poll<\/a> carried out last week by the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI) suggested overwhelming public support for the war, with 93 percent of Jewish-Israeli respondents expressing support for the strikes on Iran, and 74 percent expressing support for Netanyahu, the country\u2019s historically divisive prime minister.<\/p>\n\u201cNo one\u2019s talking about opposition to the war,\u201d Greenberg said, describing an environment in which figures from across Israel\u2019s media and political landscape \u2013 with the exception of the left-wing Hadash party and antiwar organisations such as Greenberg\u2019s Mesarvot \u2013 had lined up behind the war. \u201cIt\u2019s also getting increasingly violent,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe held a protest on Tuesday, where the police were already waiting. They beat and arrested us. I was illegally strip-searched,\u201d he said, describing it as efforts intended to humiliate him.<\/p>\n
Greenberg is no stranger to such tactics. Six months ago, after being arrested for protesting the genocide in Gaza, prison guards had threatened to carve a Star of David on his face, a permanent reminder of what they thought his priorities should be.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not just antiwar activists who have faced the brunt of the Israeli security establishment\u2019s force.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe atmosphere is very violent,\u201c lawmaker Ofer Cassif of the Hadash party told Al Jazeera. \u201cWhen I leave the house, I\u2019m more worried by the danger posed by a physical attack by fascists than I am by any missile,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Hadash and lawmakers like Cassif have been targeted by physical threats and attacks throughout the Gaza war. But criticism of the Netanyahu government\u2019s handling of Israeli captives in Gaza meant that opposition to the Gaza war was \u2013 comparatively \u2013 more socially acceptable. When it comes to Iran, the current climate is toxic, Cassif said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re often accused of supporting the regime in Tehran,\u201d Cassif explained of the attempts to delegitimise their opposition to the war.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re unequivocally not. We want to see that regime go, but we\u2019re not going to allow Netanyahu to say he\u2019s doing this for the Iranian people. He isn\u2019t. That\u2019s not just rhetoric, that\u2019s fact. The Israeli leadership was just as supportive of the shah as the US, and he was a murderous dictator no less than the current regime,\u201d Cassif said, referring to Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the leader of Iran before the Islamic revolution.<\/p>\n
For now, analysts and observers in Israel describe a society that believes it is almost engaged in a holy war.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey brought an antiwar activist onto one of the light news programmes,\u201d political analyst Ori Goldberg said from near Tel Aviv, \u201cand she was treated like you would a flat-earther. It\u2019s as if it\u2019s inconceivable that anyone would oppose this war.<\/p>\n
\u201cIsrael has become a society with no middle ground, no capacity for conversation. It\u2019s as if our entire existence is dependent on our ability to do anything we want. And if the world tries to stop that, then the world\u2019s anti-Semitic, and we all burn.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Itamar Greenberg laughed when asked if he thought he should be afraid. The 19-year-old Israeli antiwar activist had just described being spat on in the street and is the target of an online hate campaign. \u201cYes!\u201d he finally responded. \u201cIf I thought about it, I probably should be. I just don\u2019t have time.\u201d Voices like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14512,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle-east-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14511\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}