Public Responsibility is a Moral Stance
Public responsibility is not a managerial skill, nor is it a derivative of formal authority. It is not acquired through an appointment or an election, nor is it the product of a public committee’s findings – and it certainly does not emerge from hollow media declarations. Public responsibility is, first and foremost, a moral stance; it is the fundamental recognition that the decisions and failures of those in power carry a price in human life.
The events of October 7th exposed a traumatic truth: this was not merely a security failure or an intelligence lapse, but primarily the collapse of ‘public responsibility’ as an organizing principle of Israeli politics. Throughout Benjamin Netanyahu’s years in power, the concept of responsibility was stretched with the agility of a contortionist. Failure was attributed to forgetfulness, lack of knowledge, or – most frequently – to someone else. Conversely, success was always tied directly to the leader’s actions, credited to his ‘guidance and directives’. The result of this political subculture was not only the fortification of a corrupt and failing leadership, but the distortion of Israeli society itself, which, in the process, lost its moral compass.
The persistent and pathetic attempt to evade all responsibility and cast blame elsewhere reflects a chilling reality: the government, and especially the man at its head, does not see itself as directly responsible for the safety of the citizens it leads. Through biased documents, manipulative presentations, and a chorus of blind followers and sycophants, Israeli society has normalized governmental irresponsibility – not only in education, health, or welfare, but in the very core of our basic existence. The gap between the confident rhetoric (‘I instructed… I ordered’) and the administrative incompetence became unbearable on October 7th.
Amidst this fracture, figures like Einav Zangauker, Yonatan Shimriz, and Omri Ronen emerged. They became leaders not by choice, but because they experienced firsthand the distortion that has infected Israeli politics: the alien interests in decision-making, the government’s alienation from its citizens, the sinister forces operating behind the scenes, and above all, the profound moral bankruptcy of public officials.
The starting point of their public activity is not political – it precedes politics. It was forged at the moment the state’s failures ceased to be a news headline and began to dictate their personal and family fates. It was born on the day the systemic failure crossed the threshold of statistics and became an existential experience. From that moment on, their responsibility became concrete, necessitating public action.
The transition of Zangauker, Shimriz, and Ronen into active party politics signals a profound shift in the concept of civic duty: a move from passive citizenship – assuming someone else is in charge – to active citizenship born of the realization that no one else is carrying the weight of public responsibility in its deepest sense. They are not guided by a rigid ideology, but by the painful understanding that the traumatic event resulted from a state that ceased to serve its citizens and focused instead on the preservation of one man’s rule.
Their personal experience is what forged their social responsibility. This is not about personal rage or a quest for vengeance; it is a sense of absolute necessity. They do not seek culprits for the sake of punishment, but for the sake of repair. They seek to restore to politics what it has lost: the unbreakable bond between authority, responsibility, and duty.
Public responsibility, in its deepest sense, is an accountability for what was not done as much as for what was done: for the omission, the silence, and the delayed decision. This is knowledge not acquired through political theory or management experience, but through harrowing existential experience. Such knowledge does not guarantee political success, but it does guarantee a moral boundary. Some may view their involvement as the ‘politicization of pain’. I see it as the exact opposite: an attempt to restore pain as a legitimate moral category in politics – not to rule through it, but to prevent its erasure and, most importantly, its recurrence. A society that does not allow pain to be transformed into responsibility is a society condemned to relive its failures.
After October 7th, ‘governing stability’ without responsibility is not a virtue; it is a clear and immediate existential danger. The question is not whether people like Zangauker, Shimriz, and Ronen are ‘fit’ for Israeli politics – they are certainly fit to represent a society seeking repair. The real question is whether a society that cannot accept political figures born of this fracture is a healthy society. They may not be the cure for all of Israel’s political ills, but their entry into the public arena brings hope for the return of responsibility to the political discourse.
Zangauker, Shimriz, and Ronen carry a memory that refuses the normalization of failure. Their public activity stems from a refusal to accept a decayed political culture that has normalized the evasion of duty and the distribution of favors to cronies. To a politics that blames others, they bring accountability; to a society that has normalized corruption, they bring integrity; to a coarse public discourse, they bring culture and substance. In a public space that tries to blur and forget, they bring the duty to remember. Sometimes, that is the first and most essential condition for mending the world.
