"Gaza is ours forever!" declared the blue and green signs posted on a street in the West Bank settlement of Ariel. On Tuesday evening, students gathered in a lecture hall of Ariel University for a panel discussion with Hen Avigdori, whose wife and daughter, Sharon and Noam, were snatched from Kibbutz Be'eri on October 7 and returned a year ago. Roni and Shai Elbag spoke after him; their sister Liri was on surveillance duty at the Nahal Oz base when she was kidnapped. She is still in Hamas captivity in Gaza.
Israel is awash with efforts at unity these days. Our inboxes are full of citizen-led initiatives for "Unity Now!," for national consensus, for ending the polarization and bridging the cross-sectorial divisions. But a portrait of Israel in a single week shows why the unity activists have to work so hard.
Right-wing supporters of the government have long viewed Israelis advocating for an urgent hostage deal with Hamas as a cover for a subversive, left-wing, anti-government agenda. In response, the hostage families have labored to connect with religious Jewish communities. Ariel University is diverse, with Arab students and Israelis with roots in the former Soviet Union, as well as secular and religious Jewish Israelis, but the latter made up the bulk of the nearly full auditorium this week.
Hen Avigdori, whose wife and daughter were freed in the November 2023 hostage deal, at a Knesset committee meeting this month.Credit: Naama Grynbaum
Avigdori had clearly crafted his speech for the Ariel University audience. He recounted meeting with an ultra-Orthodox rabbi in Tel Aviv suburb Bnei Brak who wept as he mapped out his extended family, listing the members who had been murdered or kidnapped. Avigdori told of the mass march to Jerusalem in November 2023 to demand the first hostage deal, and how the ultra-Orthodox community of Kiryat Ye'arim outside Jerusalem turned out to cheer the marchers on as they cited Jewish texts about the commandment to redeem hostages.
Although staunchly secular, Avigdori said he loves reading the Bible, and he recently completed the Book of Joshua – earning ripples of appreciation from his listeners.
By contrast, Roni Elbag, Liri's sister, fell into a wrenching monologue that was almost an incantation. Verging on tears, she argued that all the achievements of the war could never replace the hostages: "We killed Sinwar and other terrorists, and we were all happy about that, but it's not like the happiness of hugging your family members."
While Avigdori and the Elbag sisters spoke, the students wiped their eyes and began asking earnest questions: Would prayer help, even though these speakers were secular? Had they become more religious due to their experiences, or lost their faith? Why did the hostage families adopt the anti-government, political agenda?
The families answered respectfully but pleaded for public support beyond individual thoughts or prayers. They assured the audience that they avoided politics. Roni Elbag reassured the audience that the war didn't have to end, because surely the other side would restart it anyway.
The idea that ongoing war was a selling point to retrieve her sister hit like a gut punch. But most painful was the fact that the Elbag sisters and Avigdori were reduced to roaming the country and begging Israelis, hat in hand, for help.
Liri Elbag's sisters outside the prime minister's residence urging the government to seal a hostage deal, October.Credit: Naama Grynbaum
Two hours of goodwill in the room were no match for the rest of the week. Sgt. Gur Kehati was killed in November while accompanying the 71-year-old civilian and amateur archaeologist Zeev Erlich into the battlefield in Lebanon, against standing orders, to marvel at ancient sites there. At a memorial for Erlich this week with numerous IDF officers present, Kahati's father and grandfather crashed the ceremony, screaming in anguish as they accused the army of squandering Gur's life while lionizing Erlich.
"Our son was killed, and nobody could be bothered to have his picture here, in this shit? Has anybody even mentioned him?" his father demanded.
Civilians are suffering too, even the ones who are supposed to be helping other civilians. A survey of senior medical administrators in late November commissioned by the Israel Medical Association found alarming numbers of doctors leaving the country. Over half reported that they knew between one and 10 doctors who had left over the past year. Sixty percent left for security or political reasons, according to the survey.
Haaretz's Sheren Falah Shaab reported this week on a not-yet quantified wave of Arab citizens who are leaving or considering leaving. Palestinians in Israel, it should be noted, are integral and often senior figures in Israel's medical system, and their flight surely won't help the problem there. But Arabs feel assaulted by the ultra-nationalism and political pressure against them, both during the war and before.
Once again, the data tells a heartbreaking story: In the 2024 Democracy Index by the Israel Democracy Institute, fully three-quarters of Arab respondents say they are trying to integrate into Israeli society, a net eight-point rise since 2018. Among Jews, however, the portion who believe Arabs want to integrate has fallen 30 points in that time, to just over 37 percent.
Even advertisements these days tell a dark story. One television ad sponsored by Israel's national lottery informs viewers of rising addictive behavior – smoking, drinking, popping pills or gambling – and encourages people to seek help.
Another ad urges parents to seek help for children suffering from depression. A warm and fuzzy spot for cellphone service provider Cellcom boasts that the company is sponsoring a nongovernmental organization, Sunflowers, which provides "emotional and social support" to children who have lost a parent. An organization for "emotional first aid" observed a 950 percent increase in calls from Israelis in the first half year of the war, compared to the previous year.
The words "unity" and "together" are popular these days, but increasingly they are uttered with sarcasm and despair. It will take more than pills to put Israeli society back together again.