Josh Warhit – www.israelhayom.com https://www.israelhayom.com israelhayom english website Tue, 09 Dec 2025 16:07:21 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.2 https://www.israelhayom.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/cropped-G_rTskDu_400x400-32x32.jpg Josh Warhit – www.israelhayom.com https://www.israelhayom.com 32 32 The myth of healing after Netanyahu https://www.israelhayom.com/2025/12/09/the-myth-of-healing-after-netanyahu/ https://www.israelhayom.com/2025/12/09/the-myth-of-healing-after-netanyahu/#respond Tue, 09 Dec 2025 15:45:02 +0000 https://www.israelhayom.com/?p=1108953 Israeli society has been mired in division and instability for well over a decade. Many Israelis – as well as observers abroad – believe that once Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu leaves the political stage, the country will finally begin to heal. The belief is understandable. A broad swath of Israel's political spectrum has long been […]

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Israeli society has been mired in division and instability for well over a decade. Many Israelis – as well as observers abroad – believe that once Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu leaves the political stage, the country will finally begin to heal.

The belief is understandable. A broad swath of Israel's political spectrum has long been defined by being either for or against Netanyahu, so it seems reasonable to imagine that his departure might release the pressure. In reality, though, this expectation is misplaced. The intensity of the Netanyahu fixation points to something deeper.

For decades, Israel's Center-Left has struggled to reconcile its founding self-image with the demographic, cultural, and religious transformation unfolding around it. This dissonance has bred both anxiety and resentment.

In other societies, similar discomforts have often been managed through scapegoating: identifying a figure or group to bear the blame for the strains of modernization. Jews historically filled that role, having been accused over the centuries of obstructing redemption by rejecting whichever "truth" the societal majority held sacred. 

Jewish Israelis cannot scapegoat themselves, but the psychological mechanism of blame displacement applies no less to them. It is primordial – more ancient even than the flesh-and-blood Jew. As Jean-Paul Sartre observed, "If the Jew did not exist, the antisemite would invent him."

Confronted by unsettling social change, some Israelis did precisely that. They projected their unease onto a figure who embodied it – Israel's most dominant and resilient political figure, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Benjamin Netanyahu during a statement. Photo: Haim Goldberg, Flash90 Haim Goldberg, Flash90

While Netanyahu cannot, on his own, make Israel more religious or less liberal, he has consistently drawn decisive support from sectors of society that many in the Center-Left regard as emblematic of that change. For those who once saw the state as an extension of their own secular and liberal image, Netanyahu became the ideal vessel for their fixation. He came to personify the fact that Israel has slipped away from them, such that they could no longer fully command or define it.

Strikingly, Netanyahu unsettles Israel's elites not because he is foreign to them, but precisely because he isn't. In him they see an inversion of themselves that threatens their sense of moral and cultural superiority. Like them, he is Ashkenazi, Western, educated, secular, and culturally polished – yet he deploys these traits in service of a political and cultural vision that rejects many of their premises.

He is fluent in the West but not deferential to it. He reflects the elites' self-image, but not the insecurities that shaped it. He looks like the Israel they believed they built, yet acts like the Israel that outgrew them. 

Over time, this intolerable mirror image has caused political disagreement to harden into moral essentialism. Netanyahu's decisions came to be viewed less as policy choices than as psychological symptoms, interpreted through a lens of mistrust. Assertive diplomatic or military moves were cast as recklessness, while restraint was deemed political calculation. The result was an opposition defined less by alternative policy than by the conviction of Netanyahu's inherent guilt.

Throughout Netanyahu's premiership, Center-Left parties could have zeroed in on education, housing, fair military enlistment, or any of a dozen other issues, making their position the non-negotiable price of joining unity coalitions. But doing so would have meant legitimizing a political and cultural reality they no longer felt represented them. So instead, opposition to Netanyahu became their organizing principle.

The trouble with scapegoating is that it consumes the societies that practice it. Once a single figure is cast as the source of all dysfunction, the energy that might be spent addressing real challenges is redirected into neutralizing that figure.

With the backing of Israel's unelected intellectual and security elites, the anti-Netanyahu movement increasingly leveraged the administrative state not to extract policy concessions, but to engineer his removal from office. The gravest consequence was the weakening of Israel's ability to act as one society under threat. During the judicial reform crisis, large segments of the anti-Netanyahu camp conditioned participation in reserve military duty on the fate of the legislation. October 7 revealed the cost of turning national defense into a bargaining chip.

