‘In the IDF – not Bibi – we trust’
Nearly half a year since the October 7 Hamas invasion, how it happened remains unfathomable.
Still fighting the war to destroy Hamas, the nation has not yet turned from the battleground to an in-depth look at what went so terribly wrong.
True, there have been television investigations and newspaper examinations, and both the IDF and the State Comptroller are conducting investigations, but a systemic look at how the IDF, intelligence agencies, and the government were so completely blinded and left clueless will take years to emerge. A State
Commission of Inquiry will surely be established after the war to examine all aspects of the colossal failure, though it is not clear what will mark that end-of-war point or when this body will be set up.
Conventional wisdom holds that such a committee is essential to rebuild trust in the state’s institutions, and that trust is vital. Israel critically needs to rebuild institutional trust.
Much has been written of Israel’s vaunted resilience, its uncanny ability to take blows and bounce back, usually even stronger than before. And this resilience has a number of different components.
One of them is solidarity,
loosely defined as a unity of purpose, shared vision and values, aspiration toward a common goal, and a willingness to set aside partisan individual interests for the common good.
Though some feared that Israel lost this sense of solidarity with the divisive judicial overhaul debate of the first nine months of 2023 and the bitter partisan divide that hurtled the country into five elections in less than four years, the horrific events of October 7 showed that reports of Israel’s loss of solidarity were greatly exaggerated.
Another