Last week I wrote about the mood in the country, as captured/created in the mainstream media, in the first two days of the war. I also wrote, but did not publish last week, a description of how that mood changed from the third or fourth day of that first week.

A couple of days ago, I started thinking about how I could expand and complete that description as this week’s post. However, having struggled with it for some time, I eventually realised that it made no sense to write an update that, by the time I published it, would be a week and a half out of date.

Instead, let me try to identify and describe all of the successive waves of national mood that we have experienced until now.

“All he wanted to do was to protect his family”

Let’s start by revisiting the same clip from Golda that I asked you to look at last week. You can view it again here.

After Day 2, stories began to emerge of individual heroism: of Israelis who, on that first Shabbat Chag, saw on their phones WhatsApp messages from children, parents, friends, acquaintances, and reacted by grabbing their handguns and ammunition, jumping in their vehicles, and driving to the scene of the carnage. If you’re not Israeli, that may sound surreal. What you must remember is that there is a large, self-selecting group of forty-to-sixty-something men in Israel who all served in combat units. Some of them became career soldiers; others joined police force special units. All have seen live action during their regular and then reservist service over the last twenty years. They all keep a licensed handgun at home. They keep in good physical shape, and practise at the shooting range.

So, when their daughters called them from the festival to say that they were being shot at and there were no police or soldiers to be seen, or when their children called from their safe-room on the kibbutz, where they were sheltering with the grandchildren, and said that terrorists were firing at the door of the safe-room, these men did what their instinct and their training both told them to do: they drove to the ‘front’. On the way they lied their way through army roadblocks by claiming to be policemen called as reinforcement’, or bypassed the roadblocks in their all-terrain vehicles, or pleaded with the soldiers manning the roadblocks to let them through, or, having failed to persuade, they simply said: “I’m driving through. If you have to shoot me, shoot me, but you won’t turn me back”. They passed bullet-ridden cars and abandoned corpses littering the road. They brought the fight to the terrorists in the kibbutzim, moshavim and towns of Otef Aza, and in and around the festival, and in many, many cases they rescued trapped civilians.

As the first week went on, more and more of these stories were featured on the mainstream media. If you have not heard any of them, here is one featured on CBS’s 60 Minutes. The point I want to stress is that, as outlier as this story sounds, it is one of many that I could reference, each with a storyline that, in a Bruce Willis action film, would make me smile wryly at its far-fetchedness.

Among those civilian first responders were many members of Achim LaNeshek – Brothers in Arms – the reservist group that has, throughout the year, been heavily involved in the judicial reform protests. After members of the group who are Air Force pilots stated, earlier in the year, that they would no longer turn up for their regular reserve training – a step that some commentators argued would significantly undermine the Air Force’s effectiveness – Netanyahu condemned their action in very strong and divisive terms. On that Shabbat, 7 October, when a member of the group who lives in Otef Aza posted what was happening on their WhatsApp group, members of the group responded by making their way to the front.

Over that first week, the country was reeling under the weight of details uncovered every day of atrocities committed. The number confirmed as killed on that first day continued to rise, as did the number kidnapped. At the same time, the country began to rally around and to be inspired by the stories of individual courage. Some of those stories ended as well as could be hoped– such as the father who, in his tender, rescued from a bomb shelter next to a bus stop not far from the festival not only his daughter but also another 29 girls who had managed to stay quiet under the pile of bodies covering the floor of the shelter. Others ended as well as possible; there was more than one story of an individual deliberately taking the full force of an exploding grenade and thereby saving the lives of others close by.

Start-up nation

As the days went by, and civilians were evacuated from Otef Aza, and then as the call-up of over 300,000 reservists began, the national mood changed again. Now the narrative became one of 360,000 responding to the call-up – even though only 300,000 were called. Israelis cut short post-army trips, or other holidays, fighting to get a plane home in order to enlist. In 1967, Israeli black humour asked the last person leaving the country to turn out the lights; now the request was for the last Israeli leaving Europe to turn out the lights.

The massive call-up (of 3% of Israel’s population, the equivalent of calling up over two million in the UK or 10 million in the US) of course meant that the entire population was even more closely involved in the war.. Taking our 50-member-family shul as a microcosm, two of our members have been called up, as well as another 40 children, grandchildren, siblings, brothers-in-law and sons-in-law of members.

With reservists being called to the front, and with communities being evacuated from Otef Aza, individuals and groups began organising volunteer activities: collecting clothes, toys and toiletries for evacuated families, or food, toiletries and ancillary equipment for soldiers at the front; organising activities for evacuated children; even going into the abandoned Otef Aza communities – before they were declared sterile (clear of all terrorists) – to rescue ‘orphaned’ dogs and cats from the homes of massacred or kidnapped families and arrange foster families for them. Some hotels and hostels opened their doors to the evacuees. Some builders made newly completed but not yet occupied apartment buildings available. Brothers in Arms used its existing highly organised structure to open a massive logistics centre for food distribution and other support.  

The whole country embraced the therapy of ‘doing something’. Alongside the countless modest neighbourhood initiatives, larger and more innovative projects were launched. As I write this, on Sunday evening, there are still several hundred bodies that have not been identified. Despite Israel’s forensic scientists working around the clock, with expert help from abroad, some bodies are so mutilated and so badly burnt that neither dental records nor DNA are available. There are still a large number of people officially deemed to be missing, whose families do not yet know whether they have been murdered or kidnapped.

