This week, Israel erupted into a ‘nationwide day of stoppage’ after Netanyahu announced the conquest and occupation of Gaza, effectively signing the death warrants of the remaining hostages.
It is estimated that as many as one million Israelis – 10 percent of the population – came out into the streets, backed by a large section of the establishment: Mossad chiefs, capitalists, and former prime ministers. And they are set to continue: the hostage families have called for another strike next Sunday.
Protests in Israel are nothing new, and have continued throughout the war. But the fact that they are escalating as the military situation is also escalating, and that opposition and even the threat of insubordination is coming from the very top of the military, is highly significant.
Netanyahu’s pursuit of “total victory” at any cost is tearing Israel apart. The unity of Israel, its ruling class, and its state are cracking. By driving deeper into the genocide in Gaza in spite of the disastrous consequences, Netanyahu is preparing an explosive showdown on the homefront.
Netanyahu: man on a wire
Netanyahu has ruled Israel for most of the last 15 years. He has survived by casting himself as ‘the defender of Israel’, by demagogically railing against the ‘liberal elites’, and by manoeuvring between the small parties of Israel’s fractured political system. As he has become more unpopular and desperate – especially since 2019, when he was put on trial for corruption – he has had to rely increasingly on the right-wing extremist element in Israeli society to hold onto power and avoid judgment day.
In 2023, after years of snap elections and a brief, fragile, anyone-but-Netanyahu coalition, Netanyahu returned to power in alliance with the Jewish supremacist parties led by Belazel Smotrich – a self-described “fascist homophobe” – and Ben-Gvir – who used to hang a portrait of mass murderer Baruch Goldstein in his living room. While Netanyahu’s sole concerns are maintaining himself in power and out of jail, these fanatics strive for genocide in Gaza, Nakba in the West Bank and a Greater Israel.
Immediately, this coalition came into conflict with the establishment and powerful sectors of the ruling class in Israel. When, in March 2023, the government moved to cripple the Supreme Court – which was investigating Netanyahu’s corruption and restraining the far-right’s programme – the country exploded in the largest protest movement in its history.
This was not simply a grassroots protest: the demos were actively backed by a powerful section of the elite such as the tech capitalists, who saw in the reforms a threat to the stability, profitability, and security of Israel. Such was the scale and longevity of these protests that, at the time, former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett was warning of “civil war in Israel”.
Long preceding this war, there have been deep divisions in Israeli society, and above all divisions within the ruling class itself.
Gaza genocide
The movement was suddenly cut across, however, by the events of 7 October 2023.
In their immediate aftermath, the ruling class united around Netanyahu’s war in Gaza. The media whipped up a genocidal, pogrom mood in Israel while the elites – both pro- and anti-Bibi – lined up behind Netanyahu to offer their “total support”.
Such chauvinist unity has always been a key pillar of Zionism. By fostering the illusion that Israel is an embattled Jewish fortress surrounded by hostile barbarians, the Israeli ruling class has managed to bind Israeli workers to itself, preserving stability at home.
However, the war didn’t erase the fissures in Israeli society. The anger that followed 7 October wasn’t just directed towards Hamas. It is well known, for instance, that Netanyahu has a history of propping up Hamas in order to divide the Palestinian territories and push off Palestinian statehood. From 7 October 2023, anger was also directed at the regime for the security failure that the Hamas attack represented – a failure in no small part down to the fact that Netanyahu and his far-right allies had focused the IDF’s attention on provocations, pogroms and landgrabs in the West Bank.
As the war dragged on inconclusively, that unity has disintegrated further, and all the old faultlines have reasserted themselves.
Netanyahu understands that ending the war would be political suicide. His coalition partners – who are absolutely opposed to any concessions to Palestine – would withdraw and his government would collapse, leaving him facing the rest of his life in prison. Therefore, his strategy in the face of mounting pressure for peace has been brazen escalation at every stage, in pursuit of ‘total victory’, no matter the consequences.
In Gaza, that has meant genocide. Over 22 months, Netanyahu and the IDF have inflicted a campaign of indiscriminate terror, murder and starvation. Unable to destroy the insurgency, they have driven atrocity after atrocity, towards the total annihilation of Gaza and the forced expulsion of the Palestinians. The crimes are beyond description.
And Gaza is only one front in Israel’s imperialist rampage. While it has been demolishing Gaza, Israel has also carried out mass assassinations in Lebanon, has bombed Iran’s nuclear sites, and is fuelling sectarian barbarism in Syria, leading to the deaths of many more civilians. Its six-front offensive is upending the fragile balance in the Middle East, pushing the region towards chaos and jeopardising the rule of Israel’s Arab allies.
Militarily, the American-armed IDF has crushed every obstacle in its path. Politically, Netanyahu’s strategy of endless escalation is undermining Israel itself.
