the attack, giving rise to increased cases of domestic violence, according to authorities.

Tene has also treated young soldiers coming back from Gaza traumatized by survivor's guilt, watching their friends get killed alongside them. A total 466 Israeli soldiers have been killed in Gaza, with a high rate of friendly fire accounting for 15% of soldier deaths, according to military figures.

He says he has treated many soldiers who acknowledged shooting Palestinian civilians, and who are experiencing what mental health practitioners call moral injury or moral trauma.

"Many people describe the fact that they have betrayed their values," he says. "If you shot a child, the child walks with you."

The cost of apathy to Palestinian suffering

What soldiers see in Gaza, most Israelis do not see. Israeli news has mostly shielded audiences from it.

That is another cost of the war for Israelis: a loss of empathy for Palestinian suffering.

Keren Gill, an economist attending a demonstration to end the war and free the Israeli hostages, is sad to see her sympathies toward Gaza change so much in the last two years.

"Before Oct. 7, my thinking was, there are families there and there are people who want to live quiet and have their own life," she says. "But today, I don't think that anyone in Gaza is innocent." 

She is appalled by Israeli hostages' accounts of some being held captive in families' homes. The military says some were held captive in the home of a Gaza doctor.

"Is it reasonable that a doctor in Gaza was taking hostages to his home? I cannot believe it happened. So for me, I don't care about the Gaza people," she says.

The attempt to build empathy

An Israeli researcher of Middle East politics is trying to help restore empathy. Assaf David built an online following by translating to Hebrew the Facebook posts of ordinary Palestinians in Gaza.

This post got a lot of attention, written by a father in Gaza, Saed Abu Eita. Roughly translated, it says: "This is my picture with my daughter Mira before the war. I love her very much. I lost her. I didn't get the chance to say goodbye to her, and I don't know who buried her." 

"It got a lot of reaction from Israelis, which was a surprise to me, because I didn't think that Israelis cared much about the suffering of Gaza," David says.

He believes social media posts from Gaza help skeptics in Israel gain awareness of the costs Israel has exacted on Palestinians in the war.

" I'm too terrified to think about the long-term costs of this lack of empathy, because it feeds on itself," David says. "The psychological costs and mental costs and ethical costs, they affect your soul, and these will be the hardest costs to compensate."

The cost of global fury at Israel

Protests against Israel's war are common across Europe. Israeli authorities have documented attacks on Jews and Israelis abroad throughout the war. International sports and music competitions are considering bans on Israeli participation. Countries are imposing weapons embargoes, including Israel's staunch ally Germany.

Protesters march with Palestinian flags during a demonstration under the motto "Draw the red line with us: Together for Gaza!" near the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, on Sept. 27. Tens of thousands of demonstrators marched through the streets of the German capital to demand that Israel halt its military campaign in Gaza.

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From global sympathy in the days that followed the Oct. 7 attack, Israel is fighting genocide and war crimes accusations in international courts.

The Israeli government has warned Israelis to lower their profile abroad, and delete social media posts about their military service. Some countries have pursued war crimes charges against visiting Israelis who have served in the military.

That hasn't stopped them from traveling.

The cost of traveling the world as an Israeli

The Tel Aviv international airport is Israelis' gateway to escape the intensity of life at war. That escape route is no longer a given — international flights have been canceled repeatedly with missile fire from Yemen and Iran.

In the departure hall is Oshri Avata, 25, traveling to the Eastern European country of Georgia after multiple tours of duty in Gaza and Lebanon serving in an elite undercover unit. While the rest of his unit is doing group therapy with a psychologist to process their experiences, he skipped out.

"I ran away from this. I don't wanna do that. I wanna fly. I wanna see the world ... this is another kind of treatment," he says.

Another traveler is Aviv Hajaj, 30. She was supposed to fly to Paris to see Beyoncé perform this summer, but the war with Iran canceled her flight. She is nervous before boarding a flight to Athens, Greece.

" I probably will not speak in Hebrew at streets or metros or stuff. So it sucks," she says. "The fact that we need to be scared to travel the world ... I just want it to be over."

"Our story will have a good ending"

Stickers cover the walls of the airport parking lot bear the smiling faces of young Israeli soldiers killed in the war.

One sticker stands out, with a quote from a mother's eulogy to her son, a soldier killed in Gaza: "Our story will have a good ending."

When the war does end, Israelis will begin to reckon with the costs they've paid over the last two years.

NPR's Carrie Kahn contributed to this report from Tel Aviv, Israel.
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