Scapegoating can produce a momentary catharsis when the chosen target falls. Should Israel find itself with a new Prime Minister, many will experience that fleeting relief – the illusion of moral and national renewal. Yet the deeper social rifts that gave rise to the fixation will remain unresolved. Removing the scapegoat cannot substitute for self-reckoning. Just as no renaissance followed Iraq's expulsion of its Jews, Israel should not expect sudden transformation once its own "Jew" is gone.

Genuine healing begins only when a community recognizes that the object of its hostility was never the true source of its ills. For Israel, that means acknowledging that Netanyahu is not the problem – and that refusing to engage constructively with his political base has been a grave error.

If Israel's Center-Left cannot reach that understanding before Netanyahu leaves the scene – be that in 2027 or 2037 – the path to national reconciliation will emerge too late, with a society freed of its scapegoat but still captive to its fears. The "day after Netanyahu" would then feel less like a new dawn and more like the uneasy continuation of the same night – the country's chance for renewal deferred once again and its divisions left to fester.

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Is idealism a gateway to antisemitism? https://www.israelhayom.com/2025/08/25/is-idealism-a-gateway-to-antisemitism/ https://www.israelhayom.com/2025/08/25/is-idealism-a-gateway-to-antisemitism/#respond Mon, 25 Aug 2025 07:00:26 +0000 https://www.israelhayom.com/?p=1083043 Since October 7, 2023, it has been sobering to witness how easily idealism can become fertile ground for antisemitism to take root. The last two years have laid bare that when visions of civilizational progress, victory, or self-actualization collide with reality, resentment rushes in to fill the void – and Jews are often its favorite […]

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Since October 7, 2023, it has been sobering to witness how easily idealism can become fertile ground for antisemitism to take root. The last two years have laid bare that when visions of civilizational progress, victory, or self-actualization collide with reality, resentment rushes in to fill the void – and Jews are often its favorite target.

Some idealists dive headfirst into the moral abyss. When Peter Beinart filtered Purim through the prism of modern-day Gaza in a March 2025 Guardian op-ed, he delivered, in one fell swoop, the core demand of antisemites: that all Jews must, as Haviv Rettig Gur put it on X, "answer for some unique and history-altering villainy." 

In mid-2020, convinced that his Zionism was irreconcilable with his idealism, Beinart chose the latter, declaring in Jewish Currents and The New York Times that he would no longer defend the idea of a Jewish state. Now that his idealism has failed to materialize, Beinart casts the Jewish people as the culprit: the complicit obstacle to be judged.

Others descend into dangerous territory more gradually. Tucker Carlson's fear and frustration – rooted in the Iraq War – have left him paranoid, though not, in my view, antisemitic. Still, even granting that distinction, it is hard to ignore how far he has spiraled downward in recent months.

Individuals, groups, and governments intent on turning Trump voters against Israel have flooded social media with memes and posts aimed at that goal – and Carlson, not as adept at spotting foreign influence as he claims, has swallowed it whole. His deep mistrust of U.S. military action abroad now curdles, week by week, further into conspiracy thinking, reinforced by a slate of unmoored and obsessively anti-Israel guests.

We should be wary of flippant accusations of antisemitism, which are both wrong and self-defeating. When accusations overreach, people tune out, making it harder to confront the surge in real antisemitism. At the same time, though, we must remain alert to idealism's potential to serve as a conduit for anti-Jewish bigotry. 

For centuries, Jews have been blamed for obstructing humanity's path to redemption by rejecting some big "truth" (depending on the vision). Meanwhile, outlasting relentless persecution has, ironically, fueled the illusion that Jews are behind the scenes pulling the strings – even as they remain defenseless against the mobs that follow. That's how the scapegoat ("It's all their fault!") becomes the alleged puppet master: "They control everything!"

We cannot afford to underestimate the shifts of modern idealists. The two most important things in this world – the truth and our lives – are at stake.

Josh Warhit is a contributing opinion columnist in Israel, where he writes in both Hebrew and English on the intersection of society and politics. He made aliyah from the United States in 2012 and served in the Nahal Brigade (infantry) in the Israel Defense Forces.

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El HaDegel: Fair enlistment was never the center-Left's flagship issue https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/el-hadegel-fair-enlistment-was-never-the-center-lefts-flagship-issue/ Wed, 09 Jul 2025 11:28:22 +0000 https://www.israelhayom.com/?post_type=opinions&p=1071797 El HaDegel, an organization that describes itself as nonpartisan and committed to "Zionist leadership, Zionist legislation, and Zionist action," declared in a Zoom gathering earlier this week that "the fight for equal and fair [military] enlistment is [its] flagship issue." Many might assume that this stance – and perhaps the group itself – is a […]

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El HaDegel, an organization that describes itself as nonpartisan and committed to "Zionist leadership, Zionist legislation, and Zionist action," declared in a Zoom gathering earlier this week that "the fight for equal and fair [military] enlistment is [its] flagship issue."

