The first night, a few residents of Netivot came to our command center and treated us to a barbecue dinner. The next day we stopped at an ad-hoc way station near road 232 that served soldiers hot meals and provided underwear, warm clothing, and even some tactical gear, all for free. A few days later, I received a donated high-quality bulletproof vest. On Hanukkah, our mess tent was flooded with donated jelly donuts, and both Israeli and Jewish groups visiting from abroad came nearly every night to light candles and express their support.
This was the reality during my ten-week reserve deployment at a command center near the Gaza border at the start of the war last October. The generous, creative, and tenacious giving was incessant, including everything from clean socks to food and live music. We weren’t lacking for anything, but people were determined to give regardless. It helped offset the exhausting 12-hour shifts and difficult radio reports of casualties amongst our troops in the Gaza Strip.
In parallel to my personal experience, I learned after that it wasn’t just individuals or small groups that improvised small-scale donations. As time went on, civilian operations grew in stature, until some began to fulfill the functions of the government, which was slow to adapt to the new reality.
Four such initiatives stood out.
The first began already on October 7 and included ad-hoc “command centers” to assist in transporting soldiers and reservists to their bases, as well as provide immediate logistical solutions. One of these, for example, was formed by two women named Gefen Yamin and Ayer Haleb. On October 7, Yamin and Haleb, civilian project and operation managers by training, began to match requests from transportation soldiers and reservists to volunteer drivers, from all over the country and at all times of day.
Word of mouth spread quickly, and soon Yamin and Haleb found themselves operating an array of volunteers to field and handle requests that gradually grew in complexity. They recalled an urgent request by a senior IDF commander for water – thousands of soldiers had streamed to the Tze’elim base, and there was not enough drinking water to go around.
The overwhelmed IDF logistics arm said it would take four days to provide the water. “We need civilians,” the IDF logistics officer said.
The commander at Tze’elim said he had found a civilian logistics center that had a truck with 2,500 liters of water available, but up in Kiryat Shmona; Yamin and Haleb quickly arranged a driver, and the truck arrived within hours.
While many other individually-based ad-hoc logistics command centers sprouted up in the first days after the massacre, some existing civilian organizations utilized their existing capabilities to pitch in as well. No organization did it better than Brothers in Arms, which had stood out in its fierce and creative protests against the government’s judicial reforms.
The organization transformed overnight. Its array of volunteers leased a hangar in Tel Aviv and quickly amassed enormous amounts of donated equipment, from underwear and socks to helmets and tactical gear. The hangar’s effectiveness quickly attracted national attention. A number of ministers and Members of the Knesset visited it, sometimes accompanied by foreign officials and diplomats.
The second initiative that formed with stunning speed was the Hostages and Missing Families Forum. In an interview with The Jerusalem Post in March, one of the forum’s founders, media strategist Ronen Tzur, described how what began as an information hotline for families whose loved ones had gone missing, quickly evolved into a dynamic volunteer juggernaut. It includes a media team, mental health professionals, attorneys, and even a team of seasoned diplomats and Mossad veterans with ties to Qatar, who attempted to initiate hostage negotiations.
The forum is still operational and represents a large majority of the families of the remaining 101 hostages. As time dragged on, it shifted its focus from raising international public awareness of the hostages’ plight, to protesting against the government for what it perceived as politically motivated delays and hurdles in negotiations. While the focus of the war has shifted to Lebanon, the forum remains a major force in the public push to land a deal and bring the hostages home.
Civilians taking part
THE THIRD initiative that has stood out has been the Civilian Committee of Inquiry. Here, too, civilians realized that the government was refraining from forming a National Committee of Inquiry to investigate the events leading up to, during, and after the massacre. In July, a number of families of casualties, representatives from the attacked kibbutzim, and civil society groups announced the formation of the civil probe. Its members have stated repeatedly that their primary goal is to initiate the foundation of the official national probe, and that they will shut down the initiative as soon as this happens.
The committee looks, sounds, and operates like an official probe. It has an emblem that resembles that of a national probe; it is chaired by a retired judge and includes a number of retired high-ranking professionals from relevant fields, including the IDF, Israel Police, and the local authorities; its testimonies are broadcast live, save for some that are classified for security or confidentiality reasons; and a stenographer writes down every word that is said, for future use.
The committee announced on October 1 that it was recessing in order to write an interim report, after hearing approximately 130 testimonies so far. The testimonies were detailed and far-ranging. They included politicians, including former prime ministers, defense ministers, and others; senior security officers, including from the IDF, Shin Bet, and Mossad; family members of field intelligence soldiers killed on October 7; civilian organizers and volunteers; and many, many more.
The committee has no legal authority, and no member of the current government or coalition agreed to testify. The government will likely shrug off its interim report and accuse the committee of being “politically motivated.” Yet many hours of watching the testimonies have shown that the committee’s only unequivocal agenda is for the formation of a national probe. The committee member’s questions and conduct resemble that of past national probes – they focus on the professional, not on the personal, and appear to be focused entirely on understanding the facts about the days, months, and years before October 7.
The fourth and final civilian initiative that stood out was the October 7 commemoration ceremony at Park Hayarkon in Tel Aviv. These words are being written prior to the ceremony, and will be published after it; but the preparations and scope of the ceremony have already proven to be impressive and uplifting.
The ceremony, which calls itself the “National Remembrance Ceremony,” was initiated by an organization formed by Yonatan Shamriz, brother of Alon Shamriz, a hostage who managed to escape his Hamas captors but was mistakenly killed by IDF troops in December. Shamriz launched the initiative after the government decided to hold a prerecorded ceremony.
He and many other families of hostages and of October 7 casualties claimed that the decision was made out of fear that it would be disrupted by protestors. They felt that a ceremony in which they could not participate was not the appropriate way to commemorate their loved ones.
The ceremony’s organizers promised to include all of the different groups whose lives were upended on October 7. It quickly attracted the top producers, musicians, and other sound and video professionals. It secured arguably the most popular venue in the country, and its first 15,000 tickets (which were provided for free) ran out in eight hours.
All of Israel’s central news channels announced that they would be screening the ceremony, as did over 50 foreign television networks. Due to the security situation, the live event will be limited, yet, true to 48 hours prior to the ceremony, over 100 communities across Israel had registered for communal viewings.
Facing government ineffectiveness and political foot-dragging, Israeli civilians rose to the occasion and provided a ray of light. The logistics centers, Hostages and Missing Families Forum, Civilian Committee of Inquiry, and the National Remembrance Ceremony are just examples of the dynamism and resourcefulness that Israelis demonstrated during the war. These were places where Israeli civilians did what its government failed to do.
A year since the massacre, perhaps now is the time to hope that some of these civilians enter public service and serve as an example of what dedicated, professional, and accountable leadership should look like.