Nearly half a year since the October 7 Hamas invasion, how it happened remains unfathomable.

Still fighting the war to destroy Hamas, the nation has not yet turned from the battleground to an in-depth look at what went so terribly wrong.

True, there have been television investigations and newspaper examinations, and both the IDF and the State Comptroller are conducting investigations, but a systemic look at how the IDF, intelligence agencies, and the government were so completely blinded and left clueless will take years to emerge. A State Commission of Inquiry will surely be established after the war to examine all aspects of the colossal failure, though it is not clear what will mark that end-of-war point or when this body will be set up.

Conventional wisdom holds that such a committee is essential to rebuild trust in the state’s institutions, and that trust is vital. Israel critically needs to rebuild institutional trust.

Much has been written of Israel’s vaunted resilience, its uncanny ability to take blows and bounce back, usually even stronger than before. And this resilience has a number of different components.

One of them is solidarity, loosely defined as a unity of purpose, shared vision and values, aspiration toward a common goal, and a willingness to set aside partisan individual interests for the common good.

Though some feared that Israel lost this sense of solidarity with the divisive judicial overhaul debate of the first nine months of 2023 and the bitter partisan divide that hurtled the country into five elections in less than four years, the horrific events of October 7 showed that reports of Israel’s loss of solidarity were greatly exaggerated.

Another component of resilience is the faith of the Israeli people in themselves and in the justice of their cause. That too remains strong.

The front cover of the Economist last week featured a dreary picture of an Israeli flag blowing in what appears to be a dusty wind with apparently destroyed buildings of Gaza in the background. The ominous two-word headline read: “Israel alone.”

That may be true – Israel may be as alone as it has been in decades – but one reason it is able to weather that isolation and the international opprobrium being unjustly dumped upon it is a firm belief in the justice of this war.

Optimism a component of resilience 

A third component of resilience is optimism, hope, and faith, something Israel has in abundance; something that is deeply ingrained in the Jewish psyche.

This is embodied, as the late Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks once wrote, in what Jews around the world will be saying at the Passover seder next month: “Now [we are] slaves, next year we shall be free; now we are here, next year in the land of Israel.” In other words, as bleak as things may look at the moment, Jews have eternal hope and belief that they will get better.

The final component of resilience is faith in the state’s institutions – the government, the army, the police, the judiciary, the Knesset – a belief that the institutions of the state are genuinely looking out for the good of the people and can be trusted to do their jobs faithfully and effectively. And it is with this component – institutional trust – that Israel has a problem.

This institutional trust has been on the decline for years, as documented annually in polls taken by The Israel Democracy Institute. After October 7, and the total failure of the government institutions to prevent a disaster of horrendous proportions, one could have been excused for believing that the faith in the institutions would take an even greater hit.

Yet a poll released by the IDI last week found, somewhat counter-intuitively, that this was not the case across the board.

Yes, trust in the government and the Knesset – already low, 28% in June for the government and 24% in the Knesset – fell even lower in December to 23% and to 19% respectively. But trust in the IDF actually went up a percentage point among Jewish respondents, from 85.5% in June to 86.5% in December, and trust in the police soared from 35% to 58%.

Another poll released by the IDI this week found a similar trend. Nearly half the public (48%) said that Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Herzi Halevi was doing a good or excellent job, while only 28% of the public said the same thing about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. And while fully 57% said Netanyahu was doing a poor job managing the war, only 28% said the same about Halevi.

Taken together, these two polls provide an interesting snapshot of Israeli society. Even though the IDF was caught completely unaware on October 7, as was the government headed by Netanyahu, the public still has trust in the IDF as an institution and in its leader.

There are several explanations.

First, the IDF – though caught woefully unprepared on October 7 – regrouped very quickly, drove the enemy back across the border within a couple of days, and has performed impressively inside Gaza ever since.  It was clear from the very beginning that the most efficient way for the army to regain the trust of the public, a trust shattered by the lack of intelligence and preparedness on October 7, would be to win the war against Hamas.

The IDI polling numbers reflect a public sense that the IDF is doing that: it is winning the war on the battlefield.

The same cannot be said of the government. While it took only a matter of days before the army returned to itself and began providing solutions, it took the government much longer – and in the interim, the vacuum was filled by the country’s citizens who sprang into action immediately and rushed to the front, housed and clothed evacuees, and fed soldiers.

In addition, while the army is winning battles inside Gaza, the government is losing diplomatic battles around the world, the latest being the UN Security Council resolution on Monday calling for a ceasefire that the US did not veto.

The IDF’s successes inside Gaza are not being translated into any kind of diplomatic success, explaining why the public gives high marks to the IDF and the general who stands atop its pyramid, but not to the government and its prime minister.

Another reason why the IDF and Halevi are faring far better in the polls in terms of trust has to do with accountability.

Halevi has said that he takes full responsibility for the fiasco and it is widely believed that he will assuredly step down after the war ends. This is important in restoring public trust.

Why? Because an institution can only rebuild trust if it is seen to learn from its mistakes, and one way of demonstrating that the lessons are being learned is to replace those who were in charge when the mistakes occurred. That sends a powerful message that steps are being taken to correct the situation.

That same message is not being conveyed by Netanyahu, who has only begrudgingly admitted any responsibility for October 7 and has signaled absolutely no intent of stepping down of his own volition any time soon. That different mode of operation helps explain why trust in the IDF, and its leader, is on the rise, while trust in the government, and its head, is going in the opposite direction.•