Rabbi Arik Ascherman was arrested by the Israeli army on the fourth day of the war, October 10, in the occupied West Bank. He was banned by the courts from visiting the territories for two weeks. On October 31, this long-time activist opposed to the Israeli occupation was once again walking the moonlit hills south of Hebron with a stick and boots. Here, he protects Palestinian shepherds from the violence of Israeli settlers, his fellow citizens. He pits his tall, lean body against them. For decades, he's been used to taking blows for others. But he's never felt so alone.

After the Hamas attack on October 7, young Israeli comrades stopped lending him a hand. They were mobilized by the army. They are mourning the loss of friends and relatives killed on the left-wing kibbutzes around the Gaza Strip. Some are confused, like all of Israel: The same rage consumes them. Others are afraid of the settlers, who are unleashing unprecedented violence in the West Bank, taking advantage of the war in Gaza to depopulate entire hillsides of their inhabitants. "Sometimes I wonder if fanatics on both sides don't get together at night to find ways of prolonging this conflict," said Rabbi Ascherman with a sigh.

Like this sexagenarian, the Israeli left has never seemed so fragile, so inaudible. Before October 7, it embodied the guilty conscience of a country trying to forget its war with the Palestinians, and succeeding in doing so year after year. This "fifth column," denounced by Benjamin Netanyahu's government, is now in a crisis of conscience. It is tearing itself apart, at a time when everyone is being asked to choose sides.

For the past three weeks, Lubna Masarwa has been cutting her social media ties with a host of former Jewish friends, whose patriotic and militaristic statements frighten her. This Palestinian citizen of Israel (like 20% of the country's population), originally from a rural village in the north of the country, is used to navigating the Jewish and Arab left in Jerusalem, where she runs the office of the Middle East Eye news website. She believes that on October 7, Hamas overturned a well-established view in her camp, which saw the Israeli state as the oppressor, the Palestinians as its victims and left-wing Jewish do-gooders as their saviors, defenders of the law and morality.

'Good victims'

"They would come and pick up Palestinian children at army checkpoints on the West Bank borders to bathe them in the sea in Israel or to see a doctor," said Masarwa of her former friends. "Everything was fine as long as we were good victims, grateful Arabs. But on October 7, for one day, Palestinians fought in this horrible way, and it shook their certainties."

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