Two years ago, in October 2024, exactly one year after Oct. 7, at a moment when Israeli society was still bleeding openly, we published a project in Israel Hayom titled "The Day After Tomorrow."
That project sought to lift Israel's gaze beyond the burning present and toward the horizon stretching a decade or two into the future. We wanted to create a conversation about hope, a broad exploration of what the State of Israel could become at a time when the wound was still too raw to talk about almost anything else. The project was meant to serve as a catalyst, to open a window and invite discussion.
The two years that have passed since then have left us no luxury to remain at the level of vision alone. The war is still not over. Elections are already around the corner. Most of the problems we then described as challenges for the coming decade have, almost without our noticing when it happened, become problems already standing at our doorstep, unable to wait for tomorrow.
And so, during the Ten Days of Repentance between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, we are presenting the project's second installment: "Israel: Plan of Action." This time, we are not looking a decade or two ahead. We are offering a work plan. Not what Israel could become, but what needs to be done, when and in what order.
We approached people of action and ideas. Some are senior figures in public life and policymaking; others are researchers and people working in the field; still others lead major institutions. We asked them for one thing: not a closed-ended analysis, not a diagnosis, but a plan. Concrete steps. An order of action. Something capable of setting a public or institutional process in motion and turning it into reality. Something to place on the desk of the next government, whoever leads it.
Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook once wrote in a personal letter to one of his students a phrase that over the years became a familiar maxim: "The old will be renewed, and the new will be sanctified."
That is precisely the equation we asked the writers in this project to solve, each in his or her own field. Not to abandon the foundations laid by the country's founders, but not to entrench ourselves in them out of inertia either. To renew without losing our footing, and to sanctify the new only after it has stood the test of reality.
That is also the choice confronting each of the areas of Israeli national life we examined: whether to preserve old structures out of a belief that they remain sound, or acknowledge that they have become outdated and build something new in their place, without losing sight of what gave rise to them in the first place.
The timing of this project is no coincidence. It is being published shortly before the eve of Yom Kippur, the moment in the Jewish calendar when we, as individuals and as a people, are called upon to stop and take stock. This year, that soul-searching cannot end with introspection. It must also produce a commitment to action.
Not just a record, but a direction
At the same time, the project is being published 39 days before the election for the 26th Knesset. Everything written here, therefore, is not merely an assessment for our readers. It is also a proposed agenda for every party, every leader and everyone seeking to lead Israel in the years ahead. We will not tell any Israeli how to vote. What we want to say is this: Here is the list. These are the problems. Here are proposals for solving them as well. Now it is up to you to decide.
The project is deliberately broad in scope and depth, ranging from the judicial system and national security to the economy, health care and space, alongside a theoretical, almost philosophical examination of the question that precedes every plan of action: How do we set psychological processes in motion within ourselves, as individuals and as a nation, that allow us to change and repair?
Naturally, not every contributor followed the path laid out by the writer before them. Some called for gradual change based on broad consensus; others argued that this moment demands bold decisions. That is not a flaw in the project. It is its starting point.
Berl Katznelson, who devoted his life to building the nation, understood that such a structure is built not of stones, but of hearts. A stone, once placed, remains where it is. The human heart, however, is always moving, always awakening to new understanding or new enthusiasm. Such a building, Katznelson wrote, therefore requires constant renewal and examination. We must continually ask whether its course still points toward the vision, or whether we have strayed from it without noticing.
That is precisely the task we set ourselves in this project: not only to plan the next step in every field, but also to stop and ask whether the direction in which we are moving still leads where we once hoped to go.
To be clear, "Israel: A Plan of Action" is not being published because of the election. Going to the polls simply creates a rare moment when people are prepared to listen. The writing and the purpose behind it come from somewhere else, somewhere deeper: a commitment to journalism that does not content itself with identifying the problem. Journalism that believes its role is not merely to document what has broken, but also, with the appropriate humility, to try to point toward a way out.
We harbor no illusions. We are far from having all the answers. Many of the articles in this project will contradict one another, and that is as it should be. But if a news organization can do one thing beyond telling and reporting the reality around us, it is occasionally to imagine what else might be possible, and to give that imagination a framework in the form of a concrete plan. Whether anyone ultimately puts that plan into practice is beyond our control. But the idea that it is worth trying remains as valid as ever.
