Know the terrain. Know the players. Not everyone moving is building.

After October 7, something shifted.

Not politically or abstractly, but internally. A low-level alarm that doesn’t turn off. The sense that something fundamental changed, even if you can’t fully explain it yet.

It’s the same instinct, I imagine, that pushed my great-great-grandparents onto a boat 150 years ago—the realization that something isn’t right, and that waiting it out isn’t a strategy.

Everything in me said to leave. Go to Israel. Put myself somewhere that feels aligned with where things are heading, not where they’ve been.

If it were that simple, I would have.

But it isn’t. There are responsibilities here—family, community, real ties that don’t get picked up and relocated overnight. And frankly, just because I feel this way doesn’t mean my wife does—or that I get to make that decision alone.

So the question stopped being whether to leave, and became what it means to stay.

And for me, that isn’t a casual question.

This isn’t a hobby. It isn’t a way to stay busy, and it isn’t a bid for attention.

It’s an acknowledgment of reality.

If you believe something fundamental has shifted—if you believe the conditions around you are changing in ways that affect your family, your community, and your future—then stepping in stops being optional.

At that point, doing nothing isn’t neutral—it’s a decision.

That’s what brought me into this work.

Not interest. Not ambition.

Doing nothing wasn’t an option.

So like a lot of others, I stepped in.

At first, you assume there’s a system. That there are clear roles, clear leadership, and some kind of structure behind the movement.

What you actually find is something looser. People moving quickly, often with good intentions, but not always with clarity. Authority that isn’t always defined. Responsibility that isn’t always claimed.

And that’s where things start to break.

Not because people don’t care—but because they step into situations they don’t fully understand.

Most of the people entering this space are not seasoned organizers or institutional leaders.

They’re people who showed up.

Which means they’re the most likely to get it right—and the most likely to get it wrong.

This isn’t a guide to theory.

It’s a guide to what you’re walking into.

Definition: The people who hold the community together before, during, and after the moment.

What They Do:Maintain relationships, institutional memory, and continuity. They understand the local landscape—formal and informal.

Strength:Stability. Trust. Long-term credibility. They know what will hold—and what will fracture.

Failure Mode:Can appear slow, resistant, or invisible in fast-moving situations. Often overlooked by outsiders who don’t understand their role.

What This Means for You:Figure out who actually carries responsibility—formal or not. Work with that reality, not around it.

If you move without that clarity, you’re not stepping up.

You’re creating instability someone else will have to absorb.

Definition: The people who turn urgency into action.

What They Do:Mobilize quickly. Connect people. Execute without waiting for perfect structure.

Strength:Speed. Momentum. Ability to act when others hesitate.

Failure Mode:Outpace alignment. Create parallel efforts. Initiate faster than systems can absorb.

What This Means for You:Just because something is moving fast doesn’t mean it’s moving correctly.

Before you plug in, understand who is actually directing the effort—and whether they’re accountable for the outcome.

Definition: The people who control reach and visibility.

What They Do:Take local situations and project them outward—often instantly and at scale.

Strength:Awareness. Pressure. Resource activation.

Failure Mode:Distort nuance. Escalate prematurely. Turn complex realities into simplified narratives.

What This Means for You:Visibility is not structure.

Just because something is getting attention doesn’t mean it’s understood—or that it’s being handled correctly on the ground.

Don’t take reach as direction.

Definition: The people who create access between networks.

What They Do: Make introductions. Open doors. Move information across groups that wouldn’t otherwise connect.

Strength:Alignment. Opportunity. Speed of relationship-building.

Failure Mode:Blur authority. Introduce people into situations without structure. Create movement without accountability.

What This Means for You:Being introduced to someone doesn’t mean they’re in charge.

Clarify roles immediately.

Access is not authority.

Definition:The people who show up ready to help.

What They Do:They carry the work. They execute. They are often the reason anything actually gets done.

