Inside Israel, It’s a Very Different War

There are few images of Gaza casualties on Israeli TV, widening the gulf in perspective between Israel and the outside world.

Every evening on TV news, Israelis get the latest on the Gaza war—cease-fire and hostage talks, Israeli military casualties, battlefield analysis and coverage of the Oct. 7 attacks by Islamist militant group Hamas that sparked the conflict.

One thing that is almost always missing: the people of Gaza.

Israel is watching one war unfold in Gaza, while much of the rest of the world is seeing a different one, with footage of the destruction caused by Israeli airstrikes in the densely populated enclave and sometimes gruesome images of Palestinians killed in the fighting.

That split screen helps explain the widening gulf between an Israel that feels isolated and misunderstood and outsiders who have shifted their attention from the horrors of Oct. 7 to the damage inflicted by Israel’s campaign to destroy Hamas. That gap in perspective could grow in coming weeks if Israel’s military expands its effort to destroy the remaining Hamas battalions in the crowded southern Gaza city of Rafah.

Nearly two-thirds of Israeli Jews said they had seen a few or no images of the damage, according to an April survey by the Israel Democracy Institute, a nonpartisan research center. Just over a third said they had seen a lot, either through Israeli media or social media.