In the following pages, we’ll explore how a large part of the current Israeli establishment—the left, center, and sometimes even the security and political leaders—insists on pushing the Palestinians into a peace-minded mold they have no interest in fitting. This stubborn approach has led to more bloodshed on both sides and a diplomatic defeat for Israel.

Most importantly, we’ll try to understand why Israel is so obsessed with this idea and why it struggles to achieve a decisive victory in the current Gaza campaign, even after the major shock of October 7th.

“They Want Peace”

In the decades that have followed Israel’s conception, especially from the 1990s onwards, there have been countless proofs attesting to a basic truth of the status quo: Israel offers the Palestinians various peace arrangements, and they respond with rejection – whether through words, or by way of initiating ‘Intifadas’ and attacks. Any couple’s therapist would immediately recognize the inherent asymmetry in this relationship: Israel courts, and the Palestinians play hard to get.  This inherently unbalanced relationship dynamic is one that is doomed to failure, resulting from a deep misunderstanding of the driving Palestinian motives.

This basic failure to properly conceptualize the Palestinian cause is seen  in an interview between Shaul Amsterdamski from ‘Kan,’ Israel’s national public broadcaster, and former Justice Minister Gideon Sa’ar. When Sa’ar explained his strong opposition to a Palestinian state, Amsterdamski pressed him, asking, “Don’t you think a nation whose only hope is to someday have a state, if you completely take away that hope and say never, will only continue with aggression?” Sa’ar replied: “If the Palestinian vision was a state, from 1948 and countless times afterwards, they could have achieved a state. In my opinion, you have ample evidence that the real Palestinian aspiration is in fact the destruction of the State of Israel.”

Why is it that a senior interviewer at ‘Kan,’ – a seasoned reporter familiar with Israeli affairs – thinks that the Palestinians’ “only hope” is to have a state? How did this  puzzling claim become an axiom that needs to be disproved? Haven’t the Palestinians already shown– in words and actions – that establishing a ‘state’ was never the goal of the Palestinian national movement? Why are the ongoing and ever-present series of Palestinian sabotages to the processes meant to establish a state for them – from the second Intifada to the events of October 7th – explained away again and again? What is the factual basis for the argument of the necessity of  Palestinian statehood, and what explains its outsized role in the political consciousness of Israel?

The Oslo Process and the multinational hopes pinned on it showcases probably the most accurate historical expression of the impossible gap between the Palestinian-held narrative of the conflict and the narrative that Israel attributed to them. Despite visions of guaranteed peaceful and prosperous coexistence, the “Singapore of the Middle East” never came to be, and the millions of dollars sunk into Gaza – a territory effectively exorcized of Jews and the IDF as part of the transition to supposed statehood – the Palestinians were not invested in fostering their nascent state. They instead focused their efforts on unprecedented levels of armament and fortification, and on nurturing a desperate, fatalistic society – one that promoted the real goal of the Palestinian national movement in brilliant cooperation with political Islam:  destroying the State of Israel.

“They just want to live in peace like us” was one of the most popular proclamations in Israel, at least among the left and center, for decades. “We are all human beings,” held such adherents, “and if we only correct the injustices of the occupation / lift the siege / truly respect them,” then these efforts would be responded to in good faith by a people who supposedly only sought to provide for themselves and their families. But while the truth of these statements seemed to shatter loudly on October 7th, they soon resurfaced in the discourse.

The Israeli tendency to attribute nonexistent aspirations of peace and coexistence to the Palestinians also affects areas of the public sphere entirely unrelated to the political field. Such is, for instance, the tendency of both the police and the media to determine that incidents of death are criminal events or suicides, and to dismiss ‘nationalistic motives’ – which are later revealed to only the few who continue to follow the case. Only in recent years has the Israeli discourse been weaned off another troubling phenomenon that accompanied the routine of terror attacks over the years: the  attempt by the Israeli victims of such attacks to attribute the motive for violence against the Zionist enterprise to some “trigger” originating from Israeli society.

In other words, the Israeli media consistently downplays the enemy’s inherently harmful intentions and depth of hatred towards Israel in an effort  to exhaustively maintain the false narrative that he seeks only “a good life,” or at most, his own sovereignty over a limited area—aims that supposedly to not conflict with Israeli interests.

Additionally, this trend is characterized by a lenient – even romantic – attitude towards Israeli Arabs (often manifesting in an admiration for ‘authentic’ ‘Baladi’  Arabness and a disdain towards Arabs who have adopted Zionist positions), while simultaneously amplifying disproportionately any violent action by Jews against Arabs. This is tendency is driven by a nearly explicit desire to point out symmetry so that proponents of this philosophy can condemn “extremists on both sides” (a concept that became popular during the Oslo Accords, as described by Yuval Blumberg in his article in the previous issue), thereby creating common ground – even when the basis for such comparison is entirely baseless. Even these days, when Israel’s enemies have seemingly never made both their bloodthirsty aims and barbaric methods more transparent, there are those who choose to juxtapose them with struggles over grazing lands and to label them as “settler violence” (even though some such incidents are sanctioned IDF actions). Such justification gives third parties – such as the current American administration – the perfect opportunity to counteract its own supposed support for the Israeli campaign in Gaza, thereby showing its “balanced” actions against “both sides.”

