Do we, as secular Israelis, also bear some responsibility for the failure of perception that preceded October 7?
This is an uncomfortable question, but we must not shy away from it. Not responsibility in an operational or intelligence sense, and certainly not collective blame for the disaster, but a responsibility to honestly examine the worldview through which we looked at reality.
Did Israeli secularism, particularly its liberal and educated segments, develop a blind spot over the years? Did we become accustomed to assuming that those who stand against us ultimately think as we do, want more or less what we want, and interpret reality through the same concepts of prosperity, rationality, progress, and the good life?
This is not merely a philosophical question. It is also a question that concerns our national security.
Do We Understand the Enemy, or Are We Projecting Our Worldview onto It?
A liberal person tends to think that the other person is fundamentally like them: that they too seek security, prosperity, education for their children, freedom, and the opportunity to live their lives. From there, it is a short step to assuming that national and religious conflicts can ultimately be resolved through shared interests, economic development, compromises, and improved living conditions.
This is a worthy human outlook, one that underlies many of the achievements of the Western world. Yet it can become dangerous when we stop listening to the other person and start explaining to ourselves what they really think. In other words, one of our mistakes may have been that we thought we understood the enemy better than the enemy understood itself.
When an enemy speaks in religious, historical, and national terms, Westerners sometimes tend to translate those words into a language they understand: economic hardship, a struggle for rights, a territorial dispute, or a response to a particular policy.
When extreme statements are made, it is easy to explain them away as being intended for a domestic audience, as mere rhetoric, and to assume that ultimately the other side also wants peace and prosperity. Sometimes that is true. But national security requires us to consider the troubling possibility that sometimes a person means exactly what they say.
The October 7 attack compels us to reassess these assumptions.
The Hamas militants who attacked the communities of the western Negev did not distinguish between secular and religious, between left and right, or between those who believed in peace and those who did not. The residents of Be’eri, Kfar Aza, and Nir Oz were not asked about their worldview.
From the attackers’ perspective, the internal distinctions to which we attach such great importance did not alter the fact that these people were targets of the attack. This leads to a difficult truth: we can choose how to define ourselves, but we cannot always choose how the enemy defines us.
Has Israeli Secularism Drifted Away from Jewish Identity?
It is precisely here that the failure of perception connects with the question of Jewish identity. Over the years, parts of the secular public developed an outlook that sought to separate Israeliness from Jewishness. “I am Israeli first and Jewish second,” many said. Others sought to view Israeliness as an independent, modern, and liberal civic identity that no longer needed a Jewish foundation.
In my view, this is a mistake. Judaism does not belong only to religious people. A person can be completely secular and, at the same time, Jewish in every fiber of their being. This understanding is not merely a matter of culture, tradition, or faith. It has direct implications for national resilience and for our ability to continue existing here as a society and a state.
National resilience is not measured only by the number of aircraft, tanks, and missiles, or by the billions invested in the defense budget. Behind all of these stands a human being. For a person to be willing to leave their home, their children, and their job and risk their life, they must believe that there is something worth defending.
That is why the question “Who am I?” is deeply connected to the question “What am I willing to fight for?”
October 7 also demonstrated this from the opposite direction. In the months preceding the attack, Israeli society was in the midst of one of the most severe internal crises in its history. Against the backdrop of the dispute over the proposed changes to the judicial system, reservists announced that they would stop volunteering for service if the measures continued.
There is no need to determine within the framework of this discussion whether they were right or wrong. What mattered was the phenomenon itself: the willingness to bear the security burden proved to be deeply connected to a sense of belonging to the state and to the image of the state in the eyes of its citizens.
And then, in a single morning, reality changed. Reservists reported for duty in droves, people who had not waited for a call-up order asked to join their units, and Israelis who were abroad looked for ways to return home.
The disagreements did not disappear, but a sense of shared fate was rekindled. At the moment when our shared existence was perceived as being under threat, our shared identity once again became a source of resilience.
Every state needs a shared story. In our case, that story is Jewish. Not necessarily religious, but Jewish.
Secular Zionism Never Sought to Erase Judaism
Zionism itself was, to a large extent, a secular enterprise. Herzl and many of its founders did not seek to establish a halakhic state. They sought to bring the Jew out of the ghetto and make him a free person in his own country. But they did not attempt to build the national home by erasing Judaism.
