The Oct. 7 massacre remains an open wound in Israeli society. How does one commemorate an event that is still unfolding? It's akin to announcing a funeral or memorial service for a loved one while doctors are still fighting to save their life.
Sigmund Freud said, "Mourning is invariably the reaction to the loss of a loved person, or to the loss of some abstraction which has taken the place of one, such as one's country, liberty, an ideal... Reality-testing has shown that the loved object no longer exists." Reality-testing shows that 1,151 infants, children, and adults were murdered, 251 were kidnapped, 116 were released alive, and 109 remain in captivity. How can we declare an official memorial ceremony while hostages remain in Gaza and we, like doctors, are fighting for their lives and their return?
Instead of fostering mutual support among survivors who were massacred in the disaster and abandoned, in various ways, by the government, the latter is creating conflict and division between them and within society. This too serves to distract from its responsibility for the catastrophe, the failure, and the abandonment.
The government's stance, announcing a ceremony prematurely, expresses a desire to "move on" more than a wish to remember the catastrophe. It's denial and even willful blindness disguised as remembrance. This creates the illusion that the disaster is behind us and that we can let go of the past. It's a dangerous and delusional approach that buries the hostages while they're still alive and abandons them again, along with the ideals and values that form the foundation of our existence as a people and a state – mutual responsibility and the state's commitment to rescue and protect its citizens.
The temptation to "move on," to avoid looking at what's painful and difficult, is built into our psychological makeup. Our defenses work constantly, without our awareness, to remove what confronts us with our weaknesses and helplessness, and to preserve an unconscious illusion of omnipotence. On October 7, this defensive psychological structure collapsed, leaving us terrified and unable to comprehend or make sense of what was happening. In this state, the mind is strongly tempted to eliminate and bypass anxiety.
Because of this temptation, the psyche is susceptible to political manipulation and, in other cases, to disconnection, indifference, and despair. Thus, there is a certain purpose to the government's moves to hold a memorial ceremony or construct a narrative of heroism and victory for the Oct. 7 catastrophe and the war. This is done while ignoring all those who serve as evidence of failure – survivors of the massacre, hostages, evacuees from the burning south and north – or postponing a state commission of inquiry to a vague time "after the war." These actions are intended to bypass contact with helplessness, forget the colossal failure, and strive to construct a quick and organized narrative, thus restoring the illusion that we – the leader, the people, and the army with us – are heroes, strong and omnipotent.
This is again an anesthetizing, megalomaniacal conception, preserving an illusion of superiority and omnipotence, in the spirit of what we held until October 7 regarding Hamas and ourselves, which was one of the blinding factors that led to the catastrophe. In this sense, the memorial ceremony is a symptom of governmental conduct: the choice of Minister Regev; the conditions – without an audience, a pre-recorded speech by the Prime Minister, and a declaration that in the future it will be held on the Hebrew date – all point to an attempt to organize an illusory, distorted narrative, without the "noise" of failure, suffering, and criticism.
Moreover, it appears that the ceremony is also being used as a political tool for division and conflict, igniting tensions and rifts between kibbutzim, which refuse to participate in it, and peripheral towns (municipalities) that declare they will participate. Thus, instead of mutual support among survivors who were massacred in the disaster and abandoned, in various ways, by the government, the latter is creating conflict and division between them and within society, which also serves to distract from its responsibility for the catastrophe, the failure, and the abandonment.
Without a genuine connection to failure, truth-seeking, criticism, and learning from them, we weaken and deteriorate. Without providing proper support to the families of the hostages, survivors of the massacre, the north, the evacuees, the soldiers, including those whose souls have been exhausted by prolonged fighting – we lose them, ourselves; we abandon them and the value of mutual responsibility, thanks to which the Jewish people survived, even without a state or army, for thousands of years, and without which we have no revival. Without a penetrating look at our failures and recognition of our limitations, we are prone to repeat disasters and even exacerbate them to the point of threatening our existence. The pursuit of truth and criticism are essential to our resilience and the possibility of change, healing, and hope.
