Following October 7 and the genocide in Gaza, Israeli identity has reached a breaking point. Instead of the expansionist and recyclical modes of self-preservation, its decomposition might be an opportunity for (Post-)Israelis to negotiate their preconditioned identity with a real investment in a just future in Palestine / Eretz-Yisrael, recomposing themselves towards a shared homeland.
Expansionist and Recyclical Israeli Identities
Israeli identity is at its breaking point. Since 7 October 2023, following Hamas’ massacre on the Gaza envelope, Israel entered a new, genocidal stage, in which prior senses of vulnerability and constant threat have been amplified into a near-extinction, survivalist perception to justify its atrocities. Adjusting to this ongoing and most brutal culmination (so far) of the ongoing Nakba, mainly in Gaza but also throughout Palestine, Israeli identity was required to adapt, and attend once more to its dissonances, inherent to it is as a settler-colonial nation-state (Mamdani, 2020), now laid bare for all to witness.
Through a short analysis of a few musical samples, I mean to encapsulate two main orientations, or compositions, that are in inner cultural struggle for dominance and hegemony: that of national unity, and that of mamlakhtiyut – roughly translated as statehood; or as I would like to analyse them, respectively: the expansionist composition of Israeli identity, and the recyclical composition of Israeli identity. Using a post-colonial, ecological prism on such a moment of near extinction in Israeli imagination, I do not aim for a complete survey of different rhetorics or interpretations expressed or felt in Israeli society. My aim is to better identify the crack in Israeli identity, to then draw a way out of it, one rooted in a vision of interdependence (Marom, 2026).