August 13, 2025

Hi readers, Cameron Peters here — it's Wednesday morning, and Israel's starvation of Gaza is still ongoing. 

Earlier this week, my colleague Zack Beauchamp spoke with the pollster Dahlia Scheindlin about how Israelis view the conflict, and how to reconcile their seeming apathy toward the horror unfolding in Gaza with their desire to see an end to the conflict. We're spotlighting a portion of Zack's longer piece in the newsletter today — read on for an excerpt of his conversation with Scheindlin: 

⮕ Start here

Do Israelis care that Gazans are starving?

Zack Beauchamp

I want to start with a poll result that I found horrifying: 79 percent of Israeli Jews did not feel personally troubled by reports of starvation in Gaza. Do those results seem right to you, based on your broader read of the data? And what does this kind of poll say about the Israeli mindset?

Dahlia Scheindlin

Yeah, it absolutely strikes me as correct. There’s a general trend [in polls] of a very strong majority of Israeli Jews expressing not only lack of empathy but belligerence and hostility towards Gazans, including civilians. 

I do think we need to put it in the context of everybody else here. There are parallel trends of deep, deep hostility that we had seen already in joint Israeli-Palestinian survey research done before the war. Very hostile attitudes between the two populations definitely predate October 7.

Zack Beauchamp

The reason I asked specifically about Israeli Jews — though parallel trends of hostility is obviously hugely important in understanding the situation — is that their views are especially urgent amid the overwhelming evidence that the Israeli government's policy has created a starvation crisis. It is, I think, very difficult for people outside Israel to understand why that doesn't break through in its politics.

How is it that, when it seems like your government is committing such a crime, people aren’t horrified? Is just dehumanization all the way down — that they think Palestinians deserve it? Or is there denial of what’s clearly happening? Is there lack of coverage or censorship in the Israeli media?

Dahlia Scheindlin

It's all of those things.

Israeli media, as you pointed out, is barely covering civilian suffering in Gaza — which is not much of an excuse, to be honest, because all of the information is available.

Polls have tested whether Israelis believe the starvation was happening. A recent survey found that 47 percent of all Israelis felt that it was probably lies and made up. Now, if it's 47 percent of the average, it's in the mid-to-upper 50 percent range among Jews — as presumably very few Palestinian citizens of Israel feel that way.

So 47 percent said it’s not true; it’s Hamas’s lies. And another 18 percent said, “Even if it's true, I’m not bothered by it.”

Israelis are completely consumed with the hostages. It is front and center; it's everywhere. The country is flooded with hostage symbols: signs, slogans, pins. Everyone wears a pin, including the prime minister.

The second thing they're consumed with is the fate of their sons, brothers, husbands, fathers who are serving in Gaza.

Zack Beauchamp

Basically, the Israeli Jewish public thinks the war needs to stop — but because it’s hurting them and not because it’s hurting Palestinians.

Dahlia Scheindlin

Yes, that is correct.

There is a small portion of people who are increasingly troubled by the situation in Gaza — primarily the left, which represents about 20 percent of Israelis. Among the Jewish population, it's about 12 percent to 14 percent. So, it's a minority, but those people are troubled enough that some of them have begun making that a much more central part of their public activity. 

I'm a little bit skeptical of making it seem like there's sweeping growing trends [toward public outcry about Gazan suffering]. There are demonstrations of people holding posters of children who've been killed in Gaza and also of people going to Air Force bases in Israel to hold those posters and say, “Don't go.” There were two people who burst into a reality TV show — you know, primetime television — a couple days ago and screamed, “Stop the war.” Is it growing? I don't know. But it's certainly becoming more urgent, and they're making the claim more publicly, and I think they feel that there’s some space to make that claim more publicly.

I think what you hear among a lot of mainstream Israelis — which includes people from the center and even the moderate right — is that, of course, the war is bad for everybody — get our hostages back, our sons back — and it’s also bad for Gazans. But [the Gazans] certainly are not a priority.

Zack Beauchamp

It seems to me that there's a real opportunity here for a politician or political faction in Israel to turn the things that Israelis are mad about — the hostages, soldier casualties — into an indictment of the broader right-wing worldview, that is, inflicting harm on Palestinians and taking their land is good for Israeli security — to argue that the government’s whole theory of the case is a failure, and that a new approach is needed.

And yet, I just have not seen a very successful articulation of an alternative philosophy — one that has caught fire and become really powerful in Israeli politics — since October 7. The public opinion groundwork is there, but politicians aren't taking advantage of it.

Dahlia Scheindlin

You're absolutely right; politicians aren't taking advantage of it. Nobody's really making a case for an alternative. The opposition [parties are] maddeningly focused on criticizing; all of the critical points that you and I have just raised are out there. But nobody connects the dots and says, “Here is an alternative. Here's what we would do differently.”

Everybody limits themselves saying, for example, what we would do differently on a hostage deal. It's never about the bigger vision: How do you envision Israel ending this war and preventing the next war?

I can tell you, from politicians' perspective, it's because they know that, on a deeper level, Israelis are right-wing. [About] 60 percent of Jewish Israelis self-identify as right-wing. They don't want a Palestinian state, and they don't want to hear about a negotiated solution, and they don't want to hear about concessions. 

So, that's why the opposition politicians don't want to get into it, because they have forgotten that leadership means courage — that leadership means leading, not following. They're basically just cowards running after a very simplistic reading of public opinion. Even scratching one level below the surface, they would know that you can change public opinion over time. 

We've seen repeatedly, over a decade, that the public changes its mind slowly and incrementally, but significantly, on issues related to conflict resolution or negotiations, concessions, final status — especially when they see it as a realistic possibility, and especially when their leadership is behind it and makes the case. 

When we try to tell people in polls, “Here are the advantages [of peace],” they can change their minds a little bit — but it's so remote from their experience, so hypothetical. There's no anchor in reality. If politicians were getting behind this, they would be able to create that kind of momentum.

Today’s edition was produced and edited by me, staff editor Cameron Peters. Thanks for reading!