1948 2.0—It’s time to rebuild the iron wall
On the seventh of October 2023, two dramatic events occurred simultaneously: Israeli deterrence collapsed and the Israeli social contract was tattered.
First, the pogrom in the Western Negev gave our enemies an achievement unlike any they had in the history of the Israeli-Arab conflict. Within a few hours, they destroyed the Israeli defense line, captured several IDF bases, took over civilian settlements and did as they pleased to an entire country. In doing so, they fulfilled a hundred-year-old dream: to break the Iron Wall. To breach the walls of the Zionist citadel and massacre its inhabitants. To make the Israelis feel like crusaders. Indeed: the precedent that Hamas created on the Accursed Sabbath is a terrible precedent. Even two months after its occurrence, the disaster of the temporary Arab occupation of part of the Land of Israel continues to cast a heavy shadow on the national security of the Jewish state.
Second, the pogrom in the Western Negev meant that Israeli citizens were abandoned. Thousands of Jews experienced a trauma the likes of which had not been seen since the beginning of Zionism. For long hours, they locked themselves in the shelters like Anne Frank, terrorists roaming around them, breaking into their homes and seeking to slaughter them. And for all that time, the State of Israel was nowhere to be seen. The Israel Defense Forces did not protect them. There was no security, no independence, and no sovereignty. … In the most basic sense, the contract between the state and its citizens was violated. Decades from now, the temporary disintegration of the state on that Accursed Sabbath will cast a heavy shadow on the Jewish soul, the Zionist identity and the Israeli state.
So the war with Hamas is a two-dimensional war: on the one hand, its supreme goal is to renew overwhelming Israeli deterrence, to re-erect the Iron Wall. We must defeat our enemies completely in order to erase from their minds the temptation created by the bereavement, failure and weakness of October 7th. We must build the walls of the citadel, strengthen it itself and ensure the lives and safety of all its inhabitants. On the other hand, the supreme goal of the war is to establish and renew the Israeli social contract. To establish a state whose mission is not only to protect its citizens but to be worthy of them. To restore sovereignty, independence, security - and trust. And to ensure: never again.
That is the reason why the terrible bargain of hostages-for-truce was justified. After the State of Israel earned the trust of the residents of the Western Negev, it had to do everything to regain that trust. It had no moral authority to say “no” to the return of the children and their mothers. Israel had a human obligation to rescue boys, girls and grandmothers from hell. It had a national mandate to renew the contract between Israel and the Israelis. We had to do what we did and pay the price we paid to start healing a deep inner wound.
But between the deal itself and the events that arose around it in the last week there was a great distance. Day after day and night after night, Israel surrendered to the sadistic emotional manipulations of the mass murderer Yahya Sinwar. A country dedicated to winning-at-all-costs became a country of emotion-before-everything. Instead of carrying out the essential transaction with businesslike silence and modesty, we turned it into a shocking televised event utterly inappropriate for wartime. In doing so, we committed an irresponsible act that will greatly increase the price of the deal for the release of the soldiers and may even endanger it. In doing so, we damaged our regional image as a wounded lion determined to hunt and kill those who dared to attack him. Without intending to, we took Hamas out of the beaten leper's corner and gave it a certain type of legitimacy and a certain type of image of victory.
So now we must reject not only the memory of what happened at the beginning of October, but also the achievements that Hamas gained at the end of November. We must go back and remember the supreme goal of the war: the renewal of overwhelming Israeli deterrence. This will be impossible to achieve without defeating Hamas in Gaza, keeping Hezbollah away from the northern border and deterring Iran. And this will be impossible to achieve without a very long and very difficult struggle, of which the current campaign is only the first campaign. What we are facing is long years of second War of Independence, 1948 version 2.0. And what we must do is adapt both the state, the army and the Israeli spirit so it can coexist with a brutal, long-term and arduous existential battle.