Context

Taken within the context of Israeli politics, these phenomena are often attributed to a desire to settle an internal argument between the right and left. Yet this explains only a small part of them. The left in Israel is small, and demonstrations against the “occupation” – which has lasted for over fifty years – do not attract more than a handful. In contrast, the tendency to downplay – or even justify – Palestinian hostility, assume they strive for peace, and hold as an axiom that the future depends entirely on coexistence is widely prevalent within various circles of Israeli society, and possesses a much stronger grip on its leadership systems, from government officials to the IDF.

It is clear, then, that this phenomenon is not just the result of ‘leftism,’ and certainly not radical leftism. The sheer scope of public partners in this ideology, and the degree of intensity embodied in them – the stubborn adherence to the narrative despite its clear self-deception – indicate that this is an entrenched paradigm – a fundamental position on the conflict and Zionism, rather than any sort of fleeting misconstruction – whose roots may indeed stem from the Israeli left, but whose branches shade the central column of Israeli identity.

The most common explanation for the impulse to whitewash the Palestinians into peace seekers is the natural and expected extension of Israel’s long-standing sovereign success story. We – as Israelis – established a state, gathered exiles, developed an economy – and now it holds that the inevitable next step in the realization of Zionism is to reach peace with our regional neighbors, the ‘Palestinians’ with whom we are deeply entangled. We do not want the fate of perpetual war that sometimes seems to be our destiny. Like the generations before us, we too want the sons we raise not to be drafted into mandatory military service, and certainly not to be required to participate in war. Such a conclusion – the desire for peace, stability, and prosperity – seems like the simplest thing in the world.

This is a commonly given explanation, and in many contexts, it is undoubtedly correct; yet it cannot fully explain the willful self-deception regarding our enemy’s intentions. If the goal were truly to achieve peace (in the sense of quiet and non-belligerence), we would act out of constant examination of what aids peace and what distances it. Israeli history has long taught that peace in this sense – that is, quiet and the absence of threat – is almost always achieved from a firm posture of strength, not from endless compromise. Any sober observer of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict recognizes that striving for ‘peace’ by way of political or military compromises perhaps advances the Palestinians towards their national aspirations, but distances Israelis from achieving security and tranquility — what we once deemed ‘peace.’ A look at the map of Israel and it’s history, for example, reveals the unspoken secret: the more aggressively an area has been ‘conquered,’ the more its Israeli residents live in peace, and the broader the consensus about it in Israeli society.

In simple terms, ‘peace’ – in the sense of tranquility and prosperity – can be achieved by way of two main avenues. The first is through decisive deterrence that repels the enemy while discouraging further attacks, like the peace enjoyed in the days of King Solomon(“For he ruled over all the kingdoms west of the Euphrates River, from Tiphsah to Gaza, and had peace on all sides,” Kings I 5:4), the Roman and British empires, or in Europe following the World Wars. Alternatively, peace can result from reaching compromises and crafting agreements with the enemy to end hostilities, as was the case with the Israeli-Egyptian peace agreements of the late seventies.

The position that seeks to view the Palestinians as potential partners for coexistence in spite of all conflicting evidence does not stem, therefore, solely from the simple desire for peace and quiet; for then it would examine both avenues for peace – that of both decisiveness and of compromise. In that case, it would likely be concluded that, at least regarding the Palestinians, security and tranquility must come from the decisive path, a conclusion that has indeed driven many Israelis towards the right over the years. And yet, despite the many real-world affirmations of a strong-minded course of action, Israelis from the left, the center, and even parts of the right – along with most media channels and a significant part of the security establishment – prefer to continue striving endlessly for a peaceful coexistence that does not seem at all on the horizon.

Why? What logic of the Israeli center and left leads  to a strategy that has proven a failure time and again, and what is it that continually prevents our establishment leaders from taking the decisive steps necessary on the path to bring peace?

The Legitimacy Crisis

“I impose a severe, cruel separation on my thoughts between the internal motives of the return to Zion and its justification towards others. The yearnings are a motive but not a justification. Our justification towards the Arab inhabitants of the land cannot rely on our long-standing longings through all generations. The Zionist enterprise has no objective justification other than the justice of a drowning person grasping at the only straw that could save him. And that’s enough. Here, an issue that I will return to needs to be prefaced: a vast moral difference lies between a drowning person who grasps a plank and pushes aside – even with force – the other occupants of the plank and a drowning person who takes over the entire plank and throws its other occupants into the water. This is the moral reason behind our repeated and principled agreement to divide the land. This is the difference between the Judaization of Jaffa and Ramle and the Judaization of Shechem and Ramallah.”  (Amos Oz, Under The Blazing Light, 1978)

As is noted in the preceding paragraphs, Amos Oz views himself as a Zionist, and he recognizes the deep connection of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel. However, in his view, this matter is irrelevant to the question of justification against the Arabs .

