‘Willful Blindness’

Ruth Margalit on Israelis’ media consumption and “unwillingness to sit with the facts of what was actually happening” in Gaza.

Ruth Margalit, a contributing writer at the New York Times magazine, specializes in profiles of prominent Israelis. Her new book, In the Belly of the Whale: Portraits from a Fractured Israel, which was published in September, collects ten of her pieces, including about members of the country’s right-wing vanguard such as Itamar Ben-Gvir, the minister of national security, and Yinon Magal, a star anchor for Channel 14, a network that virulently backs Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The pieces are organized chronologically, and it’s striking how much the book’s tone shifts over time. As the mania of life in Israel post–October 7, 2023, crescendoes, the right-wing voices profiled six or seven years before (including Miri Regev, who was then the culture minister) sound almost quaint.