The 1000-Day Plan: Our Path to Healing

There are moments when a person looks at his home and feels sad. He sees the inconceivable beauty of this people, the mutual responsibility, the mobilization, the open heart in moments of disaster, and on the other hand, he sees the poison that drips into our veins day by day. How did we reach a situation where we learned to hate each other so easily?

To understand the magnitude of the fracture, one must look at the engineering of consciousness. In the 60s, the world was divided into two worldviews: East and West. The Soviet Union raised the flag of the communist left and sought to create a "new man," one who has no need for materialism. The West and the United States led the capitalist right and the free market. As the years passed, the painful truth became clear: to maintain a socialist society that cares for every single person, a lot of money is needed. In the capitalist world, on the other hand, the money exists, but it creates bloody gaps between immense wealth and abject poverty.

In Israel, the politicians opened a much crueler "start-up." They understood that deep ideological discussions do not bring mandates, so they castrated the concepts, distorted the dictionary, and emptied it of content. The political consultants looked at us and decided: "Tell me who your enemy is and I will build you a campaign." So the giant conceptual fraud was born.

When they shout at the high-tech people and the Kaplan protesters that they are "leftists," they forget that these are distinct capitalist right-wingers. Capitalism is what brought them success, even though some of them are socialists at heart. And on the other hand, when we walk in the alleys of Bnei Brak or in the weak neighborhoods, and look at people who share the little bread they have out of a communal perception, commandments, and mutual responsibility, we see a social significance more moving than anything else. But them, for some reason, we categorized as "right."

This confusion happened because in Israel we reduced the entire world of values to political and security right and left. But even there, everything was distorted. If a member of Kibbutz Nahal Oz, who took mortar shells into his backyard, demanded to take down the structure in Shuja'iyya from which they were firing, he held a right-wing security position. And on the other hand, the "containment" strategy, the flow of cash in suitcases and the buying of industrial quiet, which Israeli governments led for years, is a left-wing security concept in its essence.

And so the tragedy was born: after Cast Lead, Pillar of Defense, and Protective Edge, the sentence that was sold to us again and again was "When the terrorists come out of the tunnels and see the destruction in Gaza, they will no longer have the desire for terror." Whoever cried out from the depths of his heart that we must dismantle the monster and not fall into illusions, got the label "leftist." And whoever put us to sleep and led the policy of containment and imagined quiet until the terrible disaster of October 7, was defined as "right."

"The right will fall — there will be no state." "The left will sell the Land of Israel." Listen to these slogans and understand the cruelty of this political start-up. This is a politics that does not seek to build, but to dismantle. It does not ask what you love or what you believe in, but who you hate. The politicians look at us, ask "Who is your enemy today?", and build on our fear and tears a strategy that will keep their seat for them. And the price? Our home that is falling to pieces.

But at the moment of truth, when the earth shook and darkness covered the land, this bluff burned in the fire of battle. In Be'eri, Elhanan Kalmanson, of blessed memory, fell. A man of the settlement movement from Judea and Samaria, a religious man, who left his home and ran into the inferno to save the friends and children of the kibbutz. Elhanan's act is not right and not left. It is holy of holies. It is the deepest Jewish and human cry: "Do not stand on the blood of your neighbor."

And so too Noam Erez Zaks, a religious soldier from Lod, Ariel Ohana, a secular man from Kibbutz Revadim, who fell in the battle for the Bar family's home in Be'eri, of blessed memory. Their blood was absorbed into the same earth. They did not ask each other what they voted for. Therefore, when we hear today screams of "leftist traitors" or "right-wing fascists," the heart should shrink. They are trying to play with our soul. This is a cheap manipulation whose goal is to paint some of us as "good" and some as "bad." This people, with all its tears and pains, simply does not interest the politicians. The parties are busy dividing, tearing us from within.

The time has come to say "enough." To declare that we will vote only for a party whose first, supreme, and holy mission is to unite this people. Our correction will not come from a leader raised above the people. It will not come from someone who built his career on incitement. The correction can come only from us, from the look in the neighbor's eyes, from the extended hand, from the understanding that we have no other country and no other people. The time has come to say "enough." To declare that we will vote only for a party whose first, supreme, and holy mission is to unite this people.

To return the simple values: to speak the truth, to look at the person standing in front of you at eye level and locate the good within him. Only if we heal our discourse, will we be able to force politics to change. Because in the end, the deep essence of our existence here is based on the Jewish tradition, the connection of man to the land, and Zionism. Not the political and partisan religion, but the religion that is all spirit and humanity. This spiritual spark is the only glue that can mend our fractures, and turn us back into what we are supposed to be: a people, a community of communities, a model society.

If we only want, if we only agree to remove the walls and look each other in the eyes, this will not be a legend. This is our way to heal. There is no need for a political program of 100 days, of promises that are not kept. There is a need for a healing process of 1,000 days after October 27.