Many might assume that this stance – and perhaps the group itself – is a natural outgrowth of Israel's secular-liberal base, which largely overlaps with the political center-Left. After all, this segment of the population serves disproportionately in the Israel Defense Forces, with many having completed hundreds of days of reserve duty during the past twenty months of war.

But in reality, drafting members of Israel's ultra-Orthodox demographic into the IDF has never been the center-Left's flagship issue. In fact, El HaDegel's focus on enlistment reform underscores what the center-Left could have pursued – but chose not to.

The center-Left has time and again passed up opportunities to enter governing coalitions in exchange for real progress on enlistment equality. It could have made this the price of participation in unity governments. It could have leveraged moments of deadlock or narrow majorities to extract meaningful concessions. 

But it made a different choice. It defined itself by a single conviction: that Benjamin Netanyahu must go – a fixation driven less by corruption trials or democratic norms than by a refusal to reckon with Israel's demographic, cultural, and religious shifts. Projecting its discomfort onto one man, the Center-Left convinced itself that the grievance was Netanyahu, rather than a reflection of a society it no longer recognized.

Instead of forging broad, cross-cutting campaigns around enlistment, education, and housing, the Center-Left chose a political boycott of the majority of Jewish Israelis. Every time a window for serious political influence opened, the Center-Left chose self-righteousness over results. Rather than persuade, it postured. Rather than participate, it withdrew into the institutions it still controls, treating the judiciary, the academy, and even the military as last lines of defense. 

It effectively turned the IDF into a political pressure tool, conditioning national defense on legislative outcomes – a stance that fits no definition of democracy. October 7, 2023, laid bare the cost of declaring: "We will protect the country only on our terms." 

But sure – let's wave the banner of "fair enlistment" now and pretend that "rak lo Bibi" ("anyone but Bibi") hasn't been the most damaging campaign in Israel's history.

This isn't to say the center-Left lacks patriots or citizens deeply committed to national service. But as a political force, it chose symbolism over strategy. 

Enlistment reform could have been a meaningful and achievable goal. But it wasn't the flagship. It wasn't even a sail. It was stored below deck while the Center-Left threw all its energy into a moral crusade against one man – and lost all ability to steer the ship.

Now, we're asked to believe the fight is finally on. But it's not a real fight. It's a pose. It's the latest act in a long political performance.

If El HaDegel truly wants to unify Israelis around enlistment, it must first level with its own base – admitting that for the better part of a decade, the Center-Left's priority was toppling Netanyahu, not reforming enlistment. Unless and until that truth is faced, fair enlistment will remain a slogan, not a unifying mission.

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The 'People's Peace Summit' came and went. Here's why no one noticed https://www.israelhayom.com/2025/05/25/the-peoples-peace-summit-came-and-went-heres-why-no-one-noticed/ https://www.israelhayom.com/2025/05/25/the-peoples-peace-summit-came-and-went-heres-why-no-one-noticed/#respond Sun, 25 May 2025 03:00:14 +0000 https://www.israelhayom.com/?p=1060999 Earlier this month, the 2025 edition of the peace conference "It's Time" (alternatively: "The Time Has Come") passed with barely a mention in the Israeli press or public discourse. That silence may owe something to the inaugural event's embrace of falsehoods a year earlier. The most prominent speaker at the 2024 conference was historian, Hebrew […]

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Earlier this month, the 2025 edition of the peace conference "It's Time" (alternatively: "The Time Has Come") passed with barely a mention in the Israeli press or public discourse. That silence may owe something to the inaugural event's embrace of falsehoods a year earlier.

The most prominent speaker at the 2024 conference was historian, Hebrew University professor, and bestselling author Yuval Noah Harari. On stage at Tel Aviv's Menora Mivtachim Arena, Harari told attendees: 

"The bitter truth about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is that each side fears the other is trying to annihilate it, and both sides are right… the Palestinians' fear that we want to annihilate them… is completely justified. It's not paranoia, [but rather] a sound reading of reality."

Professor Harari's credentials notwithstanding, he was wrong. Despite being fully capable of, as he put it, "annihilating" the Palestinians, we Israeli Zionists haven't done so because, contrary to Harari's words, the vast majority of us don't aspire to do that. 

