Because They Must Remain Our Why
Nirit Eylon- Hatikvah President
Last November, I met Mira Shoshani in Kfar Aza. For several hours, she walked with us through the kibbutz, taking us from one place to another and telling us what had happened there on October 7. There was no stage and no camera. We stood with her outside the homes where people had been murdered and abducted, and she told us their stories.
We stopped at the home of Smadar and Roy Idan. Smadar, like Mira, served in the Shin Bet. She and Roy were murdered that morning, while their children, Michael, nine, and Amalia, six, hid for hours inside a cupboard in the safe room. A mental health emergency worker stayed with them on the phone, helping two terrified children survive while their mother lay dead inside the house. They believed their father was dead outside, and they believed their little sister Abigail was dead too. Abigail had, in fact, made her way to neighbours and was later abducted into Gaza.
Standing outside that house, it was difficult to comprehend what those children had endured. But as we continued walking with Mira, one unbearable story followed another.
She took us to Dor Tzair, the young adults' neighbourhood where her daughter Ofir lived, and showed us where her husband, Shai, had tried to reach her on October 7. He had made it almost all the way. From where he stood, he could see Ofir's window. Only a few dozen metres separated him from his daughter, but the gunfire was so intense that he could go no further. He was shot and wounded and was forced to take cover behind a rock.
We stood there with Mira, looking from that rock to Ofir's window, and suddenly those few dozen metres felt enormous. Shai had been so close to his daughter, close enough to see where she was, yet the intensity of the fire made reaching her impossible.
Ofir was murdered. She was 20 years old.
We continued through Dor Tzair, through the burnt homes and the destruction of a neighbourhood where almost every house carried its own story of horror. Thirty-seven young people were there on October 7. Eleven were murdered and seven were taken hostage: Emily Damari, Doron Steinbrecher, Amit Soussana, Gali and Ziv Berman, Yotam Haim and Alon Shamriz.
We stood in the places where young people had fought, hidden, been murdered and abducted. We saw what remained of their homes and of the lives they had built there. It is impossible to walk through Kfar Aza, and particularly through Dor Tzair, and remain untouched. I have carried that day with me ever since.
There was, however, one thing we could not do that day. We could not take a photograph with Mira, and we could not identify her publicly. Mira was not only a bereaved mother from Kfar Aza. She was one of the most senior figures in the Shin Bet and, on October 7, the most senior woman serving in the organisation.
None of us imagined then that, months later, Mira would choose to reveal her identity and her face publicly. We certainly could not have imagined why she would need to.
Since October 7, a conspiracy theory has taken hold, promoted publicly by MK Tally Gotliv, claiming that the Shin Bet knew something was about to happen and had sent forces into the Gaza border communities to rescue its own people. Two Shin Bet women became central to that story: Mira was one, and Smadar was the other.
That is the same Smadar whose home we stood outside that day. The Shin Bet employee supposedly protected by a secret rescue operation was murdered in her own home together with her husband. Her children waited for rescue for hours, and her three-year-old daughter was abducted to Gaza.
Mira's story is different, but no less devastating. Because of her seniority and the highly sensitive information she possessed, the Shin Bet had every reason to fear what could happen if someone in her position fell into the hands of Hamas, and they wanted to get her out. But Mira would not leave while the people around her were still fighting for their lives. She demanded that others be rescued and wanted the forces to reach Ofir.
She remained in Kfar Aza for hours. By the time she left, her daughter had been murdered and her husband had been shot trying to reach her.
And somehow, from this horror, a story of betrayal was created.
I keep thinking about the Mira I met that day, because at no point did she try to absolve herself or suggest that everything had been done correctly. Quite the opposite. She spoke about failure. She was part of the system that failed on October 7, and she knows it. But she was also a mother who paid the most terrible price imaginable for that failure.
There is something deeply troubling about reaching a point where, instead of demanding answers about how October 7 happened, conspiracy theories begin to take the place of those questions. Because there are real questions, enormous ones, about the political leadership, the military, the intelligence services, the assumptions that shaped Israeli policy for years, and the decisions made before and during October 7.
Those questions deserve answers, wherever those answers may lead. They should not be selected to protect one side or designed to condemn another. What Israel needs is the truth, and that is why Israel needs a State Commission of Inquiry.
An inquiry cannot undo October 7, and establishing responsibility will not bring Ofir, Smadar, Roy or any of the others back. But a country cannot rebuild itself around competing versions of reality. It cannot heal when truth itself becomes political, and it cannot ask its citizens to trust its institutions again without allowing those institutions, and the people who led them, to be properly examined.
On October 27, Israelis will go to the polls in the first national election since October 7.
For me, the question is larger than who will govern. It is what kind of Israel we want to rebuild.
I think of Israel's Declaration of Independence and its promise of a Jewish and democratic state founded on freedom, justice and peace, with a commitment to equality. I think, too, of the relationship between Israel and Jewish communities around the world; a relationship profoundly tested since October 7.
Rebuilding Israel requires truth. Restoring trust requires accountability. And repairing the fractures within Israeli society, and between Israel and Jews around the world, requires us to acknowledge them rather than pretend they do not exist.
Hope cannot be built on conspiracy.
I still see that rock, and I still see Ofir's window. Shai could see where his daughter was, but the wall of gunfire between them was impossible to cross.
Some things cannot be repaired. Some distances can never be crossed.
What Israel does with that loss, however, is still ours to determine. October 7 can be allowed to deepen the divisions, mistrust and conspiracy that have already caused so much damage, or it can compel us to seek truth, demand accountability and begin the difficult work of rebuilding.
Mira had the courage to tell the truth about her loss and about the failure of the system she served. We owe it to her, to Ofir, to Smadar and Roy, to the people of Kfar Aza, and to everyone whose life changed on October 7, to have the courage to seek that truth too, and from it, to rebuild a country worthy of their memory and of the promise on which Israel was founded.
Because they must remain our why.
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