Oz is perhaps considered a relatively left-leaning figure within the Zionist spectrum. However, intellectuals sometimes possess the unique ability to express thoughts that many others share but cannot articulate. While I do not wish to engage in a moral or historical debate about Oz’s argument, it is important for us to understand the essence of this perception and its broader implications.

According to Oz, the drowning person may push aside the other occupants of the plank, but he is not allowed to throw them into the water. However, what if the other occupants of the plank do not agree to be pushed aside? What will our drowning person do if they want him to drown?

In such a case, our drowning person has only one option: to defend himself against those who would see to his demise, so that the other plank occupants understand they have no chance of toppling him and opt instead to reconcile. But what will he do when they continually refuse the option of coexistence? What will he do when he realizes he must remain vigilant, invest all his meager forces in his own defense, and live ‘on the edge’ at all times?

Undoubtedly, when our drowning person formulated for himself the moral strategy of ‘pushing but not throwing off,’ he only made himself a hostage at the hands of the other plank occupants. They entirely hold the initiative, and therefore can choose to reconcile with him, or they can also fight him relentlessly; after all, he has already limited himself. By curtailing the scope of his strategic moves to only a response, our drowning man has placed himself at the mercy of his adversary’s actions. He is their guest rather than the arbitrator of his own existence

This strange parable by Oz essentially affirms that the real rights to the land belong entirely to the Arabs. Accordingly, the Jews have no land of their own in the world; they are merely ‘drowning’ victims. The Jewish relation to and presence in Israel is nothing but a desperate bid for survival ; their hold on the land cannot become moral and legitimate unless by the approval of the ‘landlords,’ whose right to the plank is not to be questioned. As for the drowning victim, in the name of survival he may even threaten the plank’s occupants with a knife or a gun so they let him sit, but he must not throw them off entirely.

In this moral experiment, it turns out that, at least in Oz’s eyes, the question of “whose land is it” – a question that sometimes seems archaic or tedious – is in fact vital in discerning the root cause  of the Zionist conduct in the war thus far. For if the land is not truly theirs, they cannot justifiably dispossess others from it, even if they have proven to be a bitter and cruel enemy. By this warped way of thinking, eternal war is completely conscionable in the name of moral rectitude. Decisive victory? Heaven forbid. This is a parable that would render the current conflict for the land unwinnable.

Doubtlessly not all left-leaning Zionists, and certainly not the center, agree with Oz’s position. The idea that the age-old connection between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel is merely a “motive” for the Jews, and has no bearing on the State of Israel’s international legitimacy stands in stark contrast to all Zionist logic – which did not originate on the right. When the Allied Powers decided in the spring of 1920 to grant Britain a mandate from the League of Nations to develop a “national home for the Jewish people” in the Land of Israel (on both sides of the Jordan), they did so based on two – correct – assumptions that Oz denies. One, that the significance of a deep historical connection carries not only internal but also external significance “in the law of nations,” and two, that this territory in question was largely a “land without a people,” i.e., a sparsely populated and ill-developed area possessing no cohesive national collective seeking self-determination.

Of course, the Zionist leadership itself saw it this way. The Declaration of Independence, written primarily as a document of legitimacy for the international community, opens with an acknowledgment of the special connection between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel, emphasizes the Western recognition of the rights derived from this connection, and continues with the assertion that the establishment of a Jewish state in the Land of Israel is done “by virtue of our natural and historic right.”

However, although most modern Zionists do not agree with Oz’s assumptions, there is no doubt that the legitimacy of Zionism—especially concerning the Arabs of the Land of Israel—has been increasingly questioned. This doubt has deepened particularly after Arab refugees successfully introduced the term “Palestinians” into Israeli discourse, retroactively creating the perception of a national entity from which Zionism supposedly usurped the land. This shift has taken root in the hearts of many Israelis, especially within the secular community, which views the mythic narrative of the Jewish people with skepticism and often prioritizes their Western-liberal identity over it.

As deep-rooted Zionism weakens, it is being replaced by a Zionism founded on Holocaust victimhood, leading to dire consequences. Today, Israelis often take their important guests to Yad Vashem as if it were the foundation of Zionism. While they remain skilled in defending the land, they have lost the will to decisively win the struggle over it.

Do We Even Want to Win?

