Over the past year, we witnessed the collapse of concepts that guided us for decades. First and foremost was the "containment" approach across all aspects of our lives – avoiding confrontation with escalating dangers that were visible to all.
While we buried our heads in the sand, our adversaries seized every opportunity to develop methods, infrastructure, and capabilities. We allowed ourselves to live within a media discourse of shifting headlines while new realities were being established on the ground. We developed philosophical approaches such as a "small and smart" technological army and hiding behind fences and trenches.
We permitted drug cultivation across hundreds of thousands of acres in IDF training grounds to avoid unrest in the Negev. We remained silent about the theft of thousands of weapons and millions of rounds of ammunition from IDF bases. Crime families extorted protection money from thousands of businesses, amounting to billions of USD.
We accepted the phenomenon of illegal weapons possession in Arab communities at levels that could transform into deadly organizations targeting neighboring communities. We assumed that IDF deterrence was so effective that we relieved ourselves of self-defense responsibilities and left our communities and families vulnerable.
The deep anxiety that gripped us sharpened our most basic, primitive instincts. We sensed vulnerability at every turn, and dangers that once seemed distant became immediate. We awakened to see how dynamic and changeable reality truly is.
The immense tragedy, which will remain with us for a long time, opened our eyes to how concepts like "small army and police force" became double-edged swords. Now that reality has struck, fundamental concepts have been revived, requiring refinement, conceptualization, and transformation into relevant, developed operational doctrine.
Leadership to solve root problems
We are at a defining moment in Israel's future existence, obligated to emerge from this period with vision and concepts that will shape national security for decades ahead.
Required focus areas include: creating strategic depth; adding defense lines at borders based on religious study institutions and pre-military academies; increasing border settlements; transforming settlement blocks into military-style units with mutual responsibility concepts; providing reciprocal response to possible attacks; establishing mobile divisions for rapid, life-saving arrival; changing internal security concepts and restoring governance.
The war proved that what prevented our security and defense was an imaginary fear that paralyzed us from taking active measures, making us "see ourselves as grasshoppers." Active-duty and reserve soldiers broke through the fear barrier, paying an unprecedented price in blood. The "promise generation" cannot be appeased with populist, detached, and unimaginative solutions.
More than anything, we need bold leadership capable of solving all root problems, daring to touch raw nerves and leading to brave, deep solutions: in sharing the burden equally, in settlement policy, in restoring personal security, in reestablishing governance, and in ideological renewal that challenges the concept of isolation and returns to spatial thinking. Then you shall dwell securely.
Yoel Zilberman is founder and CEO of HaShomer HaChadash.
Israel Hayom will host a security conference at the Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem on Dec. 1.
