Then came October 7, when Hamas-led fighters emerged from Gaza to attack Israeli communities. The authorities say they killed about 1,200 Israelis, most of them civilians, and kidnapped about 240 others.
Now, as the IDF destroys Gaza, rockets fly overhead, and war looms in Lebanon, the Shapiros say they can no longer imagine living anywhere else.
“I feel more Israeli than ever,” said Shapiro, who immigrated here from Paris a decade ago. “Last year, I thought I didn’t need to be Israeli; I can just be a Jewish woman somewhere in the world living my life.
“Now, I can't pretend that I'm not part of these people.”
For thousands of liberal Israelis, October 7 prompted not to flee, but to redouble their efforts in a country they feared was heading toward tyranny and theocracy. Many Israelis abroad rushed to return home. Military reservists who interrupted their training rushed to their units. Democratic activists reorganized the movement into a broad civic volunteer network.
Some progressive, secular and cosmopolitan Israelis who once agonized over a political arena that ranged from the right to the far right now describe themselves for the first time as Zionists, emphasizing the country's founding role as a global refuge for Jews rather than its current position. As a high-tech innovation center.
“The Jewish people in Israel are dying so that Jews in the rest of the world will one day have a Plan B,” Shapiro said. “We should be here.”
After a year in which leaders warned of civil war, Israelis across the political spectrum quickly united around an external enemy. Opinion polls show that two-thirds of Israelis support the military goal of eliminating Hamas. That support has barely waned in the face of growing international condemnation – mostly from the left – of the killing of more than 25,000 people in Gaza in Israel's war on Hamas, most of them civilians, according to the health ministry there.
Support for the war is not unanimous. About 2,000 Israeli Arabs and Jews organized a march through Tel Aviv last week to demand an end to the fighting. Typical sign: “Only peace will bring security.” Speakers included three October 7 survivors.
Ironically, in a time of war and danger, many liberals now say they feel better about Israel, at least for now. The percentage of left-wing Israelis who feel optimistic about the future nearly doubled in the weeks after October 7, from 21 to 41 percent, according to the Israel Democracy Institute.
Sociologists said the shift was driven by familiar factors, including the initial effect of the rally around the flag that all countries experience during war. But the bloodiest day for Jews since the Holocaust tapped deep cultural memories, even among secular Israelis, of pogroms and exile that go back thousands of years.
Many said their sense of welcome outside Israel was challenged by the disconcerting rise in anti-Semitism in the places where they grew up, studied, worked, found community, and sometimes marched for liberal causes. Videos depicting murdered and mutilated Israelis highlighted a sense of vulnerability – and identity – even among secular Israelis in a way that textbooks and ancestral stories never did.
“They became Jews overnight,” said Eva Illouz, a sociology professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. “Suddenly they have it. They feel like the world hates them.
Assaf Ben Haim, a 37-year-old doctoral student in archeology in Jerusalem, grew up in central Israel hearing his Hungarian grandmother talk about fleeing the Nazis and his Iraqi grandfather about being expelled from the Baghdad ghetto.
He said they rarely go 10 minutes without mentioning the “miracle of Israel.” But the concept of Israel as a safe haven is never fully captured, as he enjoyed his progressive and cosmopolitan life: coming out as gay in the country's open middle class; He lived in San Francisco for three years while his husband taught at Stanford University.
The pair returned in 2021, just in time to join last year's protests against judicial reform. They've decided on “red lines” that could set them back on the outside: tilting the selection process for Supreme Court justices; Rolling back gay rights.
He might be miserable living away from Israel, Ben Haim thought, but at least he would be free. He was one of the first army reservists to announce a boycott of training until the government backed down.
But October 7 brought his ancestors’ warnings to life. He was back in uniform within weeks.
He said the shock of the Hamas attack was followed by equally troubling aftershocks: Palestinian civilians in Gaza and the West Bank cheering the killing of Jews; Some of his liberal allies refused to condemn the attacks.
He recalls statements by fellow academics that ignored evidence of rape and torture. When he saw Black Lives Matter posts on October 11 that featured a hang glider, one of the devices Hamas has used to attack Israeli neighborhoods, and titled “I Stand with Palestine,” he thought of the BLM T-shirt in his closet and anti-racism marches . Justice he joined in California.
“It should be easy to say that occupation [of Palestinian territories] He said: “It is bad and Hamas has done terrible things.” “They don't conflict with each other.”
Shay Rapoport, 33, moved to London nearly four years ago to study art. He felt at home in London's cultural mix, and joined fellow expatriates who were protesting the Israeli government. He said that after October 7, he felt chills from his liberal and Muslim friends. Then outright hostility.
And now it's back to Israel, with the wars and everything. “I felt like people who were once my friends had become my aggressors,” he said from London. “Here, I feel so lonely.”
Criticism of Israel has increased as new images emerge daily of bloodied children and shattered rubble in Gaza, where an estimated two-thirds of buildings are believed to have been destroyed or damaged. Women and children make up 70% of the dead, according to health officials in Gaza, in a campaign that military analysts say has been ongoing. One of the most destructive in modern history.
All of the liberal Israelis interviewed for this article said they regretted the killing of so many Palestinian civilians. Each said they still support the goal of an independent Palestinian state if it can exist without threatening the lives of Israelis — a view that three-quarters of left-leaning Israelis still hold. But they all said they could not think of an alternative to all-out war against militants who had integrated themselves into the civilian population and vowed to launch attacks again.
“I think the October 7 massacre created a very simple mentality: It's them or us,” Illouz said.
But for those who have logged hours protesting the government, a new devotion to Israel does not equal support for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or his coalition. In this regard, it is the broader public that has swung in this direction: more than two-thirds of Israelis now say they want Netanyahu out of office.
Politics is slowly coming back. In recent weeks, the repeated marches demanding the release of the hostages have been joined by demonstrations against Netanyahu.
Shapiro has filled her free time in the past three months at hostage protests and volunteering for civil society groups that have emerged from the democracy movement. It raises funds and visits family members of hostages, soldiers and Israelis displaced from the borders with Gaza and Lebanon, where the threat of war with Hezbollah fighters is mounting.
She remembers the pain she and her husband felt last year, fearing that the Israel they loved would turn into something they could not stand, and that they would “become nomads, as the Jewish people have always been.”
Now, despite the chaos, contradictions and danger – “my biggest fear is really Hezbollah” – all thoughts of withdrawing from Israel have disappeared.
“It's a crazy place,” she said. “But it's not just my community anymore. It's my family.”
