The vast majority of Israelis say they are not troubled by reports of famine and suffering in Gaza, a new poll released by the Israel Democracy Institute shows.
The survey shows that 79 percent of Jews in Israel were not troubled, or troubled at all, whereas 86 percent of “Arab” respondents were somewhat or very troubled by the reports about the war on Gaza.
The survey was conducted between 27-31 July.
Intergenerational trauma literally requires people to be descendants of those who suffered the trauma, and is not in any way form or shape about trauma being transmitted through race or religion and it works less the further away from the generation that suffered the trauma one is, all of which I covered in my post.
As for the rest, in 2023 there were 110,100 Holocaust Survivors in Israel, whist the population in total is about 9.5 million people, making Holocaust Survivors in Israel 1.1% of the population, so that leaves 98.9% of the Israel population who never suffered direct trauma from the Holocaust.
Even if one tries to account for direct descendants living in Israel (a very hard to estimate number), it would still be pretty hard for them to exceed the number of Israelis against what’s going on in Gaza which is about 2 million.
Or coming at it from another side, most present day Israelis come from Russia or are descendants of those who came from Russia (a large fraction are Orthodox Jews, who have very large families), most of which was not impacted by the Holocaust.
Holocaust survivors and their descendants are a minority in Israel so I don’t think they can be relied upon to make the broader people of Israel empathise with the plight of Genocide victims, especially if indeed as I have heard, Holocaust Survivors in Israel are seen as weak.
So, start with that 1.1%, add on all the ones dead of old age, and then multiply by the number of kids and grandkids the average one has. That’s a low estimate, because cultural transmission of the anxiety is pretty strong here - great grandchildren and close friends should arguably be counted as well.
The Shephardis and various other diasporas wouldn’t have been as much affected, although the fear of violence coming their way was heavily used to drive emigration to Israel back in the early days. The Ashkenazi population, however, is lousy with experience.
I think what’s really going on is that going through trauma doesn’t necessarily teach empathy. It can, or it can teach nothing (like Henry Kissinger said about his own survivorship), or it can straight-up make you mean. In Israel the dominant lesson that’s been taken out of it is that everyone’s always against the Jews no matter what, which conveniently removes any responsibility to look in the mirror.