We must be the Israel of October 8

October 7 was a catastrophe, a day of massacre and failure. Three years have passed, and we are still living in its shadow: the murdered, the hostages, the fallen, the wounded, the communities burned to the ground. Its memory will remain with us for generations.

But there was another day as well: October 8, and the difficult days that followed. Out of the devastation, Israel revealed itself at its best.

Even before anyone understood the full scale of the disaster, Israelis were already heading south. People got into their cars and drove to the Gaza border communities to fight and rescue people they had never met. Reservists reported for duty without waiting to be called up. Hundreds of thousands arrived at their units and headed to the front.

Something no less extraordinary happened on the home front. Within days, civilian emergency centers sprang up across the country. People collected equipment for soldiers, cooked meals, packed supplies, and drove them to the border. Families opened their homes to evacuees from the north and south. Hotels, kibbutzim, and boarding schools became homes overnight for entire displaced communities.

Volunteers cared for children and the elderly, harvested abandoned fields, and sat with bereaved families. Restaurant owners turned their kitchens into field kitchens. Teachers opened classrooms for evacuated children wherever a spare room could be found. Psychologists volunteered to counsel survivors and the families of hostages. Those who had money gave money; those who had time gave time. Diaspora Jews raised funds and came to Israel to volunteer.

All this was done by the same Israelis who, just a day earlier, had stood on opposite sides of a bitter divide. Protest organizations became aid operations within hours. Rabbis and high-tech workers, settlers and Tel Avivians, packed boxes together in the same warehouse. No one asked the person standing beside them how they had voted.

We came to that moment from the Israel of October 6. Just days earlier, on Yom Kippur, Jews had clashed in Dizengoff Square over a partition at a public prayer service. The year before the war had been a year of rupture. Reservists signed protest letters, political arguments divided families, and it seemed that the struggle over the country’s character might tear it apart. The Israel of October 6 was divided, suspicious, and hopeless.

October 8 showed us that this society has immense reserves of strength – the ability to unite, mobilize, and work together for what truly matters. But the forces pulling us apart are powerful too. In those days, we saw what happens when the forces of solidarity prevail.

October 6 teaches us that the threat of civil war is real. October 7 teaches us that such a massacre must never happen again. October 8 teaches us that another Israel is possible.

The eighth day was quickly forgotten. The disputes returned, and so did the poison. Accusations, suspicion, and bitter language again came to dominate public discourse. We are once more arguing about everything, and at times it seems that the Israel of October 6 has again become the Israeli norm.

We must not accept that.

The Israel of the eighth day was real. We saw it, and many of us were part of it. It was built on thousands of small acts by ordinary people. Anyone who set up an emergency center, hosted an evacuated family, or drove south that morning knows that this Israel is possible. Many Israelis are still working together for the common good. Yet the other Israel – the divided one – seems to be prevailing.

We cannot live in a permanent state of emergency. But we can carry forward the essential lesson of those days: that we belong to one another and share a common task. That, at the very least, we must strengthen the partnership embodied in our covenant of fate. And that perhaps one day we can forge a covenant of shared destiny.

That recognition must become an aspiration for Israeli society. We must foster it through education and build a politics and institutions that advance it. This is a task for our leaders – and for every one of us. It begins with the way we speak to one another, even when we disagree.

Three years later, I miss the Israelis we were in those days.

I believe we can be those Israelis again.