The national awakening you won’t hear about in the media.
The story of what happened after Oct 7 has played out in the international media as a montage of bombs and rubble. And while Israel’s campaign against the Hamas perpetrators of the horrific massacres, rapes and kidnappings is an important part of the story, it is not the only one.
From the men who grabbed their guns and drove south in the hours after the attack began to the warehouses quickly set up to provide food and clothing for the hundreds of thousands of Israelis who were forced to leave their homes after the attacks from Gaza, inside Israel, the real story has been defined by a country coming together not only to fight, but to support each other.
In the month after the attacks, one survey estimated that the majority of Israeli Jews were volunteering in one form or another at everything from baking cookies for soldiers to standing guard at potential terrorist targets. With hundreds of thousands of soldiers mobilized and hundreds of thousands of people stranded, even the most ordinary things became a problem.
Like laundry.
A Chassidic rabbi loaded up washing machines and dryers on trucks and headed with them to an army base. Laundry from displaced families was crowdsourced through social media groups with messages like, “there are at least 2000 people from Sderot who need help with their laundry. If you can help with doing one or two loads please reach out.”
Both religious and secular groups assembled massive warehouses filled with clothing and supplies for displaced people. Restaurants have set up meals and volunteers have deployed mobile kitchens in parking lots. And tens of thousands volunteer to cook in their own homes.
Weddings and bar mitzvahs have gone forward for refugee families welcomed by communities. Teenagers have volunteered to babysit and to perform household chores for military families.
At farms, including in the communities targeted by the Islamic terrorist invaders, tens of thousands headed to help. In one kibbutz, a “motley dozen-strong crew ranging from housewives to engineers and stockbrokers” could be found “tending to around 600 dairy cows”.
Polly Levine, the daughter of longtime David Horowitz Freedom Center supporter Tammy Steinsapir, recently wrote about her experiences doing everything from preparing food boxes to planting broccoli. “I was surprised to see hundreds of volunteers from all over the world: Australia, Great Britain, South Africa, France, Mexico and beyond,” she wrote.
And in grimmer work, in the days after the attacks, volunteers arrived to dig graves to bury the over 1,000 dead. “Google docs were sent out on community WhatsApp groups and it wasn’t unusual for empty 2 a.m. slots to be filled within minutes in the race to honorably bury the dead.”
“We had 50 people yesterday,” a police officer said. “Now the invitation to volunteers has gone viral, and we’re worried 5,000 could turn up.”
And there are the armed volunteers putting their lives on the line.
After the attacks, hospitals asked anyone with a gun license to volunteer as a guard. Other volunteer guards rallied to protect kindergartens in Jerusalem after the soldiers who usually defend them were summoned to war. While normal kindergartens don’t require soldiers or guards, Islamic terrorists have repeatedly targeted Israeli children. In one notorious incident in 2011, Hamas even fired an anti-tank missile at a school bus. Fortunately it hit only after most of the children had disembarked and only one teenage boy was wounded in the terrorist attack.
600 civilian security squads were established after the attacks and armed with thousands of rifles. These squads help patrol and secure communities likely to be targeted by terrorists. Volunteer forces had played a crucial role in countering the Hamas invasion at a time when the Israeli military had been caught by surprise and was outnumbered by the attacking terrorists.
The volunteerism is only the outward expression of a country at war. At a Shabbat table, I heard the story of a woman who calmly stated, “my husband is in the army, my father is in the army and my son is in the army”. After the Oct 7 attacks, reporting rates in some reserve units passed 100% with personnel showing up who had not even been called up. One viral video shows a 73-year-old “soldier” visiting his 101-year-old mother and then standing watch in the rain.
And that solidarity is really the untold story of what happened after Oct 7.
Turn on CNN and you’ll see the same montage of crying old women in hijabs and wrecked buildings that seems to have been running as a constant feed in the region since the rise of cable news, but in Israel, the story is not just the war, it’s also the peace. Before Oct 7, Israel had been tearing itself apart along political and religious lines. The underlying tensions haven’t gone away and every Hamas hostage offer calculatedly plays on those same divisions.
But Israel has also come together to a remarkable extent. That’s not a story which interests the media, but it ought to interest us because our hope for the future also lies in solidarity. In the years since 9/11, 7/7 or the other numberless Islamic terror atrocities that should have marked an awakening, we have learned all too well that superior weapons are not enough to win a war.
Wars are not just won or lost with firepower, but with the spirit of a people. The food baskets, clothing warehouses, volunteer guards, cooks and even gravediggers represent something as important, and perhaps even more important, than a military force: a national spirit.
“I see mothers of soldiers on the front lines volunteering in supermarkets. I see rabbis leaving their communities, traveling 48 hours across multiple countries to return home and fight for their country.” an email circulating after Oct 7 read. “I see police officers feeding bottles to babies who no longer have parents. I see teenage girls with flags at 2:30 in the morning dancing for soldiers who have returned to fight who simply cannot believe their eyes.”
The war against Islamic terrorism is not only a physical war, it is a spiritual war. Fighting it with weapons, but without conviction, with drones but without a national revival, has failed and will go on failing. Islamic terrorists do not just attack our bodies, they seek to destroy our spirit. They divide us in order to conquer us, they terrorize us and then play the victims, and they make every effort to convince us of the futility and wrongness of our cause so that they may defeat us.
