In an Israel on edge, the impact of wartime violence seeps into everyday life
Dina Kraft — July 13, 2026
Views and positions expressed here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily represent NJN's views and policy positions.
A shakily shot video shows dozens of Israeli teenagers and adults pushing and shoving one another. One boy is seen being wrestled to the ground. The chaotic scene took place Friday in a forest in the Galilee, sunlight filtering through towering trees in a bucolic spot where Israeli scouts from Tel Aviv had come for a camping trip that went well, full of fun and campfires, but concluded with a brawl.
Anxious to understand the jarring images shared in a social media post, I read the caption, trying to gain more information. Instead, the brief details left me even more confused and disturbed, the violence attributed to a fight over t-shirts. Yes, t-shirts. An article in Yediot Ahronoth provided a bit more context: an argument had broken out over stolen t-shirts between two groups of Tel Aviv-based scout groups, apparently something to do with a longer-running dispute between them. Several parent chaperones and counselors rushed in and stopped the melee.
The incident, seen in isolation, is perhaps not so alarming: a fight between kids. Adults intervene. Things get out of hand, but are then swiftly quelled. But it comes as Israelis again sit on edge, wondering if American bombing of Iran will again escalate into another full-blown round of war, after almost three years of open active fronts, and within a climate in which war tension in an already militarized society increasingly seeps into everyday life.
I don’t usually cite comments from social media, but I found some of the responses revealing of public sentiment. “There is chaos in the country, in every part of it,” wrote one person. Another put it this way: “Ben-Gvir sets the tone. There are no rules, everyone out for themselves. Only force and hatred of others is venerated.”
Israeli children and youth, as always, are watching the adults around them, whether it’s the aggressive words and actions of National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and his police force which has amped up violence at protests against demonstrators, ultra-Orthodox Jews setting fire to a café for being open on Shabbat, crime families settling scores in blood, or stick-wielding masked settlers attacking Jewish activists alongside Palestinian farmers (or this week, using violence to threaten a CNN crew and even a US congressman.)
Knesset hearings now routinely devolve into shouting matches, including some especially painful recent scenes between reservists, with some of those who suffer from PTSD rising from their seats, shaking with rage that the government is trying to advance bills that would protect ultra-Orthodox youth who evade the draft – while ignoring the mental health and economic needs of soldiers like themselves who have shouldered the burden of fighting the ongoing wars. The mother of a soldier serving in Lebanon was recently physically kicked out for asking lawmakers why they supported a controversial bill that would equate full-time yeshiva study with mandatory army service.
Some in Israel argue recent examples of verbal and physical assaults between Israelis are the obvious outgrowth of a society repeatedly told that force is the only answer. This is the underlying message broadcast for both wars fought in the name of securing peace, or for individual disputes. And that message has certainly been amplified in the wake of the Hamas-led massacres and mass abductions of October 7, 2023 and the brutal war in Gaza that it sparked.
Israel recently marked 1,000 days since the deadliest day in Israeli history. Weekly protests around the country cry out demanding a state commission of inquiry, but as elections approach – officially now called for October 27 – no such investigation will be established under this government’s watch. But among the actions the government has managed to do just before the Knesset adjourns for recess is to state it would defy a Supreme Court ruling, moving the country closer to a possible constitutional crisis. The unprecedented move has sparked alarm across the political spectrum that Israel’s government no longer feels bound by the rule of law.
Warnings have followed that not only is this damaging to Israel’s standing as a democracy but sends a message to ordinary citizens as well. Do they have to obey the law?
On Saturday night, at a pro-democracy protest at Habima Square in Tel Aviv, a man wearing a Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu mask held a sign that read “Rule of Law” in one hand and another that read “Who Cares?”
According to a new report on the state of Israeli society by the Jewish People Policy Institute, about 55% of Israelis cite polarization and internal conflict as the most dangerous threat to Israel’s continued existence. They see this, and the specter of civil war it elicits, as more of a threat to the country at the moment than an Iranian nuclear bomb or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Yedidia Stern, president of JPPI, said in the report that while Israeli society does show “resilience, determination, and optimism… it simultaneously operates as a fractured, polarized society suffering from deep existential anxiety about structural collapse.”
He urges public leaders to use “every means possible to place social cohesion in Israel at the top of the national agenda.”
Dina Kraft is a journalist, podcaster and the co-author of the New York Times bestseller, My Friend Anne Frank, together with Hannah Pick-Goslar. She is a creator of the podcast Groundwork, about activists working in Israel and Palestine, and was formerly the opinion editor of Haaretz English.
