One thing is clear to almost everyone in Israel: The world has changed since Simchas Torah. There is no going back to the way things were.
The subhuman monsters who murdered raped, and beheaded our brothers and sisters have shaken the world. In Israel, for the most part, there is a tremendous unity of purpose and a sense of brotherhood to fight together for our national future. Unlike what was going on before October 7, when left and right, religious and secular, were at each other’s throats, there are now countless examples of Jews of all types coming together, appreciating each other, finding common ground as Jews, and hoping together for Hashem’s help. Many see in this great hope that it is part of the necessary conditions that will hopefully lead to our final redemption, speedily in our days.
However, I believe that the current scenario is very fragile. I am old enough to have lived through the Six-Day War, the Yom Kippur War and intifadas and other crises and have seen similar unifying moments (although this seems to be the most powerful yet). In all those cases the unity waned soon after the crisis abated, and unfortunately, the sinas chinom that we Jews excel at returned quite quickly.
It is already happening. The leaders of the “Kaplan Movement,” who regularly led rallies of tens of thousands paralyzing the country and did so much damage in the name of “democracy,” found themselves on October 8 without a platform on which to bloviate and feel important. Unfortunately, they found a way to be “relevant” again. They are leading a growing movement that is cynically using the pain of the families of hostages to whip up anti-Netanyahu and anti-government protests, blaming him and the government for the security failures on October 7 and demanding that Netanyahu resign immediately. (They, of course, refuse to admit their part in causing the national weakness that our enemies saw, and blame it all on others.) They have returned to the streets in Kaplan and at the homes of cabinet ministers, and soon will attempt mass rallies countrywide.
While this is, thankfully, still only a minority view, the seething hatred of many is still just under the surface, waiting to be stoked by extremists on both sides. There is enormous resentment against the leadership of the army and the government that left Israel so vulnerable on October 7. Most sane people understand that a day of reckoning must come after the war, but the anger and desire for heads to roll bubbles up more and more frequently. When this finally happens, it is hard to envision that much unity will survive.
My concern, however, is mostly with the charedi public. As I wrote repeatedly before October 7, it is plain that much, if not most, of the anger and protests that were going on were not caused by “Judicial Reform” but by the anger and fear that the secular public has of the growing power and numbers of the religious, and particularly the charedi, community. They feared that the predominantly secular liberal State of Israel is in danger of becoming far more religious and conservative, and were strengthened in those fears by slander and lies in the media and from the intelligentsia.
