The October 6 vs October 8 mindset
Yoav Heller from Israeli organisation The Fourth Quarter talks to Josh Feldman about the challenges currently facing the Jewish State.
Few people have their finger on the pulse of Israeli society like Yoav Heller. A Major (res.) in the IDF and part of the staff that established Ynet, Israel’s leading news site, Yoav is now chairman of The Fourth Quarter, a grassroots movement that aims to create a new political reality in Israel. Yoav and I first spoke in August 2023, when I interviewed him about the civil unrest over judicial reform and his vision for a repaired Israeli political system.
Neither of us could have imagined the horrors that would be inflicted on the Jewish state less than 8 weeks later. Given how drastically the October 7 massacre changed Israel, I called Yoav again to get his thoughts on the current challenges facing Israeli society, the changes it has undergone since October 7, and what Israel’s priorities should be going forward.
When we first spoke in August 2023, the breakdown of Israel’s social and political fabric was the biggest concern for many Israelis and Diaspora Jews. October 7 changed that, to say the least. What do you think have been the biggest changes Israeli society has undergone since October 7?
There are two changes. First is a recognition that the 150 year battle between Palestinians and Jews in the Land of Israel is here to stay, and it doesn’t matter whether you’re from the right or the left. It was a deep and depressing recognition that we’re threatened. We’re facing a three headed threat externally: One, from the Palestinian national movement, which is based on ‘48 and not ‘67. They’re more interested in the Jews not having a state than the Palestinians having a state. Second is Iran. We knew about it, but we didn’t know how strong and influential Iran and its proxies — Hamas and Hezbollah — are. We didn’t even know the level of evilness — we didn’t recognise it. Third is the radical progressive movement. You can be anti-Israel, but how can you be pro-Hamas?
Suddenly there’s an understanding that this is here to stay. People ask me: you didn’t know that? I say, in history, there’s always a difference between information and knowledge. We had the information. We didn’t have the insight.
The second change has to do with the social fabric. Most Israelis have recognised the deep connection between the social fabric and security. I can see it in parlours I’ve done since the war. You don’t need to convince Israelis anymore that the social fabric is dangerous. Basically, I tell people, “the social fabric is collapsing. If it keeps on collapsing our children will die”. That’s the reality, and I think more and more Israelis understand it. Whether they’re willing to do what’s needed to fix the social fabric — that’s a different question.
So on the issue of social fabric, it seems that since October 7, two different Israels have emerged: those still stuck in the October 6 mindset, dragging Israel closer and closer to civil war, and those who’ve switched to the October 8 mindset, having realised that things cannot go back to what they were on October 6, and that a new political and social reality must be built. What observations have you made around that?
I would divide it into two periods. The first three months of the war, the mentality was the October 8 mentality for the vast majority, or at least the October 6 mentality quietened down — or even shut down. Remember the big reservists campaign? “If you don’t have anything unifying to say, shut your mouth”. That was an actual campaign. So for the first three months, it was clear unity. You saw Israeli society rise up to a historic degree. It was our Dunkirk. You saw citizens go fight in the South, you saw civil society, you saw [an enormous turnout from] reservists.
Since then, and as days go by, the division is coming back — and we need to be a little bit forgiving to yourselves. Why is it coming back? Because the emotions that we’re dealing with are incomprehensible. Not only that, we’re in many ways in a strategic lockdown. We’re practically losing the North. We have tens of thousands of displaced people. We are still fighting in the South, and the hostages are still there. We’re stuck with it. You have a very complex international situation. We have economic uncertainty. We have a government which is perceived as very polarising. We have the issue of participation in military service. Take all these ingredients, and you get a really toxic [environment].
Before dividing it into Israelis of October 6 and Israelis of October 8, I would say that in every Israeli’s head right now, there’s the voice of October 6 and the voice of October 8, and no Israeli is exempt from this battle between the October 6 voice and the October 8 voice. That’s the interesting issue, because yes, there are more and more people in the October 6 mentality, but I’m still interested in the majority — I think its heart is in October 8, but it doesn’t have the voice of October 6 because of all the ingredients I mentioned. And that’s a big issue.
I’m reluctant to jump too deep into politics, but this is still an important question to grapple with. Israel is at a moment in its history when it needs political leaders with immense courage, wisdom and trust from the public, but it’s not clear whether Israel’s politicians — both in government and opposition — are up to the task. How does Israel navigate this?
