The Cracks Within |
Long before the horror of October 7, Israel was already bleeding from wounds of its own making. These were not external blows alone. They were fractures within our society, our politics, and even our collective spirit. Left to fester, they weakened us in ways our enemies studied and then exploited.
The summer of 2005 opened one of the deepest wounds. The Disengagement was a unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and from four communities in northern Samaria. It was carried out by an Israeli government against its own citizens. The images remain searing. Children crying and clutching parents. Young soldiers embracing the very families they were ordered to evacuate. Families reciting Tehillim as they left homes they had built for decades. Synagogues emptied of their Sifrei Torah. Even graves were opened and loved ones reburied. It was a trauma that entered the national bloodstream.
More than eight thousand Jews were uprooted. Some Israelis supported the move as a painful step toward separation and international standing. Many others, especially within the religious Zionist community, saw it as a rupture of Zionist purpose and a betrayal of the Brit. The country split. Orange ribbons appeared everywhere. Rallies filled city squares. A human chain stretched from Gush Katif toward the Kotel. Teenagers were arrested for civil disobedience. Rabbis fasted. Soldiers wept while doing their duty. National cohesion, once a bedrock, visibly cracked.
Advocates of the Disengagement argued that leaving Gaza would reduce friction, lower the security burden, and allow Israel to focus on larger threats. The aftermath was the opposite. The vacuum and the collapse of Palestinian Authority control allowed Hamas to consolidate power. Within a short time Hamas ruled Gaza by force. Rockets on the south multiplied. Sderot became a byword for trauma and resilience. Kindergartens needed reinforced rooms. Playgrounds doubled as shelters. Families lived to the rhythm of sirens and seconds.
The Disengagement was not the only fracture. In June 2006 Hamas kidnapped Gilad Shalit in a cross-border raid. For five long years his captivity weighed on the entire country. His face was everywhere. Families wrote his name into their prayers. In October 2011 Israel brought him home in exchange for more than one thousand prisoners, including those convicted of mass murder. The joy of his return was real and shared across every part of Israeli life. The cost was also real. Many released prisoners returned to terror. The lesson to our enemies was clear. Hostage taking works.
Halachically there is a hard tension that our sources never ignore. Pidyon shvuyim is a supreme value, yet the Rambam and later poskim warn against paying ransoms that endanger the community by encouraging more kidnappings. Israel faced that impossible choice and chose compassion for a son. Our enemies saw leverage.
One of the prisoners released was Yahya Sinwar, a founder of the Hamas military wing. Fluent in Hebrew and intimate with Israeli society after years in Israeli prisons, he rose to lead Hamas in Gaza. Under his direction Hamas refined a strategy that exploited our moral obligations and our internal arguments. The Shalit exchange was not the only cause of what came later, but it became part of the playbook that led to the mass hostage taking on October 7.
Between 2005 and 2023 Hamas invested relentlessly. Tunnels reached under and across the fence. Tens of thousands of rockets were stockpiled. Fighters trained for a large, coordinated assault. At the same time Hamas watched our politics. It watched how we spoke about each other. It watched our arguments about identity and law. It watched the protests. It watched the erosion of trust. It saw not only a military enemy. It saw a society distracted and divided.
The Disengagement tore more than land. It shattered trust between citizens and government, and between the army and a part of the public it was sworn to protect. It split religious and secular Israelis and drained faith in shared purpose. Promises to the evacuees too often went unkept or painfully delayed. Families spent years in temporary caravans with thin walls and thinner support. Employment, education, and mental health suffered. Marriages strained. Children grew up in the space between what had been and what might never come. Studies later recorded elevated depression and trauma among evacuees. The wound did not stay in Gush Katif. It rippled through the country.
None of this erases the dignity and faith that defined those communities. Gush Katif was not a slogan. It was a living network of families, Yeshivot, farms, and synagogues. It was people who made dunes bloom and raised children in Torah and Mesirut nefesh under fire. For many the choice to live there was a mitzvah and a mission. For others it was a mix of security, livelihood, and community. Whatever the motive, it was home. The uprooting left scars that are still tender.
There is a story I will tell with a pseudonym to protect a real person. Nadav was newly religious and newly committed to the Land. He believed that G-d would not let Gush Katif fall. When it did, he tore off his kippah and left for the Diaspora. Years later, watching the images of October 7, he wept. “I still do not understand why these things happened, but maybe I was wrong,” he told a friend. “Maybe G-d never left. Maybe I did.” His return did not come in a moment. It came in the slow work of grief and honesty. The nation’s work is the same.
We should be sober about causation. The Disengagement did not predetermine October 7. The Shalit deal did not guarantee mass hostage taking. But together they sent signals our enemies read. Retreat under pressure could be achieved. Extreme concessions could be extracted through a captured life. Pair those signals with internal division, and you have a trap partly set from within.
Tanach does not pretend that a people can violate unity without consequences. At Sinai the Brit was given to a nation as one person with one heart, yet even in the wilderness we tested its bounds. The Brit Bein HaBetarim was sworn when Avraham stood alone, a reminder that the covenant rests on the faithfulness of G-d, not on our perfection. Still, when we fracture, we invite those who hate the Brit to think they can break it.
Judaism refuses despair. Teshuvah is always open. Even from the ashes of Gush Katif, new communities rose in Nitzan, Halutzit, and Shomriah. Children of the uprooted returned as IDF soldiers to defend the people of Israel. And inside many hearts there was a quieter rebuilding, a choice to believe again.
The prophet Zechariah writes, “I will bring them through the fire and refine them as silver is refined” (Zechariah 13 verse 9). The years between 2005 and 2023 were years of fire. Deterrence eroded. Division deepened. Heaven seemed silent. Yet within that same period, seeds of faith and solidarity took root. October 7 tore away illusions and showed us a hard truth. Israel’s greatest danger is not only the enemy outside but the cracks within.
Those cracks can also be the channels for light. If we choose unity over contempt, resilience over cynicism, and faith over abandonment, then from the fire we will not only endure, we will be restored. “You shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of paths to dwell in” (Yeshayahu 58:12).
Next week we will ask how a people of covenant speak in the silence.
This column is part of a weekly series drawn from the book Fire of Faith: What the October 7 War Taught Us About G-d and Israel, which explores the spiritual, moral, and historical questions raised by the October 7 war through verified events and Jewish theological reflection. Future installments will follow the book’s chapters in the weeks ahead. The book is available on Amazon or at FireOfFaithBook.com.