Rachel Arazig sat down and wrote a Facebook post after October 7. She wasn’t sure exactly what she was building.
Five months later, HaOgen (The Anchor) had become the most significant civilian volunteer initiative to emerge from the war – 20,000 volunteers serving 800 towns and cities, supporting 35,000 families.
Months after the war began, Mashiv Ha’Ruach (Bringing Back the Spirit) began running retreat workshops for frontline responders: ambulance drivers, hospital staff, body identification volunteers, and the wives of injured soldiers.
Since then, they have supported thousands who have gone on to help their own communities. There are countless other initiatives, large and small – from newly minted organizations to a simple coffee cart set up for soldiers and reservists on their way to Gaza.
We watched Israeli society mobilize for war with a singular passion and unity. Unfortunately, that public energy was pushing against an institutional engine that kept running the country off the rails.
One need not accuse leadership of cynically prolonging the war for political survival to recognize that the government failed to live up to its citizens’ example.
Whether it was the backstage maneuvering for personal advantage or the constant bickering and reckless rhetoric deployed for narrow gain, the state exhibited a stunning lack of national commitment.
Politicians exploit divisions in Israeli society
Politicians across the spectrum discovered that exploiting Israel’s divisions paid higher dividends than prioritizing the national interest of winning the war. It mattered little whether it was Itamar Ben-Gvir directly sabotaging stated war aims, or Yair Golan absurdly claiming the army kills “babies as a hobby.”
While they postured, tens of thousands of internal evacuees languished with insufficient funding and attention. Civil society was left to pick up the slack, essentially holding the country together on its own.
This dysfunctional dynamic laid bare what anyone who has ever spent three hours waiting at the Interior Ministry already knows: Israel is a nation that thrives despite its government. And this institutional rot is far from exclusive to the current coalition.
We have to ask why.
Israel is undeniably a tribal society, but the current vitriol feels like a toxic foreign import in a country otherwise defined by fierce brotherhood. In Western political theory, the collapse of politics is usually blamed on the erosion of civil society – the idea that when individuals become isolated, politics devolves into a weapon to destroy the anonymous “other.”
Yet Israel breaks the mold. We possess a remarkably vibrant, deeply connected civil society, yet we still regress to the global mean of broken politics.
Perhaps it is just the exponential math of Jewish tradition: two Jews, three opinions. Expand that formula to eight million, and you get a system far too chaotic for any parliament to govern.
Still, the dysfunction is a mutation that everyone has seemingly accepted. But we cannot afford to accept it for much longer.
Israel stands at a precipice, battered by tectonic historic shifts: a looming demographic reckoning within the haredi sector, the technological upheaval of the AI age, and a severe recalibration of its global standing. To believe our current political apparatus can navigate the next decade – let alone the next century – is a dangerous self-delusion.
We need a paradigm shift. We need Jewish republicanism.
This is small-r republicanism, a philosophy rooted in the relationship between the citizen and the polis. Among its myriad historical iterations, one core tenet is essential for Israel today: res publica, the common good.
It demands active citizenship, shared duty, and institutions built for collective self-determination. Where classical liberalism prizes freedom merely as non-interference – the state leaving you alone – republicanism demands freedom as non-domination. It envisions a society insulated from arbitrary power by the bedrock of strong, equitable institutions.
Few aspects of Israel’s current system were carefully designed, yet the result coincidentally fits the mold of classical liberalism. It is a state that tends to retreat from substance into procedure, avoiding decisive action – even on existential issues – out of a paralyzing fear of overstepping.
It might deprive millions of people of their favorite jokes at the Israeli government’s expense, but I ask you to imagine a confident state: one capable of making consequential decisions and marching resolutely into the future.
There are doubtless principled individuals who will disagree, warning of the risks of tyranny and fighting for greater individualism. However, those voices are largely confined to the Israeli academy or the Diaspora.
“It’s my right” is not a native Israeli reflex. Neither is the separation of powers, constitutionalism, or the basic civic grammar drilled into American children. Israelis can define the terms, but when they mobilize, they do not speak the language of the classical Western republic.
There is, admittedly, one glaring exception: “Democracy.” Millions chanted it in the streets before the judicial reform crisis was eclipsed by October 7. I hesitate to dictate the motives of millions, but the evidence is telling.
Given the widespread consensus for judicial reform prior to this specific coalition, and the seamless pivot the core protesters made from “pro-democracy” to unapologetically “anti-government” when the war broke out, the movement appears less rooted in high political philosophy and more so in tribalism.
That tribalism is their absolute right in a liberal society. Yet, the fact that the protest was largely confined to a single buzzword exposes the poverty of Israel’s political vocabulary. This civic destitution is not born of a lack of intellect, but a historical surplus of crises.
Even David Ben-Gurion intended to overhaul the system following the state’s emergency inception in May 1948. He failed because, by the time he turned his attention to it, the institutional cement had already dried.
Subsequent efforts have similarly stalled for a simple reason: when the villa is constantly under bombardment, a temporary patchwork is the best anyone can manage.
The reality is staring us in the face: the villa is rotting. Structural renovation is mandatory, but before we wield the sledgehammer, we need a blueprint. And a blueprint requires a shared political vocabulary.
We must reject the growing chorus advocating for the inverse – that Israel should devolve into a cantonized landscape of gated enclaves, partitioning haredim, secular, and traditional Jews into their own mini-states. This is a disastrous miscalculation. It doesn’t accommodate our diversity; it institutionalizes our fractures and forfeits that profound brotherhood we still possess. It is King Solomon actually splitting the baby.
Israel outgrew the tribal system three millennia ago, and frankly, we should thank the Babylonians for ending it. We do not need a loose confederation of tribes. We need a home, a state, and a republic worthy of its citizens.
The writer serves as the English director of the Ribo Center and the editor of Amit Segal’s newsletter, It’s Noon in Israel.
