Day 3
First, Noni, the son of my former entrepreneur and the former Minister of Science and Technology Izhar Shay, was killed late last night. Our hearts are broken for Izhar and his family and for other families that have been destroyed by barbaric Hamas murderers, rapists and kidnappers. May his and others’ memories be a blessing and give us strength to keep fighting for life, for liberty and for a safe homeland. In their death, these brave young people have commanded us to steadfastly pursue life. In yesterday’s post, I wrote: “Israel is the most resilient and strongest civil society in the world. This is what gives life meaning. It tells you who Israel is. People committed to each other. We are our brothers’ keeper.”
Today I want to tell you about Israel’s civic society. For much of the last two days many people have been coordinating between massive civilian and governmental efforts. Hundreds of former soldiers (“Brothers in Arms”) brought their jeeps and weapons to the south of Israel, coordinating over WhatsApp groups and command centers they set up in the south of Israel, have bravely saved tens if not hundreds of families who were under fire by Hamas terrorists in the communities and kibbutzim in a 10-kilometer radius outside of Gaza.
Some of my entrepreneurs opened a forward command center to coordinate locating the people who were trapped, made sure the army said it was safe enough to enter and coordinated with brave jeep owners who went to rescue the families. One of our entrepreneurs has worked around the clock since early Saturday morning on his phone and laptop and literally saved tens of lives by identifying people trapped in their homes or left bleeding in fields, coordinating efforts to rescue them. Another built an app to enable civilians to report and confirm incidents and local needs.
You cannot find a flight back to Israel in the last two days because those Israelis who serve in reserve duty are rushing to get back. Ordinary people, reservists, are leaving their jobs, rushing to get back and fight for freedom. Fight for life. Fight for good. People have rented private planes from London and elsewhere to fly reservists back since most foreign airlines have canceled all flights. As Tal Heinrich wrote, that is what happens “when duty calls,” and there is no population that duty calls to more than Israelis, and particularly former Israeli soldiers.
Tonight I went to visit one of my sons who is now at an army base waiting for instructions. When I arrived I could not believe my eyes: For as far as I could see and more, there were cars parked on both sides of the road and on both sides of the center divide. When I asked my son whose cars they were, I learned it was reservists who had been called up, parked their cars on the road on Saturday and arrived at the base. We drove the length of the parked cars: It extended for four kilometers.
The scene outside the base was wild. It was 10: 45 p.m. There were restaurateurs who pitched tents to serve food they brought for soldiers. It felt like every mother and sister in the country was walking in with cooked food. Endless numbers of people walked around with aluminum tins filled with food. There were young girls in long skirts walking around handing out extra pairs of socks, towels, toiletries, Red Bull and other military supplies that they brought for our soldiers. As we prepared to leave, a flatbed truck pulled up with a massive amount of more supplies. These were all civilian volunteer efforts, most organized over WhatsApps and on Google forms and sheets.
In Beer Sheba, Roni Flamer and Lev Echad and other One Heart volunteers are working through the night to get supplies for civilians affected by the barbarism and first responders in the cities and towns. Civilians bought ceramic vests for soldiers and first responders, headlamps, knee pads, drones and endless supplies of clothing, food, toiletries, bedding and more to those who have been chased from their homes and living in temporary shelter or other people’s homes. My 17-year-old nephew is running a WhatsApp group of 1,000 high school kids collecting food and toys for the families who have been forced from their homes. My son and son-in-law drove six hours today to pick up and deliver supplies to soldiers and first responders. My younger daughters and their friends joined WhatsApp groups for babysitters because so many men have been called up, school has been canceled and mothers need help with kids. There are groups of doctors and nurses, people with jeeps and drones, software engineers who are building tools to report issues and verify information to reduce the fog of war, hell and uncertainty that many families are living through now since their loved ones are unaccounted for. Yesterday, the Shomer Hachadash received a request for people who know how to milk cows since the people who run the barns have been called up. Teenagers are volunteering to milk cows over the coming days around the country because we need to keep the shelves stocked.
This tells a larger story, one I have written about in some of my books. Governments have 20th-century operating systems. Citizens have 21st-century operating systems. Governments run at the rate of the pony express and maybe Windows 95. Civilians and businesses today run agile and much much faster. Civic self-organization is power and prosperity. It is also joie de vivre. Governments’ inability to address many of our challenges is because their OS is outdated.
However, in many countries, civilian society is apathetic. Not in Israel. We are a mobilized and vibrant civic society. If you followed the judicial reform process and protests, you saw it (on both sides) in spades, and now it is on full display at wartime. Ministers and ministries, secretaries and government offices are struggling globally. Winning 21st-century countries will be defined by civic involvement, civilian populations mobilized for good, motivated to create a better society, triggered to empower their fellow citizens through fast-advancing technology and human empathy. Civilian armies that bring people together to fight shoulder-to-shoulder to protect the ideals and people that are dear to us are critical for esprit de corps, for binding society and inspiring calls to action. It can be very messy but it is meaningful and more impactful. It is a significant and meaningful change.
This means that much activity traditionally the purview of governments will become more distributed. Centralization is crumbling in many ways. Agility and motivated civilians are winning. Those societies with motivated and activist populations, those that value life and are willing to sacrifice for it, will win over the next decades. Those societies with a will to live, to contribute, to build a better future for children and grandchildren will do whatever it takes. Israel has those essential components and we are motivated. With God’s help, a motivated, inspiring population and an incredibly strong and resilient civil society, we will win and beat back the barbarians at our gates and in some of our streets and then we will get back to building a better 21st-century society.
Michael Eisenberg is originally from the NYC area and is co-founder and general partner at Aleph, an early stage venture capital fund with $850 million under management. He has been a venture capitalist for 25 years. Aleph focuses on partnering with great Israeli entrepreneurs to build large, meaningful companies and impactful global brands. Since its founding in 2013, Aleph has invested in more than 50 companies, including Melio, Lemonade (NYSE: LMND), Bringg, JoyTunes, Healthy.io.
Since 2006, Eisenberg has been writing the blog “Six Kids and a Full Time Job,” on topics ranging from politics to technology to Judaism to macroeconomics. He is a contributor to Calcalist and TheMarker, Israel’s Hebrew-language daily business newspapers, and is the author of the “The Hummus Manifesto,” the seminal piece on Israel’s innovation scene. Eisenberg has also published five books in Hebrew. He lectures frequently on venture capital, Israel and entrepreneurship. He serves on the board of the nonprofit organization Yeshivat Har Etzion and is the chairman of The Shomer Hachadash. Eisenberg lives in Jerusalem with his wife and eight children
