A protester is taken away as ultra-Orthodox Jewish men protest against attempts to change government policy that grants ultra-Orthodox Jews exemptions from military conscription in Jerusalem, Feb. 26, 2024. There is, however, consensus on one issue in Israel at the moment—often articu- lated with deep pain: that we find ourselves in the most serious national crisis since the founding of the state in 1948. It cannot and should not be airbrushed. It is real. And, yes, it is dire. Oct. 7 represented the failure of the para- mount covenant embodied by the State of Israel: to provide a refuge for all Jewish people, after millenia of persecution and reasonably regular attempts to annihilate us. Ironically, the hatred fortified Jewish solidarity and identity. I have often thought that if we would just be left alone for a century or so we’d likely assimilate, and the job would be done. But the pogroms recur, with a dependable frequency. On Oct. 7 the Israeli psyche was shat- tered by the magnitude of the total failure of the state to keep its most important promise—to ensure our physical safety within our national borders. Several days ago, I met with Eyal Eshel, the bereaved father of Roni Eshel, who was murdered by Hamas monsters on Oct. 7 at the Nahal Oz army base in southern Israel. Roni was an IDF soldier in an intel- ligence unit comprised solely of women, known as ‘scouts’ or ‘observers’. Lore has it that women have a heightened attention to detail, making them ideally suited to sit for hours on end, staring at a computer screen that shows images from a small patch of border terrain. I have visited several of these units over the years. If a rock is moved a few centimeters, they know immediately. They are the eyes on Hamas. 24/7. Roni was among the more senior mem- bers of the small unit and had returned to base on Oct. 4, following a short family holiday. As she was leaving to catch a train, she said goodbye to her dad, telling him, worriedly: “Dad. It’s so volatile there.” The word she used in Hebrew conveys explo- siveness, as if a cauldron was boiling over, or a volcano about to erupt. Eyal assured her that the IDF was the best military in the world and that the leadership was surely on top of things. Eyal believed in Israel’s power but, more import- antly, in the professionalism and dedica-
tion of senior military leadership. Not in a million years would he imagine the horror his life was about to become. Roni was set to greet several new recruits joining her team that weekend and to assist in their training and orien- tation. Among them was Na’ama Levy, a 19-year-old peace activist from the central Israeli city of Ra’anana. Video footage of Na’ama went viral on the morning of Oct. 7, showing her being pulled by her hair from the trunk of a white jeep in Gaza City, where she’d been stuffed in like a load of garbage. Her arms, face and feet were bloodied, her expression pure terror, her Achilles tendons severed so she could not run or escape, the butt of her light grey pants drenched with blood and soiled with dirt. Men surrounded the jeep, screaming “Allahu Akhbar,” as Na’ama was shoved into the back seat between two masked terrorists carrying Kalashnikovs. Na’ama and Roni were among the first to be brutalized that day. Roni was tortured before being asphyxiated in a locked room set afire with accelerant, to which Hamas added toxic gas in order to ensure max- imum pain and suffering. Five months on, her father seethes with rage. The army at the highest levels knew about the very real threats on the border with Gaza. But senior leadership chose to dismiss the scouts’ concerns, articulated repeatedly in reports, as being about noth- ing more than hijinks by a bunch of Hamas punks. They demeaned the female scouts, who pleaded with their male superiors to pay attention to the shocking reports they had been making for months, based on observation of Hamas training drills that were extraordinarily rigorous, disciplined and ongoing. It was all there. Day after day. On their screens. Israeli Major General Aharon Haliva, commander of the IDF Military Intelligence Directorate, had better things to do. When alerted late on Oct. 6 to deeply concerning activity in the Gaza Strip, Haliva told the underling that he was on holiday in Eilat and not to be contacted until after 9 a.m. the following day. General Haliva slept soundly as Roni was brutalized. Israeli civilians and soldiers were aban- doned by the state. And five months on, we have yet to receive a remotely appropriate explanation as to why. Why did the IDF, Shin Bet domestic sec- urity service, and senior civilian leadership
We must be unified. We have heard this ceaselessly since Oct. 7 in the Diaspora and in Israel. Am Yisrael Chai. But we are not unified. In fact, the social divisions tearing apart Israeli society are more pronounced and threatening than ever. Unity is not decreed from on high. There is no “King of the Jews” with the moral or actual power to dictate how we, the people, think and behave. If anything, the opposite is true. Those in positions of authority in Israel have failed the people and the nation so profoundly and repeatedly as to place us all in an existential crisis. This despair and rage crosses partisan, ethnic, and socio-economic lines.
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