Through Our Shared Grief, a New Israeli Nation Is Being Born—of All Its Citizens | Opinion

On the chilly morning of October 7, Israel was awakened by the sounds of sirens, explosions, and mass shootings. I was awakened by a phone call from a friend, herself a Hamas terror survivor.

"Wake up!" She shouted over the phone. "We are under attack."

I checked my phone—it was around 7:40 am—where I found news notifications in three languages reporting barrages of missiles from Gaza. Thinking it was just another round of the usual rocket attacks, I went back to sleep. It wasn't until I woke up again half an hour later and started scrolling social media that the horror began to set in. Not long after, I received the news about a friend's sister who was killed defending our border, and another friend from university who has been missing ever since the attack. Their names are Eden Nemri and Idan Shtivi.

Hamas, the Iranian regime's Palestinian terror proxy which has been ruling the Gaza strip since 2007, murdered 1,500, injured 7,000 injured, and violently kidnapped at least 220. But they didn't stop there. Hamas and its sponsor in Tehran had bigger plans. As in previous Israeli-Palestinian escalations, they attempted to bring the battlefield deep into Israel's home front, wishing to destabilize Israel from within by instigating ethnic violence in the country between Israeli Jews and Arabs.

Back in May 2021, these attempts were partially successful, with ethnic strife erupting across the nation. Not this time, no doubt to Tehran's dismay: Israelis have had enough! October 7 was a horrifying day, yet it accomplished what many of us thought was impossible: It united the whole country.

October 7 will be remembered not only as Israel's bloodiest day but as a turning point in modern collective Israeli history.

The horror from the scenes and the horrifying stories have not only shocked all Israelis, but also marked a drastic shift in Arab Israeli attitude toward the country, especially when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Historically during Israeli Palestinian escalations, the Arab community within Israel tended to be more sympathetic to Palestinians, mainly due to our exposure to Palestinian suffering.

But on October 7, it was that same exposure that made us feel more Israeli than ever—when we saw not only the footage of our mass murder but the celebrations of it in Gaza that came through on social media. We saw clearly what would happen if the other side had the upper hand, and it triggered a deep sense of solidarity from the Arab community, bolstering a shared sense of being Israeli.

According to a large poll carried out after the Hamas attack, over 80 percent of Arab Israelis rejected Hamas's attack and almost 70 percent supported Israel's right to respond and defend its citizens. Only 5 percent of respondents voiced support for Hamas's actions.

Many social initiatives popped up with opportunities for Arab Israelis to assist and volunteer. Leaders from across the political spectrum in the Arab community condemned the attack and rejected Hamas's calls on Israel's Arab citizens to join the assault on Israel. Mansour Abbas, leader of the Raam Islamist Party, said it best when he condemned Hamas's atrocities and said they are "contradictory to the teachings of Islam."

This shift is not a coincidence. Hamas's indiscriminate massacre against Israeli civilians took the lives of at least 100 Israelis from the country's Arab community. It reminded us that in our messy regional geopolitical reality, to our enemies, we Israelis all one, so we might as well own it.

One of those Arab victims murdered by Hamas was Awad Darawshe, a paramedic from a Nazareth suburb who was stationed at the Nova music festival when the attack started. Many of his colleagues fled the scene for their lives, but Awad refused to do so. He insisted on staying put and helping the injured who were pouring into his station. His family members told Israeli media that Awad told them he would be safe because he speaks Arabic, not realizing that his Arabic would not save him from the barbarity of Iran's terror proxies. Awad was murdered while trying to save lives.

We also heard the story of Amer Abu Sabila, who was shot to death by Hamas terrorists while trying to save a local Sderot family. And we heard of a local Negev Bedouin man who was driving with his wife down the highway that Saturday morning, when a group of terrorists blocked his way. The Bedouin begged the terrorists not to hurt him and his wife, to which one of the terrorists responded, "You [Arab Israelis] are more Jewish than Jews, you deserve to die." The terrorist then shot the man's wife, a hijabi Muslim woman, to death. He survived to tell the tale.

Unfortunately, the fact that hundreds of us were murdered, injured and possibly raped and kidnapped, some while attempting to save Jews, doesn't help us escape our traditional role in Israel as scapegoats and punching bags, especially in right wing circles and for incompetent failed politicians. Our current Kahanist government which failed us unforgivably on October 7 has decided to take advantage of the war to fuel unrest in the West Bank, crack down on Israeli civil society and shared Arab-Jewish initiatives in addition to freedom of expression.

Sadly, it's nothing new. Since this government took office and especially since the outbreak of the war, it has turned us Arab Israelis—one out of every five Israeli citizens—into a fifth element, enemies from within. Anti-Arab minister of "national security" has warned of Arab riots, playing into the hands of our enemies while ignoring the overwhelming voiced support for the country, armed forces, and fellow citizens from the Arab community, ignoring as well advice from the heads of the police and other security service who've been applauding Israeli Arabs for their contribution for the war efforts, insisting there's no internal threat whatsoever from Arab Israelis that has the potential to jeopardize the stability on our home front.

This is nothing less than a historic shift. October 7 will be remembered not only as deadly bloody day, the deadliest in Israel's 75-year history, but also as the day the modern Israeli nation was reborn.

I can only hope that our shared collective grief and trauma will eventually lead us to pursue peace and reconciliation, both internally and externally, instead of more bloody cycles of violence and escalation.

Muhammad Zoabi is a queer Israeli activist living in Tel Aviv. He is originally from Nazareth, Israel's largest Arab city.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.