We are focused, above all, on retaining our sovereignty without getting raped and murdered. Our top priority is to ensure we are secure and capable of adequate self-defense. We built our national movement precisely to create a slice of sovereignty as a safe haven – and to this day, our public discourse bemoans a lack of safety more than it bemoans anything else.

When our attackers wage battle from behind and beneath their own civilians, thus forcing us to choose between defending ourselves or standing down, the tragic outcome is on them. That is not "trying to annihilate" non-combatants, and to suggest otherwise is to commit a gross misrepresentation.

"All these wars have led us into an abyss," Harari said at the same event. "The time has come to make peace."

Wars did not lead us to an abyss. They're actually our best attempt to defend ourselves while already in an abyss: a world that cannot contain us, and a region whose people only value liberation insofar as it gives them domination.

Our proven capacity to wage war is the only reason that October 7th, 2023 was a horrible shock and not a daily occurrence. The fact that fighting for our lives has not produced a perfect reality does not mean that refraining from fighting is better. Empirically, it's not better. 

The Oslo peace process, not wars, emboldened Palestinians to blow themselves up on buses full of Israeli civilians. Disengagement from the Gaza Strip, not wars, led to Hamas sovereignty. Those who stand by Oslo and the disengagement should at least acknowledge the consequences. Don't blame war for what peacemaking has wrought.

It's misleading to repeat the old adage that peace is made with one's enemies; that's only true when the enemies' ideas have changed. Yet proponents of the struggle whose banner is 'Palestine' remain openly committed to eliminating the State of Israel "by any means necessary." The Israeli Left longs for peace as the gateway to normalcy, but there is no making peace with a society that turns territorial concessions into Gaza, post-2005. 

Fortunately, most Israelis now understand that relinquishing border control to a society that overwhelmingly condones the deliberate killing of our children is precisely what advances efforts to kill our children. It's insane to do that. Perhaps the few who still think otherwise will gather again at next year's conference. Chances are, once again, nobody else will notice.

 

Josh Warhit runs Warhit Media Services. He made aliyah from the United States in 2012 and served in the Nahal Brigade (infantry) in the Israel Defense Forces.

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How the Zionist right misreads the global left – and why it matters https://www.israelhayom.com/2025/05/20/how-the-zionist-right-misreads-the-global-left-and-why-it-matters/ https://www.israelhayom.com/2025/05/20/how-the-zionist-right-misreads-the-global-left-and-why-it-matters/#respond Tue, 20 May 2025 03:00:42 +0000 https://www.israelhayom.com/?p=1059887 Since October 7th, 2023, many on the Zionist Right have fallen deeper into a self-defeating habit: treating every instance of left-wing naïveté or cowardice regarding Israel as antisemitic malice. For years, some Israel supporters have painted the entire global Left with a single, accusatory brush, lumping moderates together with neo-Marxists, Islamists, and other extremists whose […]

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Since October 7th, 2023, many on the Zionist Right have fallen deeper into a self-defeating habit: treating every instance of left-wing naïveté or cowardice regarding Israel as antisemitic malice. For years, some Israel supporters have painted the entire global Left with a single, accusatory brush, lumping moderates together with neo-Marxists, Islamists, and other extremists whose hostility to Israel stems from entrenched, often annihilationist ideology. 

Yes, many mainstream Leftists are misinformed and passive in the face of antisemitism, but that doesn't make them bigots. Ascribing antisemitic malice where none exists trivializes the term 'antisemitism,' reducing it to just another partisan cudgel in the culture war. When accusations overreach, people tune out, making it harder to confront the real antisemitism that is skyrocketing.

None of this excuses the global Left's failures. On the contrary, a sharp, grounded critique of the Left is more persuasive, and such a critique begins by understanding why so many mainstream Leftists lean instinctively against Israel. Achieving this understanding means examining three major forces: ideological, psychological, and political.

From an ideological standpoint, Israel makes Leftists around the world uncomfortable because its circumstances – and its survival amidst those circumstances – test the limits of core Left assumptions.

For example, the laws of war cannot completely prevent human suffering, but left-wing elites fear that people will lose faith in international law if they understand this to be the case, so they obstruct honest assessment of the laws of war. They cave to groups like Hamas, who thrive on maximizing their own civilians' suffering – all but declaring that if such suffering is unavoidable, fighting these groups adequately is forbidden.

Irish protesters demonstrate against Israel in Dublin. Photo: AFP

Leftists also adhere closely to the belief that humans' innate capacity for good always triumphs. They insist that most people in any society, when given the opportunity, will strive to live in peaceful productivity. But Palestinians overwhelmingly bemoan their inability to dominate the Jews more than they bemoan their own lack of safety or well-being. Many Leftists, unwilling to take Palestinians at their word, end up denying them agency and blaming Israel for the dysfunctions of Palestinian society.