We’re in an era where there is an almost incomprehensible lack of leadership in the Israeli political sphere. We knew this before October 7. First of all, the issue of responsibility — really taking responsibility. I’m not talking about resigning. I’m talking about feeling that politicians — specifically this government — feel that they’re responsible for the biggest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. You don’t feel that. Second, the strategic mindset is very political. I don’t think it was in the first three months, but now strategy and politics are combined — it’s a big problem. Third is these leaders’ misunderstanding: they don’t need to follow their base; they need to follow Am Yisrael. And by the way, most of their base want them to be unifying leaders, not polarising leaders, but we’ve been sabotaged by politics of the extremes, and they’re struggling to rise to the occasion.
Regarding the war, the emergency government worked until recently. Specifically, the four people running the war cabinet: Netanyahu, Gallant, Gantz, and Eisenkot. Not because their performance is extraordinary, but because they were able to create one voice and give us citizens the feeling that there is a mutual strategy, and even if we disagreed with it, they were really unified on the war strategy. This is falling apart.
So these are the leaders. I tell Israelis we need to trust them because it is what it is. But there will need to be a fundamental change in army leadership and in politics. This will not be the leadership that will lead Israel through the next decade. But for now, it’s counterproductive to participate in this blame game. We need to demand from them coherence, unity, and transparency.
That touches on something you tweeted not that long ago. You said that if a final decision is made on a hostage deal, there will be some requirements from Israel’s political leaders: they’ll need to explain the decision, take responsibility for it, and be honest with Israelis about the deal’s costs and benefits. Can you expand on that?
I fear that because we’re in the era of a lack of responsibility, there will or won’t be a deal, and the politicians will hide behind extremists, or will speak in one voice publicly, but then you’ll see their proxies on Twitter going against the deal they signed and saying somebody forced them to sign it — blame this, blame that.
We’re choosing between very, very, very bad options. We need courageous leaders to say, “Look, this is what we’re dealing with, this is why I made this decision, these are the implications of this decision. I understand that a lot of people are going to be mad, whether from here or there, but I stand firmly behind my decision. I will explain patiently, but I will not pass on responsibility to anyone else. Judge me, not anyone else”. If that happens, Israeli society will stand behind the leader. If not, it will bring us to a level of polarisation and turmoil so severe that we will miss the October 6 mentality. You will talk about the June 2024 mentality, which will be much worse.
You also wrote that any final hostage deal would wound the heart of Israeli society. What does that mean?
We’re dealing with the worst of options — I don’t even want to think about the implications of no hostages coming back, or coming back in coffins. That would be very, very, very difficult to recover from. The other option is that there will be a deal, and we will see many terrorists — the worst of terrorists — celebrate in Gaza with Hamas leaders. That’s something that will wound our heart, something that will split us.
I’m against ending the war for a hostage release deal, but I’m willing to go up to and excluding ending the war in order to release the hostages. There are no good options here. The optics in both cases will tear our hearts apart. That closes the circle on why we need leadership. We will need comfort from leaders. We will need certainty from leaders. We will need transparency. We won’t need leaders to go into a blame game because we will be, by definition, with broken hearts and the blame game.
We have to get them back. The cost of them not coming back is higher than the cost of them coming back with a high price.
I want to go back to one of The Fourth Quarter’s goals from before October 7: creating a new social and political reality in Israel. You obviously couldn’t have predicted October 7. Has the massacre or the war changed what the new reality is that you’re working towards, or has it changed the steps you need to take to get there?
Yes, there are dramatic changes. First, in the base. When we began when Bennett was prime minister, we thought we had 5 to 8 years to get to a million people and create the big Israeli base, and then the direct intervention into the political system. Then when the judicial reform turmoil happened, we shortened it to 2 years, and now we want it by the end of 2024 — not to be a million, but 250,000 members and supporters. We want brand recognition — we currently have 17 percent. We want to jump to 70 percent. We want to be bigger, faster.
The second change is that we decided — as we don’t have time — that we need to pick up the pace with going into the heated issues. We are publishing “The Israeli Vision” that thousands of activists have been writing for a year. We’re having a big conference at the Expo Tel Aviv. [According to Israeli media, around 5,000 people attended the May 30 conference, at which “The Israeli Vision” was revealed]. We already released one policy about how to change the military drafting system in Israel that will include all Israelis, including Haredim. What characterises us is that we’re not a think tank. We did it with activists: 30 Haredim and 30 reservists who came out of Gaza. We’re now working on policies on security, education, religion and state, and the economy. We thought we had years to deal with these. We didn’t want to go into them.