“Two are holding onto a cloak; one says, ‘I found it,’ and the other says, ‘I found it.’ This one says, ‘It’s all mine,’ and that one says, ‘It’s all mine.’ This one shall swear that he has no less than half in it, and that one shall swear that he has no less than half in it, and they shall divide it. This one says, ‘It’s all mine,’ and that one says, ‘Half of it is mine.’ The one who says, ‘It’s all mine,’ shall swear that he has no less than three parts in it, and the one who says, ‘Half of it is mine,’ shall swear that he has no less than a quarter. This one takes three parts, and that one takes a quarter.” (Mishnah Bava Metzia 1:1)

We want to win – just not a win that might upset the status quo. We would prefer a vulnerable coexistence based on an unstable deterrence, rather than any sense of decisiveness. There is a clear reason for this: the paradigm of decisiveness – i.e., ‘taking the whole pot’ and fully pushing our enemies out of the arena – morally repels us. We don’t want to be the same as those who came, conquered, and threw the ‘natives’ to the winds.

Therefore, Israel cannot decisively end the campaign against it – neither the specific current battle (with Hamas), nor the larger general one (the handling of Judea and Samaria, Lebanon, etc.). In its attempts to operate on every volatile front while not counteracting its self-imposed moral standards, the State has only achieved what appears to be a grand parade of folly: routine heavy investments in fortification and the occasional use of great military force – but not decisive attacks; rather, those that ‘exact a price’ without bringing victory, leaving us repeatedly going in circles while having gained no real ground.

Our view of ourselves and the conflict isn’t about defeating the Arabs; it’s about getting them to reconcile with us and live alongside us. And if reality doesn’t allow that—if they refuse to reconcile and coexist—we’ll try to force it to fit our vision. We’ll put words in their mouths, look for a nonexistent “partner” underground, bang our heads against the wall, and keep going back to the same failed processes. Most importantly, we focus on managing the conflict nobly, aiming for coexistence instead of making hard, decisive choices.

This strategy, by the way, doesn’t necessarily lead to moral high ground. To force the Arabs to reconcile with us, we’re willing to use extreme violence and keep the cycle of bloodshed going for years. To stop them from giving up and fleeing, which would force us to make a definitive decision, we’re willing to imprison them and block any attempts at finding alternative, non-violent solutions to the conflict.

After October 7th, Israel could have toppled Hamas and resolved the Gaza issue with a swift, decisive approach, similar to the IDF’s initial move in the north. This would involve a total siege on Gaza, cutting off fuel and electricity, creating a humanitarian corridor to Sinai despite Egyptian opposition, and relocating all Gazan populations there. Fighting across a civilian free Gaza  and depriving the enemy of supplies would have shortened the conflict. While this strategy has issues—refugees, Egyptian backlash, international shock—it could be an efficient, decisive, and potentially a less bloody solution for both sides.

Why didn’t we take a stronger approach? Sure, concerns about American and international support played a part. But that’s not the whole story, and probably not even the main reason. It’s hard to argue that a more decisive military strategy would have led to tougher resistance. A quick, decisive fight would have likely spared us from the current issues—like running low on ammunition and losing international support because of prolonged, unresolved conflict. We had the means, the motive, and the international sentiment for a decisive counterassault. After 7/10, we had the green light to make a bold move.

“They Aren’t Going Anywhere”

Why did we not respond with overwhelming military force on an occasion when it would have been both publicly justifiable and tactically correct? Why didn’t we take decisive action? Precisely because it would have determined the entire narrative. The entire long-term story. It would have created—at least in the minds of Arabs—a second ‘Nakba,’ conclusively affirming that the land of Israel belongs to the Jews, and that the Arabs must find solutions outside of it, rather than endlessly resisting our established presence in the region.

Despite it undoubtedly being in our best interest, this act of self-affirmation is something we lack the moral self-confidence to undertake. The land, after all, is not solely ours, and we need their existence here to justify our own. Consequently, we will continue to shed blood for generations, primarily to maintain the Arab enemy’s proximity to us.

This is a subtle but very deep issue: it is important to us – and I am mainly referring to Israelis from the center and left – that there be an Arab minority here, in order to reaffirm to ourselves that we are not a homogenous nation-state (perceived as inferior and morally flawed) but a corrected ‘universal’ state comprised of diverse coexisting parties. This is a kind of moral signaling to ourselves; and the desire not to shatter this self-image drives us to “fit” reality to our ideals. We “celebrate” coexistence even where there is limited national loyalty, “forget” the Arabs when talking about the burden of equality, and prefer to “contain” or gloss over a certain degree of Islamic fanaticism and nationalism within such populations.

Such unwise internal oversights aside, we have allowed this very issue to escalate even further when it comes to Arabs who are not Israeli citizens, i.e., the Palestinian population determined to exterminate us. It is important to us – and again, I mean mainly Israelis from the center and left – that our Palestinian enemies be included as part of the end-of-conflict picture. Only the existence of a Palestinian entity – no matter how hostile or defunct – next to us, or a Palestinian minority within allows us to regard ourselves as a worthy and moral state, rather than as a colonial power or a chauvinistic nation-state. The expression “they aren’t going anywhere,” often heard in the discourse about resolving the conflict, is not only a grim and sober acknowledgment of a harsh reality but also a kind of unconscious internal wish. Such sentiments reflect a preference for a game with the rule that “they aren’t going anywhere,” a game we play that allows us to continue maintaining our moral perception of ourselves.

