October 7, 2023, in the area surrounding Gaza. I'm on WhatsApp with my brother, Ido.
06:58 Yonatan: "Did they surprise you?"
07:00 Ido: "Yes... it's a real event."
07:00 Yonatan: "The sons of ***... arrived at the kibbutz?"
7:50 Ido: "Brother, Bibush took a bullet. I'm done."
An hour and a half after the start of the invasion, my world collapsed for the first time.
Aviv Baram has been my neighbor and closest friend for the past 30 years. He fell defending his house. At this stage, I was still sure that this was the worst that could happen and that the IDF would be here soon, literally in a minute.
08:01 Ido: "I was a few meters in front of a terrorist... and I had to stop... listen, nothing prepares you for this shit."
08:02 Yonatan: "Crazy... who was hurt here? Were there any who were seriously hurt?"
08:02 Ido: "Amikam, Bibush, Hindi, Tal Eilon... only serious"
08:04 Yonatan: "Are you okay?"
08:05 Ido: "Yes... mentally crushed... Bibush is lying there, and there's nothing I can do."
I quickly left the shelter, took half a bottle of water and the girl's birthday cake, and quickly went back in.
It was then that I had already begun to understand that we had been abandoned to our deaths.
The super fighters of the kibbutz could not handle the 200 terrorists who greeted them with fire. My best friend and all the other members of the emergency squad - people who were like family to me - did not survive. It couldn't be worse?
09:52 Yonatan: "What about you?"
09:53 Ido: "Fortified, what about you?"
09:53 Yonatan: "Yes, but I'm not armed."
10:03 Ido: "What about Alon?"
10:03 Yonatan: "They entered his apartment now."
10:03 Ido: "Noooo"
Alon, our little brother, celebrated the day before with all the members of the younger generation at Yuval Salomon's birthday party.
A few years separated us, but the love there was so great that it is hard to describe in words.
Two minutes before I told Ido, Alon wrote to me that terrorists entered his apartment. A whole week passed before I told my parents about this conversation. After Alon stopped answering, I thought that this time it really couldn't get any worse.
You're in charge, you're responsible
Months of mourning and destruction have passed us by. The country stretched and contracted, but in the end, we stayed in the same place, with the same people who served the frontline villages on a silver platter to the Hamas terrorists, who refused to change the discourse even when they were warned of the consequences, and who continued to put their future before the future of the country.
These people - from the prime minister to the last of the ministers, from the heads of the security establishment to the soldiers who did not enter the kibbutzim because they did not receive an order - are all responsible for the terrible massacre we went through. The vast majority of them still hold the position they held that day.
The same people who worked for years on division and incitement among us sold us "Together we will win" and other empty slogans.
A government of populists whose main goal was and still remains to divide us into "them and us," "the left and the right."
There is always someone to blame. But those who defined Hamas as an asset, those who transferred millions of dollars in suitcases every month, those who together built the concept of "Hamas is deterred" - can no longer escape.
For us to restore and rebuild this country, we must finish cleaning house: the Chief of Staff, the heads of the Shin Bet and the Mossad, the current and former heads of the security establishment, the prime minister, the defense minister, and the last members of the coalition - everyone has only two steps to take: resign and face a commission of inquiry.
We, the living Israelis, must ensure that the people who will lead us after this disaster are more worthy, more humble, and above all, free from any connection to this disaster.
Only in this way can we begin to build trust, create a dialogue with the parties who are supposed to take care of us, and tell ourselves and our loved ones that we can start over.
On October 7, I kept thinking that I had reached rock bottom, and then there was a level lower. It doesn't matter at all which camp you think you belong to; this change has to happen. Otherwise, we will continue to live from disaster to disaster.
The author is Yonatan Shamriz. The brother of Alon Shamriz, who was kidnapped to Gaza and accidentally shot by IDF alongside the hostages Yotam Haim and Samer Talalka.