Until last weekend, Ofaimme Farm was a fast-growing food business with eight restaurants across Israel and plans for three more.
But since October 7, the day of Hamas’s devastating cross-border attack, normal service has been suspended and the farm-to-table business has been transformed into a relief operation.
Employees are now preparing food packages and donations for the army and others in need, while some employees are also volunteering in places where there are shortages due to Israel’s increasing war effort in Gaza, the Palestinian territory where the attackers were based, for example in nursing homes.
“I don’t know when we’ll get back to normal,” said Hedai Offaim, its co-owner. “It is important that the front lines feel the support of their backs and that we feel that we are supporting.”
Offaim is one of millions of Israelis who have rallied to the war effort since the attack that rocked the Jewish state and killed more than 1,400 people, according to Israeli officials. Some have enlisted as soldiers or in the emergency services. Others help wherever they can.
An IDF reservist at Kibbutz Kfar Aza, where dozens of civilians were killed last weekend © Alexi J Rosenfeld/Getty ImagesThe deadly attacks exposed what many Israelis believe were serious mistakes by their civilian and military leaders. But united in grief and anger, Jewish Israeli society quickly mobilized and organized in the days that followed.
Some 360,000 military reservists – including from the farms that grow food for Offaim’s restaurants – have been called up to fight, in what Israeli officials say is the largest mobilization in its conflict-ridden history.
Israel has been besieging Gaza since the attack, bombarding the enclave with air strikes and artillery fire to prepare for an expected ground invasion. More than a million Palestinians have also been ordered to move from the north to the south of the cordoned off area. At least 2,329 people, including many children, have been killed in Gaza since the attack, according to Palestinian health authorities.
Fighting-age Israelis living or traveling abroad have booked flights home. The demand is so great that a flight from Bangkok to Tel Aviv on El Al, the national airline, last week allowed excess passengers to sit on floors and aisles.
Rows of cars line the roadsides at the entrance to Israeli military bases as reservists report for duty. According to the Israeli military, many units had a reporting rate of over 100 percent and had to turn people away.
Hotels across Israel have also opened their doors to accommodate some of the thousands displaced by the attacks in the south of the country. Some of the evacuees are waiting for information about their relatives, including the more than 120 Israelis held captive in Gaza, while others are mourning relatives killed at funerals for them.
Ariel, 28, and his father were on holiday in Bulgaria on the day of the attack and immediately made plans to return. His old military branch, the Navy, did not call him up despite repeated requests. So Ariel “pulled the strings” to secure a place at an air force base.
“I have friends who were killed and kidnapped at the rave,” he said, referring to the Supernova music festival near the Gaza border where an estimated 260 young people were slaughtered. “I can’t just sit there and do nothing.”
Another soldier, Ben, who like other Israeli soldiers declined to give his last name, posted an online video urging people to buy and donate items to the troops, including blister plasters, black tape – that used to attach equipment to weapons – and black pins used to mark the time when a medical tourniquet is applied. “If you leave it on for too long, someone can literally lose a limb,” he said.
Ordinary Israelis and civil society groups are pulling together in this way, even though, as many claim, state support is almost non-existent and the state is failing to fulfill its duty to protect.
An armed Israeli civilian with a child evacuates his home in Sderot, southern Israel © Jonathan Alpeyrie/BloombergDuring Hamas’s multi-pronged dawn attack, more than 1,500 militants broke through the security barrier to attack towns and military bases. It was the deadliest in Israel’s history and is widely seen as the biggest intelligence failure since Egypt and Syria led a surprise Arab offensive against Israel in 1973.
Rapid response teams made up of battle-hardened civilians have now been deployed across the country, including in places once considered safe and secure. In Herzliya Pituach, a wealthy beach community near Tel Aviv, more than two dozen residents have banded together, armed with their own handguns.
“There used to be a neighborhood watch, but no one was involved,” said Dan, 41, one of the volunteers.
The October 7 attack changed not only Israeli society but also its politics. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week appointed his former rival Benny Gantz, a retired general and leader of a center-right opposition party, to a new unity government.
The large protest movement against Netanyahu’s right-wing extremist coalition and its judicial reforms also immediately stopped their demonstrations. Instead, it was converted into a “civil war room” that coordinates the supply of food and toiletries to troops, as well as housing and assistance to civilians in need.
The blue and white Israeli flag, considered a symbol of the protest movement for months, is now proudly flown from cars and houses as a sign of unity during the war.
“Everyone knows someone who is lost and won’t return,” prominent protest leader Shikma Bressler said in a recent video. “And everyone has someone who is on the battlefield at this moment.”
The banners of the protest movement that had been ubiquitous for months were replaced by a sea of posters with a simple message: “Together we will win.”