I will cry over my dead,” wrote journalist Arnon Lapid after returning from the battlefields of the Yom Kippur War.
“I will cry over my dead – Avermale, Ilan, Dudu, Amitai, Uzi, Yair, Beni,” continued the kibbutznik from Givat Haim, listing the names of his fallen friends.
“I will cry over my dead and you will cry over yours,” and this way all will mourn all; “together we will decry the dreams from which we have awakened, the big things that became small, the gods that disappointed and the false prophets who rose to prominence; the futility, the lack of will, the lack of energy – the present, in which there isn’t even one ray of light… and we will pity ourselves… a lost generation of a tormented nation in a land that devours its dwellers” (“Invitation to cry,” Shdemot, January 1974).
It was a testament to a postwar feeling of trauma, bereavement, angst, and despair that Israelis who experienced those years will never forget. Now, as Israeli society reels from its longest war, once again bruised, embattled, and perplexed, a similar sense of loss, disillusionment, and wrath pervades much of the Jewish state.
The pessimism of 1974, as the subsequent peace with Egypt, mass immigration, and economic prosperity proved, was exaggerated. So is the pessimism of 2025.
The shock of our latest war was in some ways even worse than the Yom Kippur War’s.
The military failures to detect the attack’s approach and prepare for it were much the same in both wars. So is the politicians’ failure to acknowledge their moral responsibility for the era’s conceit.
The two wars’ tallies of Israeli fatalities were, on the face of it, much graver in 1973, when 3.1 million Israelis lost 2,656 soldiers, as opposed to the recent war, in which 10 million Israelis lost 1,984 lives. Psychologically, however, this war’s tally is in a league of its own, because 1,065 of its fallen were civilians, whereas in 1973, all of the fallen were soldiers.
This, to be sure, is the foremost cause of the perplexity that this war has caused. Worse, the civilian fatalities were killed in their homes – parents, children, and grandparents massacred against the backdrop of their burning towns.
'Our shtetl is burning'
“Our shtetl is burning,” thought millions of Israelis, recalling Yiddish poet Mordechai Gebirtig’s prophetic lines written shortly before the Holocaust.
Yes, when the fighting that the massacre triggered arrived, it turned out that the nation that was caught unprepared for this war was not unfit for it. On the contrary. The soldiers proved as motivated as previous wars’ troops, the IDF emerged with its deterrence restored and even redoubled, and Israeli society displayed a spirit of voluntarism and solidarity that many had thought it no longer possessed.
Still, it has been half a century since Israeli society has been this traumatized. What, then, are the elements of this trauma and how will it be healed?
The previous trauma was redoubled by the economy. The Yom Kippur War fanned inflation, multiplied deficits, pumped the national debt, and heralded more than two decades of dependency on American aid.
This war was different. Israel arrived at it with a population more than three times larger than 1973’s, and a modernized economy whose per-capita product is higher than most of the world’s industrial powers.
The Israeli stock market’s TASE 35 Index rose during this war by more than 70%, the shekel appreciated by 15%, and inflation was checked at 2.5%.
Unlike the Yom Kippur War, which spawned economic doom, the war that now ended is set to touch off an economic boom. However, the prospect of economic security and optimism will not heal the war’s political wounds, much less offset its psychological angst.
The war and the events that preceded it leave most Israelis feeling politically bankrupt.
It begins with what should be any Israeli government’s bread and butter: the ability, or at least the motivation, to defend Israel abroad. The academic, economic, and cultural assault on Israel, and the attacks throughout the world on Jewish symbols, institutions, and pedestrians – have left Israelis feeling abandoned.
The leaders who caused this war didn’t even show up for the battles it kindled abroad. This insight comes not from those leaders’ opponents, but from Gilad Erdan, until recently their own ambassador to Washington and the United Nations.
Why, Israelis wonder, is there no proper budgeting, planning, and leadership on this front? And the answer is the same one Israelis gave to similar questions after the Yom Kippur War: our leaders lost their way.
Self-absorbed and up to their nostrils in bickering, feather-nesting, and petty cockfights, they lost the ability to distinguish between adversary and enemy, between fair and unfair, between good and bad, and between evil and just.
humility, solidarity, and reconciliation
At the same time, the people who sacrificed in this war emerged from it with three great expectations from their leaders: humility, solidarity, and reconciliation.
Humility demands an impartial investigation of the policymaking that ended in catastrophe. Solidarity demands that all citizens share the burden of national service. And reconciliation demands that anything constitutional be done by consensus.
It took hardly a week for the relevant politicians to make plain that if it’s up to them, there will be no solidarity, no reconciliation, and no search for truth. The war that was supposed to humble them only fueled their acrimony and zeal.
Back in 1973, the political hegemon’s attitude was not much different. It took three years, but ultimately, the Israelis who fought that war removed the leadership that caused it. The same is ready to happen now.
Fourth in a five-part series
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The writer, a Hartman Institute fellow, is the author of Ha’Sfar Ha’Yehudi Ha’Aharon (The Last Jewish Frontier, Yediot Sefarim 2025), a sequel to Theodor Herzl’s The Old New Land.