The third change is that we’re now discussing within the movement whether we should have a political party in the next election. Not the NGO itself, of course. The movement will keep on existing as a civil movement. Since the 7th of October, we are in much greater demand among existing political platforms. That’s not our priority — it’s just an indication that we’re becoming more attractive, because we think new leadership needs to emerge.
What are Israel’s biggest priorities right now?
The first priority is an immediate one: deciding our strategy for the next few months in the war. What are we actually aiming for in Gaza? What does victory look like? What are we going to do in order to return the citizens of the North to their homes? What’s our approach to our international crisis? We’re lacking strategies there. We’re lacking clarity there. That’s a huge priority. I understand that it’s very difficult to make a decision, because any decisions that we make will be cutting some of our losses, but not making a decision just piles up the losses.
The second priority, which is urgent, is actually creating a new military service law that will solve the scarcity that we have right now. It’s a necessity. This is just not sustainable — I mean within months — because of the overload that the reservists are experiencing.
Third is putting on the table the issues that are the most pressing or most polarising in Israeli society, and unlike peoples’ instincts, solving them now. I would go into a constitutional period now. I would change our educational system now. I would make some fundamental economic reforms now. Why now? Because usually we rise to the occasion during crises and make fundamental changes that we wouldn’t make for 30 years in periods without crises. Unfortunately, it’s not happening.
Fourth — what we’re trying to do — is deciding what the Israeli future looks like. What is the story that’s going to mobilise us to prevent us from giving up? We need to create a unified vision for Israelis and for Israel and the diaspora.
Points three and four are medium-long term issues that I would start dealing with tomorrow morning, because this is a once in a lifetime opportunity.
In August, I asked if you’re optimistic about Israel’s future. You said: “I’m not sure I’m that optimistic these days, but I’m very, very hopeful”. Is that still the case?
Yes. You can’t be really optimistic — as Rabbi Sacks said, it’s wishful thinking. I’m optimistic by nature, but I’m not naive. I understand that this country needs a strategic turnaround. Why am I hopeful? Because we have a lot of assets. We have the Israeli spirit. “We have the asset of being a very young country: the median age in Israel is 30. Tight intergenerational relationships, which are a very good predictor for a vibrant country, are very high in Israel. We saw Israelis in their Dunkirk moment — this generation, especially the youngsters, rose to the occasion.” A lot of Israelis understand that the October 6 mentality will kill us.
And remember, what separates us from others is that we don’t seek revenge. We’re distinct in seeking life and a better future for the whole Middle East. I don’t think it’s apparent right now, but I think we’re among a lot of people who are working to bring about that future. As long as we don’t give up, I’m very hopeful. But we better hold tight, because the next year is going to be very difficult.
There’s been a lot of talk around the observations of Israeli society made by soldiers coming out of Gaza. Can you give some insight into that?
When you go into Gaza, your cell phones are taken from you for security reasons. They’re cut off from the outside world, and what they have is comradeship. They feel that their lives are tied up to one another, and they’re drawn into a reality where fighting for Israel’s future and fighting to release the hostages are the only things that exist. A deep bond is created. I know that from 13 years of being a platoon commander in special forces.
I remember one of our activists said that when he received his cell phone back, “My hands shook. I really wanted to open it because I wanted to talk to my family, but besides that, I didn’t want it. I wanted to throw it in the bin. I did not want to be drawn back to the reality of polarisation, of arguments”.
I think many of them are experiencing psychological exhaustion and mental difficulties for two reasons. One is what they saw in Gaza, what they dealt with. Two is the transition between the two realities. If you come to Israel right now and you go to workplaces and you see some people just staring at the ceiling, I can tell you for sure they’re reservists. They’re just not fully with us yet.
I think that’s an experience to build on, because they bring us a lot of spirit, but we also need to be aware of this trauma. We need to hug them. We need to listen to them. And most of all, why do we need to fix the issue of military service? Because many of them are back in reserve duty right now, which is incomprehensible.
Is there anything else you want to say?
The issue that we’ve faced since October 7 is an issue of the future of the Jewish world, not just the State of Israel, because antisemitism has appeared again in a vicious form. There is an existential battle here for the future of the Jewish people. Israel needs to rise to the occasion and understand that we and our brothers and sisters in the diaspora share a destiny. We need to tighten the relationship, and to actually take into account our actions’ effects on the diaspora. This is a huge opportunity, but there’s also a risk that we in Israel will only concentrate on our internal affairs, whereas this is much bigger than just an Israeli affair. This is a world Jewry affair. I want to pass the message to Jews around the world that you’re not alone.
Josh Feldman is a Melbourne-based writer. Twitter/X: @joshrfeldman
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