As three Israeli captives were freed from Hamas captivity in Gaza on Sunday, Israel watched every moment with tense anticipation.
Crowds gathered in Tel Aviv to share the sight of Romi Gonen, Emily Damari and Doron Steinbrecher released after 471 days of captivity in exchange for a ceasefire and the release of 90 Palestinian women and children from prison Israeli.
The public first saw the three women when they were transferred to the Red Cross in Gaza City. Surrounding the vehicles were several armed Hamas fighters, wearing crisp uniforms and managing a large crowd of curious Palestinians.
The scene, accompanied by images of Hamas fighters parading through the streets of Gaza atop spotless white trucks, shocked the Israeli public, sowing anger as well as doubt about the effectiveness of the 15-month war.
After all, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had promised to eradicate Hamas from Gaza.
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“The face of total victory,” Amichai Eliyahu, a former minister of the far-right Jewish Power party, wrote alongside a video he posted on X in which he celebrates Hamas fighters.
Israel Frey, an independent Israeli journalist, told Middle East Eye that “there is shock among the Israeli public” following the Hamas images in Gaza City.
“After a year and four months, during which the public’s eyes were flooded with information and baseless accounts of stories of total victory and revenge, the Israeli public is seeing from Gaza images of Toyota, armed operatives of Hamas and Gaza emerging from its ruins.” he said.
Frey said the Israeli perspective on Palestinians, “from Palestinian politicians to young children in Gaza,” is one of “delegitimization and dehumanization.”
This is shared by “the whole of society,” he said, from far-right young settlers to urban liberals.
“Everything is being done to narrow the perspective of Israelis and the world to see Palestinians only as Isis, as Nazis and subhumans,” Frey added.
Amal Oraby, a Palestinian lawyer and human rights activist, said images of Hamas fighters surrounded by civilians were used to reinforce this narrative about Palestinians.
“Israeli media took this opportunity to repeat the message that there are no innocents in Gaza. They saw this as another opportunity to brutally incite attacks on the people of Gaza,” she told MEE.
“In the eyes of the Israeli public and the media, the citizens of Gaza do not deserve to be happy, they do not deserve a moment of normalcy after 14 months of war.”
Poisonous rhetoric
Channel 12 correspondent Almog Boker, who repeatedly said during the war that “there were no innocents in Gaza,” posted a video showing Hamas members driving white vans shortly before the start of the ceasefire. “If you are looking for a target for an attack…” he wrote suggestively.
The ceasefire was delayed for three hours, during which Israeli attacks killed 19 Palestinians across Gaza, including children. “It’s done,” Boker then sang.
Israelis also reacted angrily to the sight of Palestinian civilians celebrating alongside Hamas.
“It was important for Israeli media to present Gazans as guilty of their plight in order to deflect responsibility from Israel for the situation in Gaza,” Oraby told MEE.
According to reports, the deal reached on Wednesday had been on the table since May. Oraby said it would also cause unease among the public.
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“The Israeli media will wonder what all this was worth, but this speech did not exist” before the ceasefire, she said.
Israeli liberals and the left have never argued that the best way to free captives is through a political agreement and not military force, she noted.
“This camp has once again remained silent and allowed the right to control the narrative that Hamas and the Palestinians in Gaza are the only ones to blame for the situation and that Israel’s war is just,” Oraby said .
The scenes of Palestinian civilians present during the handover of the captives, during which some shouted “God is great”, were condemned by Chaim Levinson, correspondent for the left-wing newspaper Haaretz.
“I’m not happy with their joy, but sad for them, knowing who they are, the garbage juice from the depths of humanity,” he posted.
Frey considers these remarks “drawn and inspired by regimes of not so distant history, when the Jewish people were driven to crematoriums under similar slogans.”
According to Frey, this statement is not only symbolically wrong, but also life-threatening, “because it allows the climate in which the ordinary soldier can choose to shoot or not, and which allows the pilot, who can read Haaretz and consider himself a liberal, to bomb Gaza.”
“Instead of telling the story of Gaza, where people are happy that children can sleep without fear of a bomb falling on them or their families dying, there is a campaign to dehumanize Palestinians,” Frey said.
