The siren at 2 p.m. on Yom Kippur 1973 still echoes in my mind to this day. It pierced through my body, as if splitting it in two. The euphoria, arrogance, pride, and complacency that surrounded us after the crushing victory of the Six-Day War in 1967 never imagined that the sound of a war siren would shatter it all.

I was an 18-year-old girl, just two months away from my army enlistment, when I realized what war truly meant.

I was an 18-year-old sister when I realized that my brother was being taken to war, and nothing would ever feel secure again.

I was an 18-year-old daughter of Holocaust survivors when I saw, once again, the worry and sorrow in my parents’ eyes.

I was just an 18-year-old girl, forced to grow up suddenly because of one damned war.

Then, just a year ago, in October 2023, three days before the damned and most difficult war of Oct. 7, marking 50 years since that Yom Kippur War, my husband, Abraham, and I traveled to the Golan Heights. We walked along the paths of the fierce battles that took place there and visited the monuments dedicated to the fallen, including friends of ours. At one of the battle sites, a reunion of the fighters took place (now all over 70 years old, like us). A discussion unfolded about that horrific war: What made us so arrogant and overconfident? What should we have done differently? What mistakes were made by our leadership back then (under Golda Meir)? We concluded with a hope that we had learned the lesson—that we must not live in euphoria even when we succeed.

But, sadly, we knew deep down that the current leadership (under Benjamin Netanyahu), was far from being the one worthy of leading our people, nor one capable of handling war.

Three days after our visit to the Golan, and after discussing the consequences of that war, we were hit with the hardest slap to the face. Something we had feared deeply, and, if we’re being honest, something we knew deep in our hearts, that might come.

Oct. 7, 6:29 a.m. Our faces turned red with the blood of countless fallen, and from the shame of yet another failure, cursed and even worse, 50 years after that war.

So, what happened again? And what’s the difference between the failure of 1973 and the failure of 2023?

The Yom Kippur War in 1973 was a war between nations, between armies, and the fallen were soldiers. The Oct. 7 war, however, is a war against a terrorist organization that invaded many communities around Gaza, brutally murdering, raping, and looting innocent civilians.

The government that led us in 1973, under Golda Meir, was one that the public trusted from the moment it was elected. Soldiers taken captive knew their leadership stood behind them and would do everything to secure their release. It was a government that operated according to the democratic values enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. After the war, a national inquiry committee was established to determine who was responsible for the failure. While the committee found that Prime Minister Golda Meir was not personally to blame, Meir took responsibility and resigned from her position, despite the findings.

The government of today, however, is driven by personal interests, with no regard for the people it is supposed to serve. There is no trust in its prime minister or its ministers. It is a government unwilling to form a national inquiry committee, because it knows what the findings would be. It is a government that has abandoned its citizens from the day it was elected and continues to do so today, while its prime minister clings to power.

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The 2 p.m. siren of Yom Kippur 1973 still resonates in my head after 51 years. That siren shattered my innocence and took away part of my youth.

But the siren on Oct. 7, 2023, now that I am in my adulthood, scares me many times more.

  • We must never again be arrogant, complacent, or overconfident.
  • We must realize that anything can happen to us, even after many years, and we must never say, “It won’t happen to us.”
  • We must wake up and choose the right leaders, those who see the country and its people before they see themselves.

Or, we can sum it all up with: Leadership—that’s all it takes!

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On Oct. 7, Aviad Bachar from Kibbutz Be’eri lost his wife, Dana, and his son, Carmel, who were murdered before his eyes and the eyes of his daughter, Hadar. He was severely injured, his leg was amputated, and his daughter was lightly wounded.

When he was asked by a journalist if he would return to Kibbutz Be’eri, Aviad responded with a story:

“My wife, Dana, and I loved to travel. On one of our trips, we reached Costa Rica and spent a night in a village at the foot of a volcano called Arenal. One of the villagers who hosted us told us that every 50 years, this volcano erupts, destroying all the villages beneath it. I asked him, ‘And what about you?’ And he answered that each time, the people of the villages leave their homes before the volcano erupts and return once the mountain has calmed, rebuilding their homes and their lives, and passing this from generation to generation. And so it will be with us. We will return to Be’eri, rebuild our homes, restore our community, and rebuild that too. Our lives will go on, and we will ensure they are beautiful once again.”

Our good fortune is that we have wonderful people in the State of Israel and in Jewish communities around the world, and thanks to them, and to you, we always emerge from every hardship, and will rebuild a glorious nation.

Long live this nation!

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