The crisis inside Israel
Inside Israel, the mood is complicated to say the least. 82 percent of Jewish Israelis back the expulsion of Gazans. But polls show 74 percent of Israelis support a deal to end what they see as an endless, pointless war in exchange for the hostages, while 76 percent want Netanyahu to resign.
After what is already the longest war in its history, Israel has not achieved what Netanyahu promised: victory. Today 50 hostages – 20 of them believed to be alive – are languishing in the tunnels of Gaza, and Hamas can still send rockets to Tel Aviv.
This failure has become a political time-bomb.
The plight of the hostages – treated as expendable by Netanyahu – have become the rallying point for the anger in society. Since November 2023, weekly demonstrations have been organised by the families of the hostages outside the Knesset. In November 2024, after six hostages were killed due to Israel’s invasion of Rafah, these burst into a general strike of 500,000. Anger surged up again last month after a video surfaced of one of the hostages, starving and skeletal like everyone else in Gaza, digging his own grave.
That anger is a chasm opening beneath the government. But of no less significance for the Netanyahu regime is the fact that splits have reopened in the ruling class that have now extended themselves all the way into the upper ranks of the IDF.
Between the ‘far right’ and ‘liberal’ Zionists, there is no fundamental difference insofar as both want to extend Israel’s imperialist influence and annex territory. The ‘liberal’ wing of the ruling class only differ insofar as they are against pushing too far too quickly if it entails endangering their core material interests, which are now threatened from a number of angles.
Israel is, of course, utterly dependent upon the support and patronage of western imperialism. But this war is making life very difficult for their allies, who nevertheless back Israel to this day.
The flood of images of Israel’s genocide, captured by the few remaining journalists in Gaza who haven’t been murdered – of famished children, all skin and bones; of crowds of aid-seekers machine-gunned by US mercenaries; of tent cities being bombed and burned with people still inside them – are turning public opinion worldwide against the ‘only democracy in the Middle East’. In the US, Israel’s reputation is “in collapse”, according to former Israeli PM Naftali Bennett.
Internationally, the country is becoming a ‘leper state’. In the words of one Israeli entrepreneur, Israelis “feel like they’re becoming Russia without the official sanctions”.
Such is the strength of feeling worldwide that Israel’s best friends are being forced to try and distance themselves from the genocide – even though, in practice, they continue to collaborate in it. Starmer, Macron and Carney have teamed up to apply diplomatic pressure by threatening Israel with the recognition of a Palestinian state. Germany, Israel’s second biggest supplier of arms, has cut down on its weapon shipments under enormous pressure.
Fortunately for Netanyahu, Israel still has the support of the one country that counts: the United States. For Trump, Gaza is “pretty much up to Israel”. He has given Netanyahu a free hand to act as he wishes. But, with a section of the MAGA movement turning on him over the famine, it could soon become Trump’s problem. Even among young Republican voters, anti-Israel sentiment has risen from 35 percent before the war to 50 percent now.
This has big implications for the Israeli ruling class. They are already paying a heavy price for their crimes. The Israeli central bank estimates that the war on six fronts has cost Israel 10 percent of its annual GDP. The tech sector, which represents 18 percent of Israel’s GDP, is reporting a steady stream of divestments, including the biggest sovereign wealth fund in the world. The capitalists need stability to make investment decisions, but the situation has never been less stable. About 1,700 of Tel Aviv’s 20,000 millionaires have exited the country since the start of the war.
Crisis in the IDF
A major section of the Israeli ruling class is now turning sharply against Netanyahu, such is their alarm at the situation that the war is creating. More than the economic cost of continuing the war, they are deeply concerned that the fragile cohesion of Israeli society is itself under threat. 7 October and the very fact that this war cannot be won has already destroyed the myth, so carefully cultivated, of Israel’s invincibility under the protection of the IDF.
Since Israel’s foundation, the IDF has been the key institution holding Israeli society together. Promoted as a ‘people’s army’ and a melting pot which brings together Israel’s disparate ethnic groups in service to the ‘Jewish state’, it is the most trusted institution in Israeli society – whereas trust in political parties has fallen to 14 percent, 90 percent of Jewish Israelis trust the IDF.
But 684 days of war have taken their toll.
The IDF is overstretched and exhausted. So far, 850 have been reported killed, whereas 15,000 have been injured. A protracted battle inside Gaza City, the ruins of which are ideal for guerrilla warfare, would push the IDF to the very edge. Given that the IDF is an instrument of genocide, a high proportion of these wounds are psychological: 12 percent of discharged reservists have PTSD, and suicides are at their highest level in decades.
This is leading to a refusal crisis. At the beginning of the genocide, Israelis were rushing to enlist, with 120 percent of the IDF’s quota volunteering for reserve duty. This is now down to around a 60 percent call up rate. Faced with the biggest wave of refusals since Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982, IDF leaders are panicking about serious shortages of troops.