Recognising the anguish of these families, a group of hi-tech workers set up what has become a massive database. They have collected from the families all possible photographic and video evidence of those missing. They have also collected all the video and photographic documentation available from the events of that Shabbat and subsequently. Using AI and specially written algorithms, they are searching for matches, both facial recognition and possible matches of clothing. When I watched a television report on this centre a few days ago, they had been able to pass to the relevant authorities positive identification of many individuals.

Where are our leaders?

As the first week drew to a close, there was another change of tone in the national debate, as conducted in the media, and, increasingly, on the streets. Where was the leadership? This was a two-pronged question: Where was the leadership before October 7? Where is the leadership now? While there was initially widespread agreement that the investigation of any military, security and government failures or errors of judgement in the days, weeks and months leading up to October 7 should wait until after the war, Netanyahu was quick to announce that he had not been made aware of any potential situation until 6:29AM on October 7, when the attacks began.

In the last few days, the Commander-in-Chief, the Intelligence chief and the Minister of Defence have all accepted responsibility for the failure. Netanyahu has not. Government ministers unfortunate enough to be interviewed in the media have given carefully-worded responses along the following lines: “Of course we are responsible”, without mentioning Netanyahu by name or the Prime Minister by position.

Channel 11, a very mainstream broadcaster not overly sympathetic to Netanyahu at the best of times, displayed photos of the other three leading members of the War Cabinet in one column, under the heading: ‘Accept Responsibility’; in the second column, headed ‘Does not Accept Responsibility’, was the lone photo of Netanyahu.

While voluntary initiatives seem to get up to speed in virtually no time, and to run with incredible efficiency and a spirit of co-operation, this weekend saw what seems to be an appalling failure to co-ordinate. The Government offered inhabitants of Kiryat Shemona, very near the Lebanese border, the option to evacuate to hotels in the centre. Individual families were told which hotel was holding rooms for them. When some of the evacuees arrived at the hotels, they were told there were no rooms for them. On the radio this morning, the Mayor of Kiryat Shemona was furious at the incompetence of the Tourism Ministry, while the Minister of Tourism was unable to provide a coherent explanation of what had happened.

Two weeks into the war, there is still no single body to co-ordinate the Government’s initiatives for the home front. Initial attempts to organise such a body under the leadership of the Prime Minister’s office failed, because the directors-general of several of the various relevant ministries simply refused to ‘waste their time’ attending meetings of a body which would not achieve anything. Increasingly, this breakdown seems like an inevitable consequence of offering Government ministries to inexperienced members of minority parties, as a reward for joining the Government, and to incompetent members of the majority party, as a reward for remaining faithful to Netanyahu,

Members of the Government were very slow in visiting affected families in the South. This is, in fairness, partly out of a very real fear that they would encounter hostility, as one minister did when she attempted to enter a hospital to visit the wounded. At least one family warned Government representatives not to attempt to attend the funeral of their family member killed in the attack.

Where now?

Without a doubt, the country is more united, at the grassroots level, than it has been since the beginning of the year. Tzahal has announced that it has received 2000 requests from ultra-orthodox men to serve, and that it will be launching a suitable program tomorrow (Monday).

However, this unity does not move upwards. The open criticism of the Government, and especially of Netanyahu, both in the media and on the street, is becoming more strident. Given the fact that we are at war, this criticism seems to me very troubling, although I completely understand it.

The one issue above all others on which the nation will, I am sure, be truly, and savagely, divided, is the question of the country’s priorities. The basic question to consider is: How do you rank in importance the following three goals: The complete destruction of Hamas; the safe return of the hostages; the minimising of loss of life among Israel’s forces.

Adding to the complexity of the situation is the question of what will happen in Gaza after Hamas is completely destroyed (if that goal is even achievable). Further added to the complexity is the question: How is Israel most likely to achieve the safe return of the hostages? I have heard experts argue that a prisoner exchange is the only way; others argue that when we have Hamas by the throat they will release the hostages; yet others say that we need to carry out an Entebbe-style rescue.

These questions are, of course, immensely complex. I have not even added in the question of how Israel’s action in Gaza, against Hamas, will affect the stability of the Northern border. Will our action trigger Hizbollah to escalate hostilities? Will Iran be drawn in through Syria?

When I started thinking about this week’s post, I planned to call it ‘The Start-Up Nation’ and I intended to focus on how Hamas’s miscalculation was to think that its pogrom would destroy our morale rather than uniting us and leading us to forget our differences. That was the mood a week ago. Since then, the mood has shifted. The government, and the Prime Minister, have appeared to lack purpose, ability, and sensitivity to the mood of the nation. In addition, the geo-political ramifications of the situation have become clearer to us. As our ground troops wait impatiently on the Gaza border, and drown in home-made cake and shaving foam sent from the home front, and wait, and wait; as our troops wait anxiously on the northern border, and drown in coca-cola and soap sent from the home front, the way forward through the next weeks and months seems very far from certain.

However uncertain they seem for us, how much more so must they be for the families of the hostages – and for the hostages themselves?