Unsourced Allegations Feed Israel’s ‘Masada Complex’

The Israeli public is convinced the world is against it.

By Simon Frankel Pratt,

As the civilian cost of Israel’s war in Gaza continues to mount, advocates have waged massive information campaigns to give Palestinian suffering and victimhood due attention. The view that Israel is actively perpetuating a genocide is increasingly prevalent, held by groups ranging from governments to growing numbers of American Jews to experts on genocide and atrocity crimes. Allegations of Israeli wrongdoing range from well-evidenced accounts of indiscriminate force, failure to respect the flag of surrender, and prisoner abuse, to alarming but less well-evidenced claims of mass executions or even of organ harvesting. In response to a case brought by South Africa, the International Court of Justice has made an interim ruling that Israel must take measures to prevent acts of possible genocide while the case continues.

But maintaining an appropriate sense of skepticism, without dismissing real atrocities, is important whoever the perpetrators are. Allegations should be investigated, but care should be taken to distinguish between substantiated and unsubstantiated claims. Defenders of Palestinians’ rights to the protections accorded civilians in war may not think this skepticism is important when it comes to Israeli military actions. Substantial evidence already suggests the operations of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) could violate the laws of war, and one way to hold Israel accountable is to believe Palestinians when they testify that crimes have occurred.

Yet while eschewing all skepticism in favor of horror at the carnage is understandable, it does not link up to the diplomatic and domestic levers that could cause Israel to change the intensity of its military action, improve humanitarian aid flows, and restrain its soldiers. Israelis have become dangerously convinced that the world is deeply biased against their country. Spreading unsubstantiated allegations contributes to that belief—and allows Israelis to dismiss foreign criticism too easily. This is a serious problem, as Israeli public support will be crucial for pressuring the Israeli government to further reduce the intensity of its military action and develop solutions to the humanitarian crisis the war has now produced.

Disinformation has been a consistent and serious problem in this war. From the outset, footage of atrocities and violence from other conflicts has been shared as though it was depicting Israeli and Palestinian victims. Some pro-Israel commentators have claimed that genuine images and videos of dead Palestinian children are in fact hoaxes, products of an imagined “Pallywood” industry producing fake victims, while even major media outlets repeat unsubstantiated claims made by the Israeli government, ranging from a now-disputed guard rosters in underground facilities to the discovery of alleged Hamas suicide vests for children.

Others, including journalists and academics, have denied or dismissed the sexual torture and rape committed by Hamas attackers on Oct. 7 or claimed that large portions of Israel’s civilian dead were killed by Israel’s own security forces. Many expert commentators have discussed how difficult it is for members of the public to know what is happening when falsehoods circulate and every claim of victimhood is contested.

Much of the Israeli public has been conditioned by its politicians and media, for decades, to view foreign critics as implacably hostile, prejudiced, and uninterested in their right to safety. Audiences refusing to accept claims of Hamas atrocities, perhaps jaded by Israel’s own unconfirmed allegations, and willing to accept thinly evidenced claims of monstrous behavior by the IDF affirm this perception and make Israel less likely to deescalate. Put simply, if foreign critics deny Israeli suffering and believe Israel guilty of every alleged wrongdoing, they alienate everyone in Israel, including those otherwise sympathetic to calls for restraint.

One political scientist has referred to this as a “Masada complex,” in which the Israeli public imagines itself to be a besieged people facing death, with no option but resistance even to the point of suicide. Indeed, Israeli youth for generations went on pilgrimages to Masada, as part of the country’s collective memory of Jewish historical resistance. Generational Holocaust trauma and victimhood are socialized and collectivized in Israel. Perpetual sensitivity to the possibility of Jewish genocide has led to a militaristic society in which the IDF and the political elite are intertwined. For Israelis, statecraft is a redemptive project as much as it is an institutional one, aimed at restoring agency and political self-awareness to the Jewish people, while geopolitics carry a perpetual awareness of the apocalypse. The upshot of all this is a “security concept” fixated on overwhelming military power and anxious about the very survival of the Jewish people.

Israelis believe foreign audiences have dismissed the genocidal threat posed by Hamas while unreasonably inflating the destruction the IDF has inflicted. Lampooned in sketches by Israel’s famous comedy show Eretz Nehederet, Israelis believe foreign media is quick to believe the worst about Israel in any dispute over a mass death event during war while treating Hamas as legitimate and reasonable representatives rather than monstrous terrorists.

When observers deny the rape of Israeli women on Oct. 7, Israeli audiences view this as a denial of Hamas’s genocidal desire or intent, because Hamas’s massacre as similar to the Holocaust or earlier pogroms—a perception shared by Jews elsewhere as well. Indeed, for Israeli audiences, refusal to admit the true violence of Hamas’s attack may itself be an attempt to provide cover for genocide or indicate the desire to see one carried out without interference. When observers accept without hesitation that Israel is carrying out unlimited violence in Gaza, some Israelis even see this as a resurrection of the blood libel, analogous to Christian propaganda about Jewish ritual sacrifices and clandestine killings of gentile children. These reactions are the product of long-standing cultural trauma and memory—an underappreciated commonality Israelis share with Palestinians. The result is that Israelis, a majority of whom strongly support their war on Hamas as a security necessity in the face of a genocidal adversary, are insensitive to foreign horror and outrage over the conduct and effects of their military operation.

Scholars of international relations would identify this as a matter of “ontological security.” Nearly 20 years ago, pathbreaking research used psychoanalytic methods to identify the ways that anxiety, identity, and cultural commitments can lead countries and communities to pursue policies that make them less safe from violence or more isolated internationally. The insight of scholars such as Jennifer Mitzen and Brent Steele was that “security of the self” requires remaining true to one’s worldview, even when this involves painful material sacrifices. Israel’s fortress mentality, tendency for apocalyptic anxiety, and hyperawareness of past genocide have all contributed to a tendency to see any concession as total rather than limited. To concede anything is to concede everything.