Beyond ideology, a deep psychological unease shapes the mainstream global Left's relationship with Zionism. 

European Jews began receiving equal rights in the late 18th century, but only because regimes felt compelled to apply the rights of man consistently, not because antisemitism had faded. As Max Nordau told the First Zionist Congress, emancipation happened "only for the sake of principle." Anti-Jewish sentiment ran as deep as ever. 

By the 20th century, many Western liberals were eager to build a modern world order but were confronted with their failure to address the "Jewish question." For them, Zionism was more than a solution to Jewish suffering; it was a salve for their own insecurity, offering moral absolution for liberalism's failure up to that point.

But when Israel's founding brought new conflict, that absolution faltered, and so a kind of psychological retreat took hold. Israel came to be seen less as historic justice and more as a moral liability – especially on the Left.

While liberalism has shaped both Left and Right, its idealistic instincts – especially belief in the inherent reasonableness of people – run deepest on the Left. This has fostered a worldview in which peaceful coexistence is seen as the natural state of human affairs, and violence as an aberration rather than a persistent feature.

Israel's reality upends that vision. It's a reminder that some aggression cannot be reasoned away. For those on the Left anchored in moral optimism, that's deeply unsettling, so it fuels reflexive hostility toward Israel.

Finally, politics matters. Consider America's Democratic Party. Throughout the 2010s, as Democrats worked to expand their base of support, explicitly anti-Zionist elements gained status quickly – not despite their anti-Zionism, but often because of it, as hostility to Israel had become a marker of credibility in certain progressive activist circles.

In this environment, many moderate Democrats choose silence. Not because they share the radicals' beliefs, but because speaking up comes with political risk. Support for Israel became controversial because Israel's enemies had become political bedfellows. Increasingly, many on the Left refuse to confront antisemitic rhetoric in their ranks – not out of agreement, but because political incentives reward silence.

In assessing leftist hostility to Israel, conflating naïveté with antisemitism helps no one – least of all the Jews. Precision, by contrast, is a tool of both moral and strategic power.

As opposed to sweeping condemnation, a thoughtful critique of the Left can persuade moderates, isolate radicals, and build strong coalitions. Not everyone who gets Israel wrong is a lost cause. Some are reachable, but reaching them begins by recognizing the difference between being confused and wanting Jews gone.

 

Josh Warhit runs Warhit Media Services. He made aliyah from the United States in 2012 and served in the Nahal Brigade (infantry) in the Israel Defense Forces.

 

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Why anti-Zionists are the biggest Zionists https://www.israelhayom.com/2025/02/05/why-anti-zionists-are-the-biggest-zionists/ https://www.israelhayom.com/2025/02/05/why-anti-zionists-are-the-biggest-zionists/#respond Wed, 05 Feb 2025 12:36:13 +0000 https://www.israelhayom.com/?p=1032549 As the State of Israel became a reality, mass societies in North Africa and the Middle East unleashed their rage on the Jews in their proximity. Mobs pillaged, raped, and murdered. Families hopped across rooftops to escape calls from street level to slaughter the Jews. The vast majority of the region's 800,000+ Jews fled or […]

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As the State of Israel became a reality, mass societies in North Africa and the Middle East unleashed their rage on the Jews in their proximity. Mobs pillaged, raped, and murdered. Families hopped across rooftops to escape calls from street level to slaughter the Jews. The vast majority of the region's 800,000+ Jews fled or were outright expelled, and their property and wealth were expropriated. 

These mass societies were engaged in a dialectical struggle against Zionism, whose goal of Jewish sovereignty (as it happens, in these societies' midst) jeopardized their sense of superiority. If only these societies had seen that by turning against local Jews, they were aiding the very object of their struggle.

Hundreds attend a protest called by the National Jewish Assembly, The Camapaign Against Antisemitism and the UK Lawyers for Israel at the BBC Broadcasting House on October 16, 2023 in London, England (Guy Smallman/Getty Images)

Arab Muslim societies missed a golden opportunity to weaken or even outright defeat Zionism. Had they embraced their native Jewish populations, these Jews would have remained where they were, thus depriving the fledgling State of Israel of much-needed Jewish demographic support. Embracing their Jewish populations would also have pushed back against Zionism's understanding of the world, in which modernizing mass societies invariably turn on their Jews. Such a choice would have marked a civilizational victory far greater than anything these societies had imagined possible.

Instead, