In the annals of the days of documentary cinema, a place of honor is reserved for a small, modest, simple - but extremely brilliant film. He focuses on the face of a small child for 10 minutes, during which he watches a puppet show. The 3-year-old boy panics and calms down, sad and laughing, bored and fascinated: we don't know exactly what, but we get a glimpse into his psyche as he himself rides an emotional rollercoaster that will eventually mature in 10 minutes.
The 100th anniversary of the war is not a milestone that requires a strategic assessment of the situation and a discussion of ways of thinking for the day after. 100 is a beautiful, round number, and that's all. The ritual, ostensibly, is superfluous. You can move on. But along major roads it is customary to scatter milestones to mark distances, and the war is proving to be such a long road. And since we don't know how far the destination is, at least we will remind ourselves, from time to time, how far we've come from where we started. It's an anchor.
President Herzog visiting Kibbutz Be'eri // Photo: Avi Kanner
From a split to a huge hug, photo: Oren Ben Hakon
This is perhaps the most documented, photographed, exposed war we have ever had, and yet everything in it is shrouded in a battle nebula, intelligence camouflage, and cognitive warfare. Everything in her remains undeciphered. It emerged from the depths of the earth, from the depths of our haunted memories, from the slopes of our history as a people. She remarked riddles, traumas, nightmares - which we did not solve until the end. We look into the eyes of the abductees who returned from the network of tunnels branching underground as if they had risen back from the underworld after meeting Satan himself. What do they know we don't? What do they tell us?
Ostensibly, we knew everything we needed to know about the religious fanaticism of our enemies – about incitement, about preaching hatred, about an orderly and systematic ideology that seeks our elimination. After all, we read the Hamas Charter. But we couldn't believe, we couldn't believe, that this culture of hatred was just waiting for an opportunity to fulfill its sick desires in such a gruesome and horrific ritual of sadistic violence, of chilling mass indulgence in suffering, and blood, and screams. Now we know.
Nokhba terrorists on October 7, Photo: GettyImages
And ostensibly we also knew everything there was to know about the collapse of values in the West, about the "progressive trolling" that imposed wild moral confusion. We mocked the theories that conquered the social sciences and humanities, and we scorned agendas that took over film and art festivals. But we didn't believe, we didn't want to believe, that this trolling would reach the point where intellectuals, artists, students, cultural figures would be able to look at horror images from a kitchen - and then go out and protest against the victim. Now we know
We knew that the international institutions were rotten, that the world of diplomacy was steeped in double standards, that "the whole world is against us," and that hypocrisy was celebrating. And haven't we seen who is running the human rights circus at the UN, the groveling to Iran and the abandonment of Ukraine? But we did not believe, we did not want to believe, that even in the face of a blatant, shouting, clear crime, stupidity and hypocrisy in their crudest manifestation in the ICC courtroom in The Hague would stand for a despicable show of insulting intelligence and criminal desecration of humanism itself.
The air force attacks in the first days of the war, Photo: GettyImages
The balloon and purity
We thought we knew something about our soldiers. That they are the most patriotic, bold, courageous and loving imaginable, even when in the world – and in Israel – there are those who have worked hard to convince them that they are, of all people, war criminals, sluggers, abusers. But we didn't know, we couldn't know, to what extent our soldiers would return the blush to the cheeks. How much our field warriors are made of the material from which heroes were winked. How determined they are to win, how willing they are to sacrifice, how dedicated they are to the task, how legendary they are. Who knew this would be the case? Now we know.
And we knew we had a great country. Or at least there was. We knew that once we were beautiful and righteous, seekers of good, brotherhood and friendship. We were sung that "this nation is divided all year round, how it gets up when it smells danger." But we did not believe, we could not believe, that even in our generation, we would rise from the dust of quarrels to such a huge group embrace. And we'll wake up those beautiful songs, and the balloon, and the mustache, and the volunteering, and the packages for the soldiers, and we'll wave the flag, and goodbye to each other. We thought that the Israeli spirit of the founding generation and the parents' generation would no longer be established. Now we know better.
Security forces evacuate residents on October 7, Photo: AP
After 100 days, we know. Like that 3-year-old boy who came of age by 10 minutes in Hertz Frank's 1978 short film. We know. Leave the screens for a moment and look at our faces, how much they have changed in the last 100 days. We oscillate between panic and calm, between sadness and laughter, between curiosity and escapism, and most importantly – between repression and knowing. Look at how much we've matured in 100 days.
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