Israel: Back to the Future After October 7

 By Henry Srebrnik, [Saint John, N.B.] Telegraph-Journal

Hamas’s assault on Israel last Oct. 7 was, in its brutality, more than an act of war. In its fury, the mass violence enacted against its victims brought forth memories of earlier massacres of Jews in Europe and the Middle East long before the formation of Israel. It evoked the historical word “pogrom.”

As has by now been stated many times, it was the most destructive day of mass murder of Jews since the end of the Holocaust. What is now at stake, as most Israelis understand it, is nothing less than the survival of the state itself.

After all, a simmering battle with Hezbollah in the north could rapidly escalate into an even more fearsome war. And waiting in the wings, so to speak, is a potentially nuclear-armed Iran. Israelis today feel seriously let down by their political and military leaders, less secure, and feeling far more vulnerable.

Israel’s former consul general in New York, Asaf Zamir, captured this sentiment in a January post on X, formerly Twitter: “If this war ends without it being completely safe to return to live on the border of Lebanon, and around Gaza, and if it’s impossible to return and hold festivals and events in the entire country without any fear, we lost. Not the war, the country. Want to know what the goals of the war are? These are the goals of the war. No less. Otherwise it’s over. Maybe slowly, but over.”

Israelis now wonder how such a catastrophe could have occurred in today’s Israel. Some see the problem as one that began with deep shifts in the country’s culture.

In recent years, Israelis started to convince themselves that they could live mostly normal lives. The political elite lost sight of continuities in the Israeli condition and the connection between war and national survival.

“A broad consensus emerged that the Palestinian conflict could be managed or contained, rather than solved,” observed Yeshiva University professor Neil Rogachevsky in the winter 2024 City Journal. “Whereas peace was once seen as a cherished break from constant war, it came to be seen as a norm, with war the temporary deviation.”

Over time, the once mutually reinforcing sense of danger and purpose grew dimmer in Israel, even though the basic realities of the country hadn’t really changed. Now everything will be different.

“Israel’s holiday from history is over. And the country will have to rediscover the single-minded attention to security that typified its early days. Israel will have to steel itself, again, to living on potentially near-permanent war footing,” suggested Rogachevsky.

The support for the “two-state” idea has been based on the assumption that even in a withdrawal to the 1967 borders, Israel will be able to defend its sovereignty and security. Its proponents have argued that the military will always be able to ensure Israel’s security even after withdrawals. This optimistic reading is now in doubt.

The perceived strength of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) led them to believe that the military will always be able to repeat its great achievements, such as that of the six-day June 1967 war. But that was a war between armies. Even the far bloodier 1973 war was fought by soldiers, and not within Israel’s borders. Today things are different.

On Oct. 7, the special security fence in the Gaza Strip did not prevent war and did not even delay Hamas’s rapid attack. The decision-making process of the Israeli government to launch a counteroffensive was difficult and lasted weeks. Nor did it take very long for international public opinion to shift, and soon the perceived legitimacy for Israel’s counterattack evaporated even among its friends.

Israeli “hawks” now think the war needs a decisive and indisputable victory. Deterrence will not be restored if the narrative emerges that Israel had not achieved its goals after so many troops were deployed.

Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen, a senior research fellow at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar Ilan University, in a BESA Perspectives Paper published Jan. 8, is very pessimistic on the prospects of peace.

Hamas, Hezbollah, and other militia are postmodern military organizations. “They don’t need an air force, a navy, or artillery, and yet they are creating an enormous strategic threat,” he explained. He considers the two-state solution unworkable, and a West Bank Palestinian state a danger.

 “With the shocking force of an earthquake, a cultural concept that had its roots planted in the dream of peace, and in the illusion that the State of Israel could aspire to become a kind of Denmark, disintegrated completely.

“Despite all our faith in the IDF and its capabilities, there is not now, and there will not be, an option to defend the State of Israel along the coastal strip. This fact must be brought to broad national consensus and placed at the center of the Israeli security perception.”

Hacohen met Tablet journalist Armin Rosen in Tel Aviv in mid-February and reiterated his concerns. “A Palestinian state is a threat much more serious to the existence of Israel than the nuclear bomb in Iran,” he maintained. “And if Israel will not struggle against this idea, we are just opening the door for the fatal end of Israel.” For such people, Oct. 7 was a truly major zeitgeist shift.