“In one second, it was all over,” said Hoffmann Agiv, an organizer with Bonot Alternativa (Building an Alternative), the women’s group known for marching battalions of red-and-white “handmaids” through the streets. The group’s founder sent a text: “Judicial reform is dead, let’s talk about what’s next.”
It was the start of a rapid and wholesale shift in Israel’s “great awakening.” By sundown, the groups had repurposed their vast networks and organizational might to provide aid, answers and weapons to a traumatized nation.
When the burgeoning military battle is over, the movement may be critical to rebuilding a country riven by years of political schisms, already overwhelmed by grief and the demands of war.
“What we are seeing is this huge civic awakening and energy being channeled in what is probably the largest civic support system we’ve ever known,” said Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute.
Hamas attackers were still rampaging through Israeli towns when the protest groups began to pivot: Members of Brothers and Sisters in Arms, military veterans who had pledged for months to boycott their reserve duties, grabbed uniforms and raced to the front lines. Others organized gear drives, scouring Israel and the world for weapons and supplies.
Fundraising leaders turned their attention to booking hotel rooms for evacuated families. Cyber experts gelled into a collective that gathers digital traces of the more than 200 Israelis who were taken hostage by Hamas, providing tips on their possible locations to Israeli security services.
A subgroup of psychologists fanned out across the country to counsel traumatized victims.
The women’s group tapped their 80 national affiliates and more than 150,000 members to create pop-up supply networks, gathering donations and allowing the exploding number of Israeli evacuees to request clothes, food or medical equipment and have them delivered for free.
At an emergency meeting of the four main protests groups on Oct. 7, they agreed on a rough division of labor and combined many of their individual WhatsApp channels into a single online forum. Within 24 hours, they had generated a list of more than 10,000 households willing to host displaced persons.
“We immediately knew that people would be evacuated,” said Hoffmann Agiv. “And we knew the government wouldn’t be able to help them all.”
On Monday, she was working in Modi’in, a bedroom community between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. A house vacated by a family seeking a more secure location had been converted into a fulfillment center and crammed with donated goods. A table used at countless protests and lined with protest slogans— “It’s in our hands” — was covered with new shoes. Two women sorted incoming orders on laptops; others came and went with deliveries.
The group tried to coordinate with social services agencies but found them deluged and unresponsive.
Faith in the government, already shaky in this divided country, has collapsed since the attacks, polls show. Protesters say their criticisms of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right coalition have been tragically borne out.
“This government’s inability to give answers and actions that serve the people is what we were protesting against,” said Shikma Bressler, the particle physicist who became the face of the demonstrations. “In the last nine months, we’ve been building all kinds of civil organizations with very good logistical and execution abilities. It was natural we would fill the vacuum left by the government.”
The protest movement emerged in January in response to the new government’s plans to give the ruling parties more power to override Supreme Court decisions and select judges. The changes had long been a goal of right-wing and ultra-Orthodox parties frustrated by court rulings against West Bank settlements and religious privileges.
The country fractured. Conservatives said the government’s four-seat majority in the 120-seat parliament gave it a mandate for the overhaul. Opponents saw an authoritarian bid to corrupt the balance of power. In the chaotic standoff, both sides saw a battle for the soul of Israel.
Tens, then hundreds, of thousands of protesters took over the streets of Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and other cities. Demonstrators came from all walks of life, many protesting for the first time. Shockingly, thousands of military reservists, revered as the backbone of the Israel Defense Forces, took center stage.
When Netanyahu tried to fire Defense Minister Yoav Gallant after he criticized the judicial push, spontaneous protests erupted. Netanyahu was forced to back down and temporarily paused the legislation.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Dan Ben-David, president of the Shoresh Institution and an economist at Tel Aviv University. “It was a huge awakening for the center and the left. And after Oct. 7, I think the penny dropped for a lot of people on the right, too.”
Technically, the judicial overhaul measures are on hold. Non-security legislation is all but frozen while a new emergency government focuses on the war.
Political analysts think the proposals are unlikely to come back in any form, even after the war. Support for the government has tanked, new elections are seen as inevitable, and only the most extreme coalition members have said they would try to resume their agenda.
“Israel needs to unite now, and [the judicial overhaul] is the most divisive thing in Israel. This is over,” said Roee Neuman, spokesman for the Kaplan Force protest group.
Mass demonstrations are impossible now, as Hamas continues to fire rockets at Tel Aviv and other cities amid the Israeli military’s aerial bombardment of Gaza. But protesters say they will be back. Their ultimate goal of driving Netanyahu from office remains unchanged.
“Everybody knows that he won’t be going by himself,” said Neuman. “That’s going to be our next mission.”
In the meantime, protest leaders said there is almost no dispute within their groups about supporting the war effort. The protesting reservists were among the first to respond, joining the mass mobilization that has drawn more than 360,000 soldiers back into the ranks. Others relocated to southern Israel en masse and set up a makeshift command post 15 miles east of Gaza.
Members of the Anti-Occupation Bloc, peace activists who angered some other protesters by calling for Israel to pull out of the West Bank, have joined up. Even protest leaders who oppose the occupation said including that message risked splintering the movement.
Nir Avishai Cohen is a deputy infantry battalion leader and 20-year reserve veteran who was shoved during demonstrations when he waved a Palestinian flag. But as soon as the attacks happened, he scrambled for a flight home from a business trip to Texas and went straight to his unit from the airport.
He sees no choice but to enter Gaza in pursuit of Hamas. He hopes he can help minimize civilian casualties, even though the bombardment has already killed more than 5,000 people, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
“I have a hope that after this terrible, terrible war, more people will understand that we need to look for peace and end the occupation,” he said. “Our war is with Hamas, not the Palestinian people.”
Outside of the military, the movement has retooled for the long haul. It’s a logical evolution, said Bressler, who now visits victims around the country and finds herself “at too many funerals.”
“We were fighting to save the country, and we are still fighting to save the country,” she said. “And this is what that means now.”