Israel has long been the canary in the coal mine of Islamic terrorism. It has shown us how to physically fight terrorism. Perhaps it will now show us how to awaken our nations to the war.
David says
Good to see people coming together to defend their country.“You won’t find it difficult to prove that battles, campaigns, and even wars have been won or lost primarily because of logistics” ~ General Dwight. D. Eisenhower.
FYI says
If you are in Israel..
Read Joel 3 v 19-21 especially what God says in v 20-21
Read Zechariaah chapters 12-14
FYI says
allah compared with Biblical God
allah or al lah comes from the kaaba who is associated with hu baal
allah is NOT the Biblical God
allah’s teachings are at odds with the Laws given to Moses{Confirmed by Jesus Christ in Matthew 23}
Jews and Christians believe in the Biblical God:look at the laws given to Moses{2 chief and ten commandments}
These laws are the SAME in both religions.The law was never changed.
islam is at odds with these Laws
Jews:al lah is derived from the kaaba.That is NOT the Biblical God.
Christians:allah is likely the one mentioned in 2 Cor 4:4 and allah’s greatest enemy is a man called the “King of kings”
somehistory says
Love and right conduct were taught in the Ten Commandments given to Moses for the sons of Israel, so many years ago. “You must love Jehovah your God with your whole heart, soul, mind and strength. And….Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” Jesus said these are “the two greatest commands and upon which hang the whole Law and the Prophets.’ Those people in Israel….the residents and those flying in…are demonstrating ‘love of neighbor.’
biden has said a 40 day ceasefire is coming, which will release nearly 200 terrorists from the prisons in Israel. biden believes this action will increase his chances of being given another cheat to the oval office. hamas is gathering it’s few remaining (nearly 75% have been killed) forces for a ramadan attack on Israel. hamas blames Israel for any and all civilians dying in gaza….but they refuse to give up their demands and their assaults on innocent people.
It is easy to compare and see which group is in the right.
Walter Sieruk says
One untold story about October 7th2023 and the further Hamas jihadists atrocities committed the peaceful Jewish people after that horrific day is that the truth as to why Hamas attacked Israel with is brutal cruel vicious murderous jihad on October 7th ,2023 is because “roots” of the ideology of Islamic terrorism is based on the theology of the religion of Islam.
In which has its entire foundation on the Qur ‘an.
That “holy book” of Islam the Qur ‘an [the Koran] instructs on the use of violence and killing of disbelievers for the advancement of Islam. As found in, for example 2:191. 4:89. 5:33. 9:5,111,123. 47:4.
Furthermore, teaches hate for and towards Jewish people, as in calling them descendants of “apes and swine.” As seen in the Qu ‘ran in 2:65; 7:166.; 5:60. Therefore, the violent jihadist and devote jihad-minded Muslims despise the Jewish State of Israel.
That murderous demonic jihad entity, Hamas is based on Islam . That’s the actual, real,” roots” of that Israel – Hamas war.
Walter Sieruk says
One untold story about October 7th2023 and the further Hamas jihadists atrocities committed the peaceful Jewish people after that horrific day is that the truth as to why Hamas attacked Israel with is brutal cruel vicious murderous jihad on October 7th ,2023 is because “roots” of the ideology of Islamic terrorism is based on the theology of the religion of Islam.
In which has its entire foundation on the Qur ‘an.
That “holy book” of Islam the Qur ‘an [the Koran] instructs on the use of violence and killing of disbelievers for the advancement of Islam. As found in, for example 2:191. 4:89. 5:33. 9:5,111,123. 47:4.
Furthermore, teaches hate for and towards Jewish people, as in calling them descendants of “apes and swine.” As seen in the Qu ‘ran in 2:65; 7:166.; 5:60. Therefore, the violent jihadist and devote jihad-minded Muslims despise the Jewish State of Israel.
That murderous demonic jihad entity, Hamas is based on Islam . That’s the actual, real,” roots” of that Israel – Hamas war.
Walter Sieruk says
One untold story, a true story is that violent and deadly religious Jihad organization ,Hamas . It’s foundation is Islam which has Quran as its ’holy book” that instructs Muslims to engage in the violence and killing of “disbelievers” for the cause of Islam, as seen in Surah 2:191. 4: 89. 5:33. 9:123. For example, Surah 47:4 reads, “Whenever you encounter the disbelievers strike off their heads until you make a great slaughter among them…”
The terrible reality is that using rockets, machine guns and bombs will make a greater “slaughter among them than a sword can.
Keith O says
Both the state of Israel and the Jewish people have been under attack many times since the nation was established in 1948 so this almost genetic reaction to another invasion is to be expected.
This is both inspirational and extremely sad. No nation nor people should have to face the daily prospect of being exterminated by a cult who hates everyone and everything that is not of itself.
Western nations could learn some VERY valuable lessons from the Israeli people,,,,, if the media allow it of course.
Tony Rice says
Israeli is the canary for Western civilisation in the Middle Eastern coalmine. Needs and deserves our support.
Naja says
I agree with Tony rice.
Jay says
Thank you for telling this story. It deserves to be told. I have noted it often on social media but it never gets much traction which frustrates me. I have friends in Israel (and some are in the IDF) whom I keep in touch with and they have all been telling me stories like this since 10/8. I live just outside of Manhattan and was working on my masters during 9/11 and their ‘come together’ mindset is very reminiscent of how many of us felt and acted in the weeks after the terrorist attack by UBL and his sick mass murderers.