On top of this, since April this year, open letters have flooded in from former and serving soldiers protesting against the war. The gates were opened by a mass letter signed by 1,000 active and retired Air Force reservists. Netanyahu swiftly moved to fire these “marginal and extremist” protesters. Since then, however, letters signed by a total of 140,000 Israelis – including Mossad agents, retired generals, teachers, sailors, elite veterans and musicians – have been published, all calling for an end to the war and the release of the hostages.
In the words of one prominent letter, signed by members of the elite military surveillance division Unit 8200:
“When a government acts for ulterior motives, harms civilians and leads to the killing of innocent people, the orders it issues are clearly illegal, and we must not obey them.”
This is a call to mutiny.
Armies are not supposed to be political. They are supposed to be ‘impartial’ and obedient weapons against the enemies of the state. By infecting the army with politics, by getting soldiers to think and pick a side – with the sanction of prominent veterans – the crisis is seriously eroding the IDF’s cohesion at the same time as it is waging war on six fronts.
Splits in the army
This manifold crisis came to a head over the plan for the permanent occupation of Gaza.
Netanyahu’s latest plan to break the stalemate and ‘finish the job’ is to conquer and occupy Gaza indefinitely, starting with the conquest of Gaza City. For this, he wants to call up 60,000 more conscripts.
This would be a deathtrap, not only for the one million starving Palestinians trapped there, but for many of the IDF troops who are supposed to seize and hold this shattered city street by street against an invisible insurgency. Most importantly for most Israelis, it would certainly mean sacrificing the surviving hostages.
This was not lost on the IDF chief of staff, Eyal Zamir, who told Netanyahu:
“You’re going to create a trap in Gaza… [which will] significantly endanger the lives of the hostages and cause erosion in the army.”
Zamir is certainly no friend of the Palestinians. He is backed in this by the overwhelming majority of the general staff, who desire peace in a matter of weeks.
Netanyahu, backed by his coalition partners, is ploughing ahead regardless. As we speak, Gaza City is being evacuated and carpet-bombed.
For his opposition, Zamir has been marked for removal. He would not be the first. Before and during the war, Netanyahu has been at war within the state against his opponents. Defence Minister Yoav Gallant and former IDF Chief Herzl Halevi were manoeuvred out. Ronen Bar was the first Shin Bet chief to be fired after he refused to surveil anti-government protesters. And just last week, Netanyahu tried to fire Israel’s attorney general, Gali Baharav-Miara. This was overturned, but nonetheless, the locks to her office were changed. For now, Zamir has bowed his head and followed orders.
Netanyahu’s plans on Sunday provoked the biggest protests since March 2023. As in September 2024, they were organised by the families of the hostages. And, once again, standing behind them were Israel’s corporations – who permitted their employees to strike, enabling the ‘shutdown’ – universities, the lawyers’ bar association and, in support, a significant portion of the military-political establishment.
That support was this time more vocal than ever. For example, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak wrote in an editorial titled, “Israel Is Becoming a Pariah State. We Need Massive Nonviolent Civil Disobedience Until Netanyahu Is Ousted”:
“The only course of action that could still save Israel is massive nonviolent civil disobedience, with its main component a total shutdown of the country until the government is replaced or its leader resigns. Only when the entire country is paralysed by massive strikes will these recesses be cancelled, with the government yielding to the people’s will, making way for a better government.”
Another by the Former Deputy Chief of Mossad, titled, “We’re Getting Close to Disobeying a Military Order”, runs:
“Disobeying an order is a dangerous step that crumbles the basis for the IDF’s action. But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is dragging us into a situation in which obeying orders would be much more dangerous and harmful, and would destroy the ideological basis on which the army was built.
“Chief of staff and staff generals, you must refuse to continue a pointless war whose vague goal of ‘pressure on Hamas’ isn’t being achieved, and whose real goal appears to be warfare for warfare’s sake.”
Military establishment personnel were involved in the mass protests in 2023. However, the war has served to paper over the cracks to some degree. What is remarkable is not just the involvement once more of senior military personnel in mass protests, but that this is happening amidst the war, at a moment of key escalation in the war, and that calls are coming from the highest echelons of that establishment to refuse to carry out orders! This is unprecedented.
Netanyahu’s wife and son have explicitly branded this mounting opposition at the top of society and even the army as a coup plot.
Sunday’s protest movement did not succeed in halting Netanyahu. He simply denounced it as “rewarding Hamas”.
In spite of the protests, and in spite of the pressure to conclude a ceasefire, he insists on pressing on down the doomed path of constant escalation without an endgame. Militarily, that could theoretically go on indefinitely – as it did in Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam. Socially, the fabric of Israeli society is already showing signs of tearing, and the ruling class is split right to the very top of the state. The new, massive escalation will enormously accelerate this process, and should the hostages die on Netanyahu’s watch, the situation could explode.