Strength:Energy. Commitment. Willingness to step in.

Where It Goes Wrong:Most volunteers assume there is more structure than there actually is.

They take direction at face value.They assume the person giving it has authority.They move quickly—because they care.

That’s where things break.

Volunteers get pulled in different directions.Given conflicting instructions.Or placed into situations they don’t fully understand.

When that happens, they don’t just become ineffective.

How to Move Correctly:Before you act, get three things clear:

What exactly am I being asked to do?

What exactly am I being asked to do?

Who am I accountable to?

Who am I accountable to?

Where does my role stop?

Where does my role stop?

If you can’t answer those, pause.

Not every instruction is leadership.Not every loud voice is in charge.

And if something feels unclear, it probably is.

Definition:The people who enter during the moment but are not tied to its outcome.

What They Do:Observe, document, amplify, and sometimes participate.

Strength:Attention. Energy. External perspective.

Failure Mode:Act without consequence. Shape situations they won’t stay to manage.

What This Means for You:Someone showing up from outside may bring energy—but they don’t carry the outcome.

Don’t confuse presence with responsibility.

A Note on Performative Advocacy

Up to this point, these are roles. They exist whether you name them or not, and most of them, in the right balance, are necessary. What follows is something different.

You start to recognize it the longer you stay in this work. Not immediately, but after you’ve been through a few cycles—after you’ve watched how things unfold not just in the moment, but in what comes after.

It begins the same way every time. Something happens, people move, and energy builds. Then someone steps forward quickly and confidently into the center of it. They weren’t there before, and they are not tied to what comes after, but in that moment they are everywhere—speaking, directing, framing what is happening.

If you don’t know better, it looks like leadership. It feels like leadership. It fills a vacuum.

But leadership is not stepping in. Leadership is staying. Leadership is being responsible for what your actions set in motion.

That is where this breaks.

Because when the situation becomes more complicated—when relationships need repair, when lines need to be clarified, when someone has to answer for what happened—those same voices are no longer central. Sometimes they are gone entirely.

What they leave behind does not disappear with them. It lands somewhere. Usually on the people who were already there.

That is the cost of performative advocacy. Not bad intentions—misplaced ones. Action without ownership. Direction without responsibility. Visibility without consequence.

And it is becoming more common, because it is rewarded. It looks effective, it moves quickly, and it fills a need in the moment.

But it does not hold.

Most people entering this space are Volunteers.

That’s not a lower role. It’s the foundation of everything.

But it’s also where people get it wrong most often.

When you show up, you want to help. And in moments like these, help feels like movement—say yes, step in, do something. But not every direction is leadership, not every person giving instructions is accountable, and not every situation is as structured as it appears from the outside.

So slow down—just enough to understand where you are.

Ask who was here before you, who is actually responsible, what you are being asked to do and by whom, and what happens if it goes wrong.

If those answers are not clear, you do not have a structure. You have movement. And movement without structure is where most of the damage happens.

Helping is not just about doing something. It is about doing the right thing, in the right place, with the right people—and knowing when not to step further.

If you are not accountable for the outcome, you are not in a position to lead.

Most mistakes in grassroots advocacy do not come from bad intentions. They come from people moving too quickly inside unclear structures, trying to help while stepping into roles that were never actually theirs.

That is how things get complicated. That is how communities absorb damage that did not need to happen.

After October 7, a lot of us felt the same shift—that something fundamental had changed, that the ground was less stable than it used to be.

Some people left. Some are still planning to. And some of us are here, trying to figure out what it means to stay.

This is part of that answer.

Not reacting blindly. Not outsourcing responsibility. Not confusing noise for strength. Building something that actually holds.

Something your kids can grow up inside of without feeling like it is one bad moment away from unraveling.

That does not come from who shows up the fastest. It comes from people who understand the weight of what they are stepping into and choose to carry it properly.

After a while, you stop asking who showed up.

You start asking who is still there when it is over.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)