This is the most probable explanation for the deep reluctance of many left-leaning Israeli factions to talk about the potential emigration of Gazans from the Strip – even when they themselves desire it, and when, from a humanitarian perspective, it is the most logical thing. The rehabilitation of the Strip, according to all opinions, will take many years; the desire for emigration is present and very evident among the Strip’s residents even before the war and even more so after it; and preventing war refugees from fleeing to neighboring countries – as Egypt does – is contrary to international law and the most basic of humanitarian commitments. In other words, even without the Israeli interest in preventing a supportive Hamas population from re-establishing on our border, opening Gaza’s gates for emigration is the most logical act from any pro-humanitarian perspective. Despite this, the Israeli left continually refuses to even think of criticizing Egypt for closing the border, and certainly does not expect the Western world to open its gates to Gaza’s displaced. On the contrary: it feels the need to recoil in shock and horror from any talk of facilitating emigration or even simply pushing for open gates to encourage such.

Moreover: one of the relatively agreed-upon lessons from the events of October 7th is that, even after the war, a Gaza Strip constituted of its original population and self-rule will pose an existential threat to Israel. If Israel controls the Strip, it will endanger its soldiers and necessitate harsh suppressive measures; such measures will also likely be taken by any other Arab or international entity that may assume control of Gaza in the coming years. In other words, the future of Gazans, unless they miraculously undergo an unforeseen change of heart, is not promising, and the chances of a Gazan losing his life, health, or property in the coming years are very high. The return of Gazan refugees to their cities is therefore not a promise of peace for them or their neighbors; the only scenario that can guarantee greater peace is one involving significant emigration of Gaza refugees into the wider world.

Unfortunately, this logic – as well as the argument that Gazans do not have a deep connection to the Strip, given their post-1948 refugeehood from Jaffa, Ramle and Ashdod, which they will never return to – is not shared by anyone in the Israeli left. Pushing Palestinians out of Israel, even if done willingly, for their own benefit, and to guarantee peace, is something that must not be considered.

Indeed, the Israeli left’s—and, often following suit, broader circles’—attitude towards questions of territory and demography, such as settlement and immigration, is marked by an almost obsessive desire to fortify the position of the ‘native’ Palestinian, real or imagined, and in doing so, keep him in close proximity. We pay the price for this in various ways, including the inability to maintain effective methods of deterrence against terror in Judea and Samaria. For instance, expelling the families of terrorists—a punishment that, considering the terrorists’ motives and Arab culture, is probably a more effective deterrent than current measures—remains off the table.

If Israel allowed itself to expel the families or clans of murderous terrorists, it is likely that lengthy and dangerous pursuits of these terrorists, which put Israeli lives at risk, could be avoided, along with future attacks. Yet, despite this clear reasoning, such expulsions continue to be condemned. Expulsion, it seems, is something we simply do not do.

Another manifestation of this obsession with Arab-facing morality is the attitude towards settlements and settlers. Opponents of occupation worldwide are constantly engaged in freeing lands from military rule. In Israel, however, the unholy rage of occupation opponents is mainly directed at civilian activities of construction and agriculture, while the IDF’s control of such areas is relatively accepted. In the eyes of the non-radical leftist, the issue is binary: the IDF is the good side, and the settlers are the bad side. In the eighties, occupation opponents were busy fighting against night arrests or checkpoints, i.e., the military activities of the occupation. However, in recent decades, attention has consistently drifted towards civilian activities. The very act of settlement – the inherently Zionist act of drawing the border by way of the plow – has become the demonic enemy of ‘Haaretz’ circles. Such factions do not take issue with “control over another people’s land”, but rather with the associated distancing from the supposedly messianic vision of two states for two peoples, – the vision in which Israel will gain legitimacy from its “native” Palestinian neighbors and become a worthy state only alongside them.

For the Sake of Normalcy

However, there is yet another factor complicating the question of Israeli self-image: the desire of Israelis to see themselves as citizens of a “normal” Western state. If in the past a “normal” Western state was a nation-state – according to the post-WWI lines that marked the end of the era of multinational empires, when Israel’s foundations were also laid – then in recent decades, a trend has developed, especially within the European Union, that despises nationalism and prefers to view states as multicultural civil frameworks. Against this backdrop, Israel, with its undeniable national and religious identity components, stands out. Unlike many other Western states, Israel was not founded as a social contract of the land’s inhabitants, but as the political realization of Zionism, a national historical and religious vision – and Zionism remains a central component of its citizens’ identity and their motivation to contribute to and defend it.

