Volunteers from Standing Together. Courtesy of Alon-Lee Green

Laura E. Adkins June 6, 2024

Allowing aid convoys to pass into Gaza unobstructed won’t end the war, bring back the hostages, or prevent further humanitarian disaster within the coastal Palestinian enclave. But when a group of peace activists in purple T-shirts managed to distract a band of extremist settlers on Sunday, ensuring that dozens of trucks filled with food could get through a checkpoint without being ransacked, it felt like cause for celebration.

Long before Oct. 7, chasms within Israeli society threatened to tear the country apart: the Haredim opting out of military service vs. those who serve their country; supporters of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vs. those who have had enough of his corruption and narcissism; Arab Israelis and a handful of Jewish leftists vs. pretty much everyone else. The fanaticism and deep distrust have not abated during eight months of war against an external enemy.

But whether or not that war ends soon with a negotiated deal, like the one President Joe Biden shared last week, the devastation and destruction caused by Israel’s inept and incapable leaders will have to be cleaned up by civilians on all sides. The only hope Israelis have out of this mess is not Netanyahu, or his replacement, but one another.

To focus on the many ways a narcissistic and feckless Netanyahu and the other frustrating members of his government have fallen short is to miss what has held Israel, grasping for breath since Oct. 7, together.

Within days of the Hamas terror attack, while reporting in Israel for the Forward, I spoke with citizens who were finding hostages, interviewing survivors, organizing aid for their neighbors and keeping fruit from rotting in the fields near the Gaza border. Everywhere there was work to be done — distributing supplies to displaced residents, organizing shivas, identifying bodies and body parts — there were volunteers.

Overnight, the members of Brothers and Sisters in Arms — a group of reservists that protested Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul plan — redeployed the infrastructure they’d developed staging weekly street protests to build a sophisticated network of support systems.

Sources of remarkable bravery and clarity persist in every sector. Across the country, I’ve seen weathered and determined people fighting to regain some sense of normalcy.

One man I met in Sheba Medical Center last month had held his safe room door shut so tightly, trying to protect his family sheltering inside as terrorists fired at the door, that his hand is still being reconstructed bit by bit.

I was in Jerusalem as part of a delegation working to understand the needs of Israeli women’s organizations, and we met with leaders of the country’s nine rape crisis centers. One Arab Israeli employee told us how she rushed to the Nova music festival on Oct. 7, having been told by the army that her car — and her son — were there. She learned en route that it was a mix-up, but continued south anyhow, thinking that she might as well try to save someone else’s son.

Then there’s Nimrod Palmach, a 39-year-old military reservist who spent Oct. 7 fighting off dozens of terrorists at two kibbutzim near Gaza, Be’eri and Alumim. At one point, he stopped to record a WhatsApp message to his two young children, thinking he’d likely never see them again. Palmach’s eyes glistened as he walked us through Kibbutz Alumim, recounting the battles.

I also met Tali Binner, a Nova survivor who witnessed horrific sexual violence, yet bravely tells her story to anyone who will listen.

October in Israel felt like a car crash after the airbag has deployed: ringing in your ears as white powder chokes your lungs and blurs your vision.

And yet, despite the ongoing trauma and anger, many are quietly working to repair their fractured society as best they can. The peace activists in purple T-shirts, volunteers for an Israeli-Palestinian coexistence group called Standing Together, started trying to protect convoys bound for Gaza in mid-May. Jewish extremists had for weeks been attacking trucks as they tried to get through Tarqumiyah Crossing, a busy checkpoint located near Hebron in the occupied West Bank. The Israeli police seemed uninterested in stopping them, so the coexistence volunteers organized regular confrontations. On Sunday, the extremists finally agreed to give up their efforts.

Standing Together, which was founded in 2015 to fight for Arab citizens’ equality within Israel and an end to the occupation, has been a darling of the international press since Oct. 7. But within Israel, anyone calling for “coexistence” is seen as delusional; “leftist” is still very much a slur.

The longer the war progresses, as the bodies pile up on either side, both Jews and Palestinians will become more sure that we are the only ones who are truly oppressed.

We seem blessedly close to a deal that would end this war. But what happens after a ceasefire? Who happens after a ceasefire?

The religious extremists who attack aid convoys have been widely condemned within Israel, but have also been aided and abetted by members of the military and police, who have warned them about when and where the trucks carrying aid will be.

The future of Israel — whether it inches toward difficult peace with its neighbors or continues on the treacherous route to becoming a pariah state — is very much in question. So it matters that the peaceniks won their battle against the settlers on Monday, just as it matters that civilians have been holding the country, and each other, together since Oct. 7.

Countless worlds were ravaged by this war, and true healing will not begin until the killing stops. Salvation will not come from an individual leader; only civilians can drive the change — repairing the deep distrust of each other, of the state and of the outside world — required to ever inch closer to a more permanent end to the madness.

You cannot replace a politician with an idea. But to focus solely on Netanyahu’s successor is to miss something important: There are also already so many people who are quietly picking up the pieces of Israel’s broken society.

It is not politicians who will clean up this mess, or determine which Israel emerges. It is the people who are already doing so.

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