💧News of the Crisis💧July 3, 2025
This afternoon, Netanyahu is visiting Kibbutz Nir Oz for the first time today since October 7. For nearly two years Nir Oz stood as a bleeding totem for everything Netanyahu wishes to blot away - the negligence, the tragedy, the forsaken hostages. In anticipation for his visit, truckloads of crowd control barricades waited at the gate of the Kibbutz and he arrived from the back entrance, just like the Hamas militants, whom he deemed “wearing flip-flops”, did that Saturday morning.
Reuma Kedem, whose daughter, son in law and three grandchildren were murdered in Nir Oz, tweeted: “Don’t you dare, two years later, enter the gates of this kibbutz. Let your filthy foot not dare tread on the paths of this abandoned and soot-covered kibbutz, do you hear? Where my grandchildren ran, played, and romped. My dead family is not a PR prop for your imagined election campaign… Your armored vehicles and bulletproof vests will not enter here. Not your wife, not your makeup artist, not your photographers”. She ended her tweet with, “You are a sick man. You will not get the cheap closure you crave here. Not in the blood of my children. You are going to hell”.
Danny Elgarat, whose brother was kidnapped from Nir Oz and killed in captivity, claimed: “If on October 7, one fifth of the security now present to guard Bibi was present in Nir Oz, a Holocaust would not have taken place”.
Two days ago, as two members from Kibbutz Nachal Oz arrived in the Knesset to attend the Special Committee for Young People, they were refused entrance. The two wore T-Shirts printed with “Omri Miran - Bring Omri Back Now!” but were requested to change their attire. They were refused again when they changed to shirts bearing the name of their kibbutz, “Nachal Oz is my home”.
MK Na’ama Lazimi, Chair of the Committee, posted on Instagram: “It turns out that the father of two little girls kidnapped in Gaza is a controversial subject, as is the name of the kibbutz he was kidnapped from. Shocking and disturbing. If anyone is wondering: This is how you make the hostages a political matter. Engineered, cynical, and evil. I'm ashamed of the internal destruction that this coalition has committed on the House of the People”.
The 2025 Israeli Democracy Index, conducted by the Viterbi Family Center for Public Opinion and Policy Research at the Israel Democracy Institute between June 22–23, 2025, found that only 40% of Israelis trust Netanyahu (10% among the Arab population, 46% among the Jews). Other takeaways from the survey include:
🔹 National Mood & Democratic Stability
60% of Israelis rated the country’s situation as “bad” in May 2024, though this "dropped to 48.5% by October.
A majority of Jewish and Arab respondents believe Israeli democracy is in grave danger, with Arab concern significantly higher.
🔹 Threat Perceptions
The greatest external threat identified is a multi-front regional war, followed by international isolation (Jews) and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (Arabs).
Internally, Jews cite tensions over Israel’s Jewish-democratic identity, while Arabs point to Jewish-Arab relations as the top existential threat.
🔹 Social Cohesion & Trust
Most Israelis feel connected to the state’s challenges, though Arabs report lower levels of belonging.
Trust in state institutions has declined, while belief in civil society and fellow citizens has grown—reflecting disappointment in government response to crises.
🔹 Identity & Values
A majority of secular Jews believe the Jewish component of Israel’s identity is too dominant, while religious groups feel the democratic component is overemphasized.
Social tensions between Right and Left now surpass those between Jews and Arabs.
🔹 Security & Solidarity
Israelis overwhelmingly support expanding women’s roles in combat, especially among secular respondents.
There’s strong support for a hostage deal and a state commission of inquiry into the October 7 events.
The Hebrew edition of Times of Israel reports “This coming Monday, the state will stop funding the stay of the displaced people who were evacuated in October 2023 from the north of the country and the Gaza Strip, and who were housed in hotels – assuming that the funding will not be extended again. The government previously announced that the evacuees’ stay in hotels would end in September 2024, but has repeatedly postponed the date: first to December, then to February, then to the end of June, and finally to July 7.
“Almost all of the tens of thousands of displaced people from the Gaza Strip have already left the hotels. According to estimates by the management of “Tekuma,” about 80% of them have long since returned to their homes; about 10% are currently returning, with the end of the school year and the lifting of the security ban on returning to the Gaza Strip kibbutzim. Residents of six kibbutzim that were destroyed in the massacre live in alternative sites, and the rest have resettled across the country. Only a few evacuees from the south remained in hotels, for exceptional personal reasons.
"The strong young people have long since settled down with apartments and jobs in the center and in Eilat, or have returned. Most of those who remained in hotels – something like 3,000 people – will return to Kiryat Shmona next week. Some voluntarily, and some because they have nowhere else to go."
The situation in the north of the country is different. According to data from the Tnufa administration, which is responsible for the rehabilitation of the north, about 4,100 of the approximately 70,000 displaced people who were evacuated from the area are still staying in hotels. It is estimated that the vast majority of them are residents of Kiryat Shmona. Most of them are staying in hotels in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Herzliya and Eilat. Many of the Kiryat Shmona residents who were evacuated to Tiberias have already returned to their city, unlike those who were evacuated to Eilat and the center of the country.
According to a source in the Kiryat Shmona Municipality's Welfare Department: "Most of these people are the weaker population – the elderly, the needy, people with disabilities and parents of children in special education. The strong young people have long since settled down with apartments and jobs in the center and in Eilat, or have returned. Most of those who stayed in hotels – something like 3,000 people – will return to Kiryat Shmona next week. Some voluntarily, and some because they have no other place to stay”.