The drive for ‘normalization’ of Israel involves a partial denial of its essence as a nation-state, instead emphasizing its multicultural elements. This trend influences not only cultural celebrations like the ‘holiday of holidays’ (a combination of the “three religions’ holidays” created by the tourism marketing department of the Haifa Municipality) but also a distaste for the Nation-State Law, civil struggles for African work seekers, the naturalization of foreign workers’ children, and hostility towards Israel’s warm relations with the nationalist countries of the European Union—the Visegrad countries—even though they consistently support Israel and oppose its enemies.

In this sense, too, the potential division of the land between Jews and Arabs is viewed as a benefit, not a drawback, by those who want to move away from the concept of nation-states and embrace multicultural ideals. This is, of course, a disastrous fantasy: dividing the land will only lead to renewed bloodshed, dragging the entire region away from the progress and prosperity we’ve come to know. Yet, there are those within our own government who would accept these outcomes in pursuit of such fantasies—what won’t be done in the name of a fantasy?

Deep Roots

It is important to say, however, that the weakness in the ability to conduct a determined national struggle actually aligns well with deep foundational elements of the Jewish character—and with Zionism itself. This is not a flaw but a profound and wonderful characteristic of Jewish identity. On one hand, the Jews, through the Bible, gave birth to the original model of nationalism (as opposed to imperialism or tribalism), but on the other hand, Jewish nationalism is defined from the outset as having a universal purpose.

In the very same exchange wherein God told Abraham that a nation would come from him and that this nation would inherit the land of Cna’an, it was also foretold that this nation would bring blessing to “all the families of the earth.” The actual birth of this nation during the Exodus from Egypt and the giving of the Torah establishes our founding myth on the message of the slaves’ coming into their freedom out from another land and a foundational constitutional-religious event taking place in the open desert; all these things stand in contrast to any classic national myth arising from the native connection to the land. Even the inheritance of the land by the conquering leader Joshua is justified by the wickedness of the inhabitants of the land and their pagan culture, not by the need of the children of Israel for living space.

Zionism itself was born directly from visions of bringing progress to the underdeveloped Middle East and establishing a political entity that would bring blessing to all its surroundings. Of course, due to the circumstances,  visions of “conquerors of Canaan,” of a “proud, generous, and cruel race,” and of nationalism that does not seek justification outside itself also arose; but these were no more than brief flashes. Indeed, Zionism recorded a tremendous cultural achievement when it transformed a nation of pale-faced scholars into a nation of fierce warriors, and even ‘normalized’ within the Jewish discourse that always tended towards anarchism  and pacifism the use of military force and the aspiration for strong sovereignty. However, this natural and necessary evolution did not uproot the universal and peace-seeking foundations that remained – and will always remain – at the heart of Jewish national character. It is those very foundational tenets that would not allow Israel to fight for its national existence unless as a key component to broader world repair – or alternatively, when this existence is under existential threat (“a war of no choice”).

Wars of no choice indeed give birth to a sense of righteousness – but also, as mentioned, a vital consciousness of how our Jewish national prosperity serves a positive universal value. The formation of such a consciousness must be a fundamental guiding principle of Jewish education: understanding the Jews as a “chosen people,” attributing to them a moral mission towards the other nations, and maintaining the inherent connection between national-redemptive salvation (the ingathering of exiles, sovereignty in the land) and universal salvation (“The wolf will dwell with the lamb”). Such consciousness was present and powerful even within the secular Zionism of earlier times: Ben-Gurion and his cohorts sought to establish for the rest of the world a “model society” in the Land of Israel, and educated the officers and fighters within a perception of our “national destiny and uniqueness.”

One of the most enlightening insights from the war that erupted following the disaster of October 7th is that a sense of righteousness and the fighting spirit it engenders have a tremendous impact on the capabilities of the IDF. The combination of the horrific massacres that dehumanized the enemy and the return to a survivalist, vengeful mindset reminiscent of post-Holocaust survivors, with the realization that Israel is a nation under existential threat, gave birth to a spirit unseen in Israeli fighters for many years. This also fostered a brotherhood among our soldiers that quickly overcame the severe social tensions of the past year, and a kind of good-spirited bravery rarely seen in everyday life.

Perhaps most importantly, the deep belief in the righteousness of the campaign created a psychological reality contrary to what might be expected: soldiers engaged in a bloody conflict, killing and being killed, without extinguishing their deep love of humanity and life.

The Price of a Paradigm

However, it is necessary to come down from this heady height present only in the assembly areas and among the soldiers’ defense lines and return to the larger national crisis that prevents Israelis from translating their military achievements into a victory of long-term stability.

We began by considering a rather concerning—if not outright suicidal—trend: the continued attempt to impose on the enemy a semblance of acceptance of Israel, which has led to disastrous results. The most notable example is the Oslo process, where Israel ceremoniously deviated from its long-standing path of resistance to the Palestinian narrative—and its inherent struggle against Israel—and chose a path intended to lead the region to a new reality of coexistence between two states, Israel and Palestine. This move won admiration in the West, including the Nobel Prize for Arafat, Rabin, and Peres, and the warm adoption of the ‘two-state idea’ by the US State Department, which has not awoken from it to this day. However, it failed miserably on the ground.