Ahad Ha’am feared that a state without spiritual and cultural depth would become just another country among countries. Rabbi Kook, from a completely different starting point, saw the secular pioneers who built the country as part of a historical Jewish process, even when they themselves rebelled against religion.
Perhaps this is one of the keys to Israel after October 7.
A person can refrain from observing Shabbat, not pray, and reject the authority of Jewish law, while still seeing the Bible as their heritage, Jerusalem as part of their identity, the holidays as part of their memory, and the fate of the Jewish people as part of their own fate.
There is no contradiction between these things. The problem begins when secularism becomes not a way of life, but a detachment from identity. When we disconnect Israeliness from the Jewish story, we may gradually lose part of the answer to some of the most fundamental questions of national security: Why are we here? Why here, specifically? And what are we willing to pay to defend this place?
The answer “because this is my country” is, of course, an important one, but over generations it may not be enough on its own. States do not exist solely by virtue of a passport, a border, an economy, and an army. They also exist by virtue of memory, belonging, culture, and a shared story.
Judaism Does Not Belong to One Sector
This is also where our particular responsibility as secular Israelis comes in. We do not need to become religious, nor do we need to adopt a religious worldview. On the contrary: we must not hand Judaism over to any one sector.
We are free to argue with it, reinterpret it, embrace some parts of it and reject others. A person does not need to wear a kippah to study the Bible, nor do they have to observe Shabbat to feel that Yom Kippur is part of who they are.
Judaism does not belong to any particular sector. But our responsibility goes deeper. We must also recognize the limits of our own worldview. Liberalism is a value. Education is a source of strength. Skepticism is a condition for a free society. But none of these absolves us of the obligation to listen to the enemy in the language through which it speaks about itself.
We cannot assume that religious faith is always a cover for material interests, that ideology is always propaganda, or that economic prosperity necessarily outweighs faith, nationalism, revenge, or a sense of historical mission. This may be the most important blind spot we need to correct after October 7: not every person in the world is a liberal who simply has yet to discover it.
The Renewed Alliance: Secularism, Judaism, and Shared Responsibility
National resilience requires two values that at first glance appear contradictory. On the one hand, an open, critical, liberal, and free society that does not abandon the values that have made Israel a modern state. On the other hand, a society capable of understanding that there are also forces in the world that operate according to entirely different systems of belief, and that does not assess threats based on what it would like the other side to think.
But the religious and ultra-Orthodox public also has a responsibility within this alliance. One cannot speak of a shared fate while simultaneously demanding that others bear the security burden alone. Judaism that becomes a tool of coercion, exclusion, or avoidance of shared responsibility does not strengthen national resilience, but weakens it. The connection must work both ways: the secular person need not fear Judaism, and the religious person need not fear secularism.
Such an alliance does not require agreement on every question of faith, Jewish law, or lifestyle. It requires recognition that we share a fate, bear a shared responsibility for the country’s future, and need one another to ensure its survival.
Precisely by recognizing our differences, we may be able to build a shared identity that is not based on erasing those differences, but on the ability to live with them.
To Be Completely Secular and Completely Jewish
Ultimately, the lesson of October 7 is not that we need to be less liberal or less secular. It is that we need to be more clear-eyed. Being secular does not require disconnecting from Judaism. Being liberal does not require assuming that the enemy is liberal. Being educated does not give us the right to explain to another person that they do not mean what they say. And believing in peace does not absolve a state of the obligation to prepare for war.
The State of Israel needs aircraft, intelligence, defense systems, and a strong military. But beneath all of these, it also needs resilience of mind: the ability to see reality as it is, not only as we would like it to be, and a society that knows why it exists and what it is prepared to defend.
October 7 reminded us, in the most brutal way, that we share a fate. The challenge that follows is to turn that shared fate into a shared identity as well, without giving up our freedom and secularism.
It is possible to be completely secular and completely Jewish. It is possible to be liberal and clear-eyed. It is possible to want peace and understand the enemy.
Perhaps this combination is one of the foundations on which we can build Israel’s national resilience after October 7.
