A Historic Failure vs. Deliberate Negligence: The Difference between October 6 and October 7

On October 6, 1973, my life — and the lives of an entire generation — changed forever. The Yom Kippur War was meant to be the resounding slap in the face after the euphoria of the Six-Day War. That euphoria and its shattering came at a terrible cost: twelve of my closest friends never returned, and many others came back, but were never the same.

There was hardly a street in Israel left untouched: 2,600 dead, 7,500 wounded, and tens of thousands more scarred in body and soul. It was a horrific price paid by Israeli society for blindness, hubris, political folly, and reckless misjudgment that bordered on abandonment.

That loss was not fate. It was not an earthquake, nor a volcanic eruption, nor a meteor strike. It was a man-made disaster—born of blind faith in a misguided doctrine and an unwillingness to act. Those responsible were called to account. Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan stepped down, and within four years the party that had built and led the state paid the political price and was sent into opposition.

I was only 21 then, the youngest in my unit. My generation was left with the scars—decades of post-trauma, sleepless nights, worry, but also a resolve to change reality. We worked, settled the land, built families, and strove to make Israel a better place, to secure its future for generations. We bore the heavy cost, but we believed the sacrifices were not in vain—that lessons had been learned.

And now, fifty years and a single day later, what we once saw as a historic national failure—born of paralysis and blindness—pales in comparison to the calamity of October 7. No—calamity is the wrong word. A calamity is something that happens by accident, by force of nature or fate. October 7, unlike October 6, was the result of deliberate negligence.

For years there were warnings, cries, pleas in the face of an emerging dictator—blind, drunk with power, devoid of responsibility—the worst leader the Jewish people have endured since the destruction of the Second Temple two thousand years ago.

Nearly 2,000 people have already paid with their lives for the complacency and blindness of Netanyahu and his circle. Tens of thousands more carry wounds of body and soul. The entire nation is traumatized, hundreds of thousands of children now condemned to live their lives in its shadow.

From the Yom Kippur War, we managed to recover and rise as a regional power—because there was accountability, because there was a willingness to pay the price, because leaders acted to fix what was broken and to draw the necessary lessons.

From the war of October 7, I fear we may not rise again. Not because our people lack the strength—on the contrary, they have shown determination, wisdom, and courage far greater than their failed leaders—but because our leadership is rotten, irresponsible, and above all malicious. A leadership willing to sacrifice its own citizens to cling to power, even at the cost of the state itself.

Hamas is a brutal terrorist organization that must be destroyed. But we have faced, and can continue to face, its terror. What is far harder to endure is a government that for two years has waged relentless terror against its own citizens. We were never taught that such a thing was possible. Yet here we are, held hostage by zealots who see endless war with the world as the fulfillment of their messianic vision—who truly believe these are the days of redemption. Happy holidays, indeed.

The Yom Kippur War shattered trust in the old leadership and laid the groundwork for the political upheaval that brought Menachem Begin to power. October 7 shattered trust in the state itself: citizens no longer trust their government or their army, or even each other. This is not post-trauma. This is disintegration.

I want to be hopeful. I want to tell my children and grandchildren that we will rise again, as we rose from the ashes of the Holocaust, as—though on a different scale—we recovered and thrived after the Yom Kippur War. I want to say it, but I find it hard. I see our young people leaving, and on the horizon I see ruin approaching.

We have only one bullet left in the chamber, one last step before there is nothing left to save. Will we have the wisdom and courage to shake ourselves free from those who terrorize us? Sociology teaches that all the power of a government is derived from the faith of its citizens. No government—not even one that turns the police into its private militia—can withstand a genuine protest of millions. It can incite, divide, sow discord. But if we, the people, resolve to drive it out, it cannot prevail.

Do we still have that strength left in us—or will we wait another two thousand years in exile for the next chance?