The Palestinian national movement enjoyed a golden age under the generous auspices of the “Zionist enemy.” On one hand, it quickly revealed itself as striving to destroy Israel over establishing a peace-seeking state; on the other hand, it received a dramatic upgrade in international status, funding, and highly destructive arms. The golden age of Palestine soon gave birth to the golden age of exploding buses and suicide bombings—from the terror wave of ’93-’97 through the second Intifada of the early 2000s—and to a new breeding ground for radical Islam and Iranian proxies, all of which ultimately exploded on us on October 7th, 2024. Ironically, the “peace era” that began in ’93 directly spawned what turned out to be the bloodiest era in Israeli history. The burning ambition to solve the Middle East conflict—an overwhelmingly Israeli aspiration more than a real goal of the opposite side—actually led to its escalation and intensification.

Despite decades of bloody violence initiated against it, Israel does not aspire to defeat its enemy, and certainly not to do anything so final as to remove them completely from the land. This is someone who shares our home, and there is a price for it—not just the blood price but also a host of additional hurdles to everyday routine. Civilian life in Israel is full of fortification-minded security measures that have become obstacles, all intended to allow us to live alongside those who seek our death. At the entrances of all public buildings, from malls to zoos, stand security guards. Architects design buildings with many entrances and exits to integrate them into the urban fabric, but after construction, all except one entrance—staffed by a security guard—are closed.

For border communities, we developed shelters; for our skies, we have the ‘Iron Dome’; for our settlements and borders, there are numerous fences. Put plainly, if someone wished to write a book on “how to live next to someone who wants to kill you at the first opportunity without expelling or killing them,” it would be wise to take a tour of the Holy Land; we have specialized in this field.

Aside from the routine burden to civilian life, perhaps one of the heaviest prices extorted on Israel by the paradigm of endless toleration is the progression of Israeli leniency — and even dependence – towards the Palestinian Authority and UNRWA. The Oslo Accords gave birth to the Palestinian Authority, which to this day constitutes the main potential ‘partner’ and the ‘rightful,’ less frightening embodiment of the Palestinian national movement. According to the attitude detailed in this article, it is our cooperation with the Palestinian Authority that has become the determining factor of the legitimacy of the Jewish state.

The Authority, which indeed maintains a degree of security cooperation with the IDF, is a body that not only teaches its children in school to delegitimize Israel and encourage terrorism, but also directs a significant portion of its funds to pay salaries to terrorists according to a horrifying scale wherein the more deadly and brutal your attack, the more generous the funding you receive. If it were in any other position, there is no doubt that the State of Israel would refuse any relationship with such a body, strive to boycott it in international forums, and impose sanctions on its funding. However, the State of Israel backwardly ‘depends’ on its Palestinian ‘partner,’ whose very existence preserves the hope of a two-state solution. If Israel wanted to put a decisive end to the current campaign of violence and defeat the Palestinian narrative denying Israel’s right to exist, it would cease recognizing the Palestinian Authority and end its cooperation with terror financing.

Sobering Up – and an Alternative Course

The events of October 7th clearly and loudly convey to us that we can no longer continue with our policy of preserving the enemy. Coexistence with the Palestinian national movement not only forces us to live within a limiting protective bubble, but also poses a proven existential threat. The goal of bringing the Palestinians to accept our existence must be abandoned, and instead we must adopt another paradigm – that of ceaseless victory.

The legitimacy complex that makes the existence of Palestinians alongside us a moral imperative is not the inherent of all Israelis. As already mentioned above, many Israelis do not need external justification for Zionism or Jewish nationalism. The vision of the Return to Zion or the establishment of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel is, in their eyes, already a highly moral act, and one that holds the key to blessing the rest of the Middle East and the entire world. They are not drowning people clinging to a plank, but sons returning to their historical homeland, redeeming it from neglect, and breathing life into it in a manner unseen for thousands of years. The struggle to make real the dream of establishing a Jewish sovereign state in the Land of Israel where they can live comfortably and free of fear \is a struggle they want to – and can – win.

The disaster-survivalist perception revealed in Amos Oz’s earlier parable has accompanied Zionism since its inception. Yet, even then, there have always been protests against this self-view. In the summer of 1913 (5673), Rav Avraham Yitzhak Kook wrote a letter to the ‘Mizrachi’ convention he was unable to attend, asking them to engrave on the movement’s flag the elevation of the Zionist vision to a higher purpose—not a Zionism of refuge, but a Zionism ceaselessly working toward the realization of its historical vision.

