(ESSAY) With tight military censorship, Israelis are left to wonder what is happening “down south.” Like a wounded lion, the Israel Defense Forces are licking their wounds, impatiently waiting for the order to unleash a ferocious ground invasion of the Gaza Strip.

Some 400,000 IDF soldiers and reservists — including my nephew Guy Carmeli, a tank gunner — are near the Gaza border. Their oft-repeated objective is to eliminate Hamas, which seized the coastal enclave in a bloody 2007 coup d'état from the Palestinian Authority based in Ramallah, and has since foiled any chance for a two-state solution.

IDF grunts on the ground have experienced a groundswell of religious fervor. Many view the looming ground offensive akin to a holy crusade. Ultra-Orthodox Jews of the priestly caste having been blessing the soldiers in keeping with the Torah commandment by quoting Deuteronomy 20:3, “Before you join battle, the Kohen shall come forward and address the troops.”

READ: The ‘Cave Church’ A Sign Of Hope In The Middle East

More than 2,000 ultra Orthodox have left their cloistered seminaries to enlist in the IDF, mcuh to the dismay of their rabbis. Similarly, many secular Jews serving in the military have taken to wearing tzitzit — a shirt with tassles — under their uniform. Volunteers are busy tying the ritual fringes to t-shirts to distribute to the soldiers. Videos abound on social media of choirs reciting the Shema (Deut. 6:5-9) and the prayer for the IDF.

My e-mail has been flooded with messages pointing out last week’s Torah reading, the story of Noah and the Flood, that contains the word Hamas: Biblical Hebrew for violence. From Genesis 6:11-13, “Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence. God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. So God said to Noah, “I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth.”

It’s been nearly three weeks since the attacks and Israel seems to be a country transformed. The turnaround from a nation bifurcated by protests for and against judicial reform just last month to one united by social cohesion has been extraordinary. Yet, the trauma from the Oct. 7 terror attack unleashed by Hamas that killed 1,300 civilians remains.

I have just returned from a neighbor’s for an evening of hizuk (morale and spiritual reinforcement). A woman there with a son called up to the Gaza front said he advanced his December wedding date to the following night. We unanimously burst into celebratory song, wishing her mazal tov. The previous night we were at a shiva (a seven-day mourning). My friend and tour guide colleague Jo Lane reported that her mother, 84, who escaped Nazi Germany to reach Wales, had died of a broken heart. 

In the absence or news, rumors abound including an account of the not-so-secret negotiations in Qatar between Hamas, Israel and a seasoned American negotiator via the White House. Those talks aim to broker the release of the 224 hostages held in Gaza’s labyrinth of tunnels and to secure the entry of humanitarian aid via Egypt.

According to London’s Jewish News, the two-stage plan was put together by American-Israeli businessman and philanthropist Mordechai (Moti) Kahana in partnership with the White House, France and a Syrian adviser to Kahana’s company, Global Delivery Corporation. Kahana has previous experience in humanitarian rescue efforts in other war-torn nations such as Syria, Afghanistan and Ukraine.

In the initial phase of the plan — whose details remain to be finalized with Hamas leader Khaled Mashal in exile in Qatar — water, medical supplies, baby food and hygiene products will be sent in to Gaza solely for civilian use. These goods — $20 million of which Kahana has stored in an American warehouse ready to be airlifted to Egypt — will be provided in exchange for the release of all hostages. These include Ethiopian-Israeli Avera Mengistu and Bedouin Arab Israeli Hisham al-Sayed, seized in 2014 and 2015, respectively, and the remains of IDF soldiers Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul who were killed during the 2014 war in Gaza.

The second stage, according to Kahana, will mirror what Israel did in 1982 when the PLO leadership, including Yasser Arafat, were allowed by the IDF to leave besieged Beirut, Lebanon. Most settled in Tunisia.

What’s happening on the home front?

My hometown Jerusalem, at least for now, has received comparatively fewer rocket attacks from Gaza (certainly nothing compared to surrounding regions). Nearly all the incoming rockets have been neutralized by the Iron Dome interceptors.

In the first days of the war following the massacre, the capital was all but deserted. Many residents had been called to the reserves. Others were sheltering at home, in accordance with Home Front Command orders. Stores were closed.

These days, the streets are no longer empty and some commercial life has returned. But that impression of business-as-usual is illusory. There are zero tourists. Lodging in hotels, including the Dead Sea, Eilat and elsewhere, are tens of thousands of civilians evacuated from the Gaza periphery and areas along the Lebanese border.

Eugene and Nili, a couple originally from the former Soviet Union, have moved into our empty AirBnB apartment next door. Their apartment in Ashkelon was hit by rocket fire.

Incongruously, children kick a soccer ball in front of usually staid Herbert Samuel Hotel, while staff look on with a smile. Parents mill on the street. Lobbies are a no-smoking zone.

A few luxury hotels are refusing to house the displaced, citing the IDF reserve duty call-ups which have left them short-staffed.

Volunteers are organizing programs for the out-of-school children. My wife Randi joined a circle of kids at a boutique on our street decorating sunglasses with beads and Stars of David.

Most cultural institutions have closed, including the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, which has been screening a large Israeli flag on its iconic Shrine of the Book housing the Dead Sea Scrolls. Blue-and-white bunting and banners are everywhere.

Across the street, the new National Library of Israel — home of the world’s major collection of Bibles, kabbalah manuscripts and maps of the Holy Land — has indefinitely postponed its grand opening. The reading rooms will open to the public this Sunday, in accordance with Home Front Command regulations.

Proactively documenting unfolding events for the historical record, the NLI is engaged in “internet harvesting” — gathering digitally-born media posted on websites and social media. The library has also reached out to numerous oral history and testimony collection projects, offering professional expertise and guidance on methods for collecting and transferring material with the aim of “being the trusted repository and open-access provider for this critically important historical documentation.”

Municipal elections, slated to have been held across the country on Oct. 31, have been deferred to Jan. 30, 2024.

Some Israelis, meanwhile, have fled overseas. Friends have temporarily relocated to Cyprus and Dubai. Others have cancelled trips abroad, which they had booked before the Hamas terror attack. 

The ongoing war notwithstanding, or perhaps because of it, immigrants continue to move here. A flight of 25 olim — the immigration of Jews from the diaspora — arrived last week from New York, brought by Nefesh b’Nefesh. Many are American teenagers enlisting in the IDF.

Her generation of teens are now working in the fruit and vegetable stalls at Jerusalem’s Mahane Yehuda market, filling in for their fathers and older brothers called up to the reserves.

A few Palestinian friends in the peace camp have phoned me to express their horror and shame. Most of Jerusalem’s 350,000 Palestinians have remained in their neighborhoods, afraid their presence in the Jewish side of the city might trigger vigilante violence. 

For me personally, I was horrified to see uncensored footage of Hamas terrorists’ cold-blooded murder screened this past Monday by the IDF for a group of foreign-based news outlets. 

Anecdotal evidence suggests many Israelis are refusing to view what they deem to be terrorism porn. That is, unspeakable images of cruelty and sadism which once seen can never be unseen.

In fact, the collective trauma from the attacks will forever scar this generation.

Gil Zohar was born in Toronto and moved to Jerusalem in 1982. He is a journalist writing for The Jerusalem Post, Segula magazine and other publications. He’s also a professional tour guide who likes to weave together the Holy Land’s multiple narratives.