Global outrage over Gaza has reinforced a ‘siege mentality’ in Israel – what are the implications for peace?
- Written by The Conversation
After more than 20 months of devastating violence in Gaza, the right-wing Israeli government’s pursuit of two irreconcilable objectives — “destroying” Hamas and releasing Israeli hostages — has left the coastal strip in ruins.
At least 54,000 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military, close to two million have been forcibly displaced, and many are starving. These atrocities have provoked intense moral outrage around the world and turned Israel into a pariah state.
Meanwhile, Hamas is resolved to retain control over Gaza, even at the cost of sacrificing numerous innocent Palestinian lives for its own survival.
Both sides have been widely accused of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and mainly in Israel’s case, genocide.
While the obstacles to ending the fighting remain stubbornly difficult to overcome, a troubling pattern has become increasingly apparent.
The very outrage that succeeded in mobilising, sustaining and swelling international opinion against Israel’s actions — a natural psychological response to systematic injustice — has also reinforced a “siege mentality” already present among many in its Jewish population.
This siege mentality may have undermined more proactive Israeli Jewish public support for a ceasefire and “day-after” concessions.
A toxic cocktail of emotions
Several dominant groups have shaped the conflict’s dynamics, each driven by a distinct set of emotional responses.
For many Israeli Jews, the massacres of October 7 have aggravated longstanding feelings of victimhood and mistrust, fears of terrorist attacks, perceptions of existential threats, intergenerational traumas stemming from the Holocaust, and importantly, the strong sense of siege mentality.
Together, these emotions have produced a toxic blend of anger, hatred and intense desire for revenge.
For the Palestinians, Israel’s devastation of Gaza has followed decades of oppressive occupation, endless rights violations, humiliation and dispossession. This has exacerbated feelings of hopelessness, fear and abandonment by the world.
The wider, global pro-Palestinian camp has been driven by moral outrage over the atrocities being committed in Gaza, alongside empathy for the victims and a sense of guilt over Western governments’ complicity in the killings through the provision of arms to Israel.
Similarly, for Israel’s supporters around the world, anger and resentment have led to feelings of persecution, and in turn, victimisation and a sense of siege.
Many on both sides have become prisoners of this moral outrage. And this has suppressed compassion for the suffering of the “other” — those we perceive as perpetrators of injustice against the side we support.
Complaints of bias and content omissions
Choosing sides in a conflict translates almost inevitably into biases in how we select, process and assess new information.
We search for content that confirms what we already believe. And we discount information that would go against our pre-existing perceptions.
This tendency also increases our sensitivity to omissions of facts we deem important for our cause.
Since early in the crisis, voices in the two camps have accused the mainstream media in the West of biased coverage in favour of the “other”. These feelings have added fuel to the moral outrage and sense of injustice among both sides.
Outrage in the pro-Israel camp has focused mainly on a perceived global conspiracy to absolve Hamas of any responsibility.
In that view, Israel has been singled out as the only culpable party for the killings in Gaza. This is despite the fact Hamas unleashed the violence on October 7, used the Gazan population as human shields while hiding in tunnels, and refused to release all the Israeli hostages to end the fighting.
On the other side, pro-Palestinian outrage has focused on “blatant” omissions by the media and Western governments of important historical facts that could provide context for the October 7 attacks.
These included:
On both sides, then, significant focus has been placed on omissions of facts that could support one’s own narrative or cause.
A siege mentality in Israel
Many Israelis continue to relive October 7 while remaining decidedly blind to the daily horrors their military inflicts on Gaza in their name. For them, the global outrage has reinforced a long-existing and potent siege mentality.
This mindset has been fed by a reluctance to directly challenge Israeli soldiers risking their lives and other rally-around-the-flag effects. It’s also been bolstered by the desire for revenge and an intense campaign of dehumanising all Palestinians — Hamas or not.
The so-called “ring of fire” created around Israel by Iran and its proxies —Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Houthis — has further amplified this siege mentality. Their stated objective is the destruction of Israel.
I’ve conducted an exploratory study of Israeli media, government statements and English Jewish diaspora publications from October 2023 to May 2025, reviewing some 5,000 articles and video clips.
In this research, I’ve identified strong, consistent uses of siege mentality language, phrases such as:
In a detailed analysis of 65 English articles from major Israeli outlets, such as The Jerusalem Post and Times of Israel, and Jewish publications in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia, I found siege mentality language in nearly nine out of ten searches.
Importantly, nearly half of these occurrences were in response to pro-Palestinian rhetoric or advocacy: campus protests and actions targeting Israelis or Jews, university groups refusing to condemn October 7, or foreign governments’ recognition of Palestinian statehood.
The sharp increase in attacks on Jews and Jewish installations since October 7 has also sparked global debates over rising antisemitism. Distinguishing honest critiques of Israel’s actions in Gaza from antisemitic rhetoric has become contentious, as has the use of antisemitism claims by Israeli leaders to dismiss much of this criticism.
Moving forward
When viewed through the prism of injustice, the strong asymmetry between Israeli and Palestinian suffering has long been apparent. But it’s grown even wider following Israel’s brutal responses to October 7.
The culpability of Israel’s government and Hamas for the atrocities in Gaza is incontestable. However, many in the Israeli-Jewish public must also share some of the blame for refusing to stand up to – or by actively supporting – their extremist government’s policies.
The pro-Palestine movement’s justice-driven campaigns have done much to combat international bystanding and motivate governments to act. At the same time, the unwillingness to unite behind a clearer unequivocal condemnation of Hamas’ massacres may have been a strategic mistake.
By ignoring or minimising the targeting of civilians, the hostage-taking and the reports of sexual violence committed by Hamas, a vocal minority of advocates has weakened the movement’s otherwise strong moral authority with some of the audiences it needed to influence most. First and foremost, this is people in Israel itself.
My research suggests that while injustice-based outrage can be effective at generating attention and engagement, it can also produce negative side effects. One adverse impact has been the polarisation of the public debate over Gaza, which, in turn, has contributed to the intensification of Israelis’ siege mentality.
Noam Chomsky, a well-known Jewish academic and fierce critic of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, once noted in relation to Palestinian advocacy:
You have to ask yourself, when you conduct some tactic, what the effect is going to be on the victims. You don’t pursue a tactic because it makes you feel good.
The question, then, is how to harness the strong mobilising power of moral outrage for positive ends – preventing bystander apathy to atrocities – without the potential negative consequences. These include polarisation, expanded violence, feeding a siege mentality (when applicable), and making peace negotiations more difficult.
The children in Gaza and elsewhere in the world deserve advocacy that will prioritise their welfare over the release of moral outrage — however justified.
So, what approaches would most effectively help end the suffering?
Most immediately, the solution rests primarily with Israel and, by extension, the Trump administration as the only international actor powerful enough to force Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to halt the killings.
Beyond that, and looking toward the future, justice-based activism should be grounded in universal moral principles, acknowledge all innocent victims, and work to create space for both societies to recognise each other’s humanity.