It is worth recalling that we are talking about the early days, even before the Balfour Declaration, when Zionism was a nearly negligible enterprise of the Jewish people, who at this stage were indeed a landless people of liminal, uncertain status, subjected to legitimate persecution in certain countries. And yet, Rav Kook specifically sought to emphasize that the tone accompanying this critical enterprise must change. “Not the voice of a nation hated in the world seeking only a safe refuge from its persecutors is worthy of reviving this eternal movement,” he writes, “but that of a holy nation, a special treasure among nations, the lion’s cub of Judah awakening from its long slumber—and returning to its inheritance.”

More than sixty years later, following the establishment of the State of Israel and the conquests of the Six-Day War, Rav Tzvi Yehuda, Rav Kook’s son, frequently published short manifestos in the press as part of a struggle against various withdrawal plans on the agenda in the late seventies. It is interesting to note that even though the public discourse at that time around borders and occupation was undoubtedly engaged with questions of American pressures, questions of demographic threat, and human rights issues, Rav Tzvi Yehuda chose in his letters and essays to deal specifically with the fundamental questions relating to the right – between Jews and Arabs – to the land. With deep intuition, he doubtlessly saw in such issues the root of a dangerous potential weakness.

The Land Is Ours

“All this land is absolutely ours, of all of us, and it cannot be given to others,” begins Rav Tzvi Yehuda in his explanation of how this ownership is our inheritance from our forefathers, who themselves received the land through  divine promise, whose numerous formulations he quotes from the Bible. Indeed, while this stance draws from a religious belief not shared by all, it is not fundamentally different from secular versions (“natural right,” “historical right,” etc.) and it does not appear here as a statement that negates or silences arguments of international law, Arab rights, and more; all these are discussed later. This accounting in fact provides a crucial anchor for validating our right to form a nation – one that parallels the “certain unalienable rights” established by the Declaration of Independence in its pointedly non-religious opening paragraphs.

“Therefore, once and for all, things are clear and absolute that there are no Arab territories here and no Arab lands, but Israeli lands, our eternal ancestral inheritances, which others came and built on without our permission and presence, and we never left or disconnected from our ancestral inheritances, always maintaining all ties of our consciousness with them and all the strength of our resolute protest against their cruel and artificial holding of them […] and so these things are also known in oral Arab traditions about our return in the end of times to our ancestral inheritance and also in their Quran, and these things are also confirmed in the words of the League of Nations at the end of the year 5674.”

The territory, explains Rav Tzvi Yehuda, was never ‘Arab’ (even if Arabs lived in it as individuals); rather, it was torn from Jewish hands by foreign conquerors (in the language of the Declaration of Independence: “after the people were exiled from their land by force”), and their connection to it was never severed (“… remained loyal to it in all the lands of their dispersion”). The recognition of the land as ‘Eretz Israel’ exists, according to him, even in Muslim  traditions and received recognition from the Western world at the end of World War I.

That right does not stand alone: to realize it, historical circumstances are needed to establish the return as moral. Therefore, Rav Tzvi Yehuda continues to explain that the establishment of the national home for the Jewish people in the Land of Israel occurred not on the ruins of some imaginary ‘Palestinian state’ but in a sovereignty-free space created following the defeat of the Ottomans:

“We did not take any government rule from the Arabs who sat in its desolation, which they did not have in it, but we returned to our land with the collapse of the temporary foreign rule over it and with the consent and decision of the nations of the world.”

This historical fact, he continues, is also agreed upon by the Arabs, as he claims they  admitted to him. To conclude his position, Rav Tzvi Yehuda also argues that there was no expulsion in 1948: “It is also known to all that we did not expel them from their settlement here in our land, this inheritance of our ancestors […] but they themselves, either out of excessive panic or due to political plans of exaggerated things and making ‘refugee camps’ for the eyes of the surrounding and distant world, fled and left some of their settlements here.” Here he echoes the official Zionist historiography, which later was challenged, at least in part. Indeed, there was no sweeping policy of expulsion, and the fact is that there remained a large Arab minority within Israel following the War of Independence – and not all who left did so due to unfounded fear or political treachery.

I return to this somewhat outdated, almost-classic text of Rav Tzvi Yehuda Kook and the ideology of ‘Gush Emunim’ of the eighties – an ideology that had not yet been shattered by the complexities of post-colonial occupation – not to copy it verbatim, but because it offers a fascinating mirror image to the picture painted by Amos Oz at the same time. Even if its details are flawed, this viewpoint offers a fundamentally moral and self-confident Zionist alternative to our current mindset – an alternative that allows Israel and Israelis to win.

Will our return to an existential war after the horrific bloodshed of October 7th allow us to break free from the moralizing arrogance of the “two-state” fantasy? Can we wholeheartedly re-adopt the consistent Zionist logic beautifully expressed in our Declaration of Independence and in the words of our most esteemed leaders? Will we begin to see reality with open eyes and understand that we are the culmination of a heroic return to our ancestral homeland—not as drowning people clinging to a plank, but as the rightful heirs of a blessed and moral societal vision?

Will we dare to win?

Cover photo credit: Bigstock michelangeloop