Setting aside the political bluster on all sides, we still do not know to what extent the war against Iran has weakened its regime or curtailed its ballistic or nuclear capabilities. Nor is the outcome of the renewed fighting against Hezbollah in Lebanon yet clear. In the meantime, the world’s gaze has drifted away from the misery in Gaza and the urgent need to build a post-Hamas reality.

Entirely absent from the headlines is the urgency of rebuilding Israeli society after the war. Now that all of our hostages are home, Israel’s people must decide what comes next. We find ourselves at a critical juncture where most Israelis have lost faith that our government functions for the good of the people.

This unprecedented societal schism has deeper roots than Hamas’s attack on October 7. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, together with his coalition partners, has continued to drive wedges into our civil society, starting in January 2023 with his government’s assault on Israel’s independent judiciary. This was a legal coup designed to neutralize the rule of law, primarily to guarantee the government’s hold on power. Netanyahu and his ministers then proceeded to demonize anyone who protested this constitutional putsch.

Then came October 7. Those of us whose communities Hamas assaulted felt abandoned and betrayed by our government. For years, Netanyahu professed to have an iron-clad deterrence policy against Hamas. All the while, his government pushed to develop Jewish settlements in the West Bank, together with other messianic goals. The blows to the national interest continue: Netanyahu’s coalition partners have now tabled a proposal in the Knesset to prohibit non-Orthodox rituals at the Western Wall.

Netanyahu, having been in office for nearly 19 years since June 1996, has steadfastly refused to take accountability for October 7. He prioritized his own political survival over the fate of Israel’s hostages in Gaza, rejecting legitimate opportunities to end the war through negotiation while Israeli soldiers continued fighting. This, even though Israel’s military and Intelligence leaders stated that more warfare could not eradicate Hamas or rescue living hostages.

In the weeks before the war with Iran, Netanyahu attempted to rewrite history around October 7, obfuscating his own accountability and deflecting blame for the catastrophe onto his own lackeys, the Attorney General, military and intelligence commanders, his political opponents, and US President Biden. Going further, his ministers are removing the word “massacre” from official memorials to the events of October 7 and insist that “massacre” be excised from future public discussions of the disaster.

Throughout the war, Netanyahu’s allies sowed suspicion toward hostage families and their supporters, making menacing insinuations that we were harming the war effort. These insinuations have continued, even after the last hostage came home. Gal Hirsch, the Former IDF commander Netanyahu appointed to oversee Israel’s handling of the hostage crisis, recently accused the public movement to free the hostages of abetting Hamas’s war effort and, despite all evidence to the contrary, insisted that the Netanyahu government never needed outside encouragement to save our hostages.

There have always been existential threats to Israel, from the Mufti of Jerusalem to Nasser’s Egypt in Israel’s first decades and, most recently, the real threats from Iran. But today, the internal divisions the Netanyahu government is sowing pose the greatest danger to Israel’s existence, and no bombing campaign in Iran or other military operations will suffice to heal the rifts.

There was an outpouring of voluntary mobilization across the country after October 7, bridging political divides. Civil society groups – not the government – provided emergency aid to hostage families and ravaged communities, and addressed myriad other critical needs. Netanyahu’s refusal to accept responsibility for October 7 caused a fracture, however, pressuring his voters to back away from the hostage movement as a litmus test for loyalty to him. This was truly a lost opportunity to unify Israelis.

The Israel-Diaspora divide

Equally troubling, the government’s actions since October 7 have poisoned relations with large swaths of Diaspora Jewry. Israelis underestimate at our own peril the fissures widened between us and non-Orthodox segments of the Diaspora, as well as the rifts inside the Diaspora between Zionists and non-Zionists, even within synagogue congregations. These cracks started in the mid-1970s but have gone “code red” in the last two years. This raises a core question: can Israelis finally accept responsibility for the fact that actions taken by our government impact Diaspora communities? This connection is now visible to all following the spike in antisemitism as a consequence of the Gaza war.

Events in Israel and attacks around the globe deserve far more serious thought about the role Diaspora Jews should have in crafting the future character of the country. Burning issues include deciding whether Israel’s democracy – as imperfect as it is – should serve all its citizens or only Jews. Should the Diaspora stand aside while Israel descends into xenophobic nationalism? Ultimately, are all Jews willing to accept an Israel whose government embodies a “Theocracy of Power,” in which ultra-Orthodox rabbis preside as political kingmakers, extorting leaders through threats to bolt from coalitions while catastrophic inequities in civil responsibility impose greater national burdens on fewer, mostly secular, citizens?

And finally, will Jews inside and outside of Israel continue to accept that Israel’s wealth gap only grows, camouflaged in full view under glorified, distorted narratives about the country as “Start-Up Nation”?

Our international challenges extend further. Israel must never be a partisan issue, particularly now, considering fractures among Republicans around support for Israel. We must also repair the ties to Democrats that Benjamin Netanyahu broke. As a recent Gallup poll revealed, for the first time ever, Americans of all ages are questioning the US alliance with the Jewish State. Left uncorrected, this shift will imperil Israel’s security.

These realities suggest more hard reassessments. What can be done to improve our image in the world? Might it be possible to separate in the global public eye this disastrous government from the much more politically diverse, empathetic Israeli populace? Can Israelis learn to engage meaningfully with other worldviews and look at ourselves honestly instead of reflexively repeating old clichés emanating from our multi-generational garrison mentality?

The post-Hamas future

We all must come to terms with a fact that even the Abraham Accords tried to bypass: Israel cannot exist peacefully without a negotiated agreement that will facilitate coexistence with our Palestinian neighbors. Palestinians and Israelis aren’t going anywhere. Having lived for decades on the border with Gaza, the risks of peace have always been palpable for me, never more than after October 7, when our Gazan neighbors rampaged through my small kibbutz community on the border, murdering, kidnapping and destroying.

The return of the last hostage from captivity in Gaza, on January 27, 2026, ended a traumatic chapter in our history. A post-Hamas Gaza must indeed be reconstructed, even if no one knows yet what that will look like. Even after the horrors of October 7, I still fully believe that Gaza’s civilians have a right to live in peace, prosperity and dignity.

Alongside grieving for loved ones and a community lost, amid grave doubts about the prospects for true peace, the same crucial questions remain: are we Israelis doomed to endless violence with our neighbors? Will we bequeath to our grandchildren this “Gordion Knot” of hatreds feeding massacres by doing the same, ineffectual things? To reach any other outcome, Gaza needs a post-Hamas future, and Israel needs a repaired, post-Netanyahu society.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)