Gathered this month around a campfire at the edge of a forest in central Israel, soldiers plotted their next mission: to save their deeply divided country from itself.
Like many of the thousands of Israeli reservists called up to fight in Gaza, the soldiers left for war amid a sudden wave of national unity following the October 7 attacks by Hamas on Israel.
But as the military has withdrawn troops from Gaza in recent weeks and troops have returned home, they have found their country less as it was after Oct. 7 and more as it was before: riven by divisive politics and cultural clashes.
Now, as those bitter divisions resurface, disillusioned reservists are at the forefront of movements demanding political reset, seeking unity and repudiating what many see as extreme polarization.
“I first came out in December and I was shocked to see that nothing had changed,” said David Sherez, a special forces commander and budding entrepreneur, as he left his base near Gaza.
Mr Sherez, one of the soldiers gathered around the forest fire, is a founding member of Tikun 2024, a new non-partisan organization led by reservists who aim to preserve the spirit of cooperation engendered by the war.
“You put on the news and you look at social media and it’s like October 7 never happened,” Mr Sherez said. “Everyone has to search their soul.”
Members of the small but fast-growing movement cited controversial government moves that have divided the country, including a proposed overhaul of the judiciary, talks of resettlement in Gaza, criticism of hostage families who called for a ceasefire and a proposed budget. it benefits the far-right and ultra-orthodox fringes at the expense of the national economy.
Israel’s military, in which conscription is compulsory for most citizens, has always been the country’s great equalizer and unifier, at least for those who enlist. most Arab and ultra-Orthodox citizens do not serve. Tikun 2024 members say they want civilian Israel to reflect the camaraderie of its military, where units and tank crews are made up of right-wing and left-wing, religious and secular Jews, Bedouin and Druze, settlers from the occupied West Bank and businessmen. high tech from Tel Aviv.
The reservists who make up the leadership of Tikun 2024 are a politically diverse group. (Tikun is the Hebrew word for correction or repair.) Instead of simply calling for snap elections, which many Israelis would interpret as an attempt to oust Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, they have called on the country’s main political parties to form an emergency unity government with Mr. Netanyahu, for now, and to agree on a date for holding elections by the end of the year.
Only a unity government, they say, can address the most difficult issues facing Israel’s future, including the fate of the occupied territories, where Palestinians and much of the world envision the establishment of a future Palestinian state.
Founded just a month ago and fueled by crowdfunding, the group quickly gained traction. Lawmakers from across the political spectrum and representatives of competing segments of Israeli society have met with the reservists — sometimes in the woods and around the campfire.
One evening, Tikun 2024 leaders met with Shikma Bressler, the face of the pre-war protests that opposed a hotly contested government plan for a judicial review.
The next night, at the same spot, they met with Simcha Rothman, a hardline lawmaker who was the driving force behind the judicial plan, which had been put on hold at the beginning of the war.
Israel has a tradition of reservists returning home from war to lead influential movements for change. A reservist captain, Motti Ashkenazi, began a lone protest a few months after the war in 1973. His movement grew, eventually forcing Golda Meir, the prime minister at the time, to resign in April 1974. Capitalizing on their status as patriots willing to make the ultimate sacrifice, reservists also played a critical role in the protest movements after Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in the 1980s and after the Second Lebanon War in 2006.
Already, thousands of Tikun 2024 supporters are connecting through WhatsApp groups, and a recent conference organized in just four days attracted around 250 people to Jerusalem from all over the country.
Tikun 2024, the soldiers say, is not intended to become a political party. However, some of its leaders have not ruled out a candidacy.
“We are calling for new blood,” said Yitzhaki Glick, 38, a special forces commander and lawyer who grew up in a settlement, was educated at prominent religious-Zionist institutions and used to work on new settlement development. “We think the people in the system today are not up to par.”
Mr. Glick, who now lives in Mazkeret Batya, in central Israel, said the first time he met Israelis from different backgrounds was during his mandatory military service. The controversy over judicial reform led him to believe that history was repeating itself, he said, and he feared that as in ancient times, internal divisions would cause the country to break up.
Part of the group’s dynamic is driven by a growing desire for national unity and a weariness with politics as usual. The trend is reflected in polls showing a jump in support for a centrist party led by Benny Gantz, a former army chief, at the expense of Mr Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud.
“We have to fight the division,” said Soham Nav, 26, a reservist and student who was called up on October 8. “This is a war without choice – at the front and at home.”
But they are not all together.
Critics have called Tikun 2024’s vision naive, and the group has been denounced from left and right. Leftists accuse the group of trying to numb anti-Netanyahu protests. The right has called members of the right the “useful idiots” of the left.
Some right-wing reserves and ultra-nationalist groups recently held a rally in Jerusalem to urge the government to take the war to a decisive defeat of Hamas. Attended by thousands of people, mainly from the religious right, the speakers took hard lines and called, in fiery speeches, for the government to reject a deal to release the hostages and to demand territorial honor from the Palestinians in Gaza.
But even at that rally, some soldiers behind the front tried to minimize differences.
“In fighting, there is no left and right,” said Eden Moshe Levin, 28, a supermarket worker from the southern town of Netivot, which was attacked on October 7.
“What good will it do to call each other traitors?” he said.
Lavi Kreisman, 41, a tour guide, said he encountered the rally on his way home wearing a uniform and carrying a rifle. He said his unit lost 14 members in an explosion in Gaza, including Jews and non-Jews.
“It’s the people out there fighting, not the politicians,” he said. Noting that all the fighters wanted victory, he added, “I want to make sure they didn’t die for nothing.”
After nearly five months of war, more than 29,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to health officials in Gaza, sparking international outrage. More than 260 Israeli soldiers have been killed since Israel launched its ground invasion in late October, according to Israeli authorities, in addition to more than 300 soldiers who were among the 1,200 people killed in cross-border attacks by Hamas in October. 7.
In the tumultuous months leading up to October 7, reservists played a key role in anti-government protests under the umbrella of Brothers and Sisters in Arms, a grassroots organization. Thousands of its members threatened to stop reporting for reserve duty, arguing that the court plan endangered the democracy they had signed up to defend.
Many Israelis saw this refusal as the unforgivable crossing of a red line that made Israel look weak in the eyes of its enemies.
However, the moment Israel was attacked, Brothers and Sisters in Arms called all reservists to report for duty and mobilized a massive citizen volunteer effort to support Israelis affected by the war.
Now, after months at the center of the political storm, this group is also calling for new elections and national unity.
“We all learned a lesson,” said Eyal Naveh, 48, a leader of the organization. “We don’t want to go back to the polarizing discourse of trespassing on each other.” He said his team was also talking to Israelis across the social and political spectrum, including the ultra-Orthodox community.
“In the end,” he said, “we’re all saying it’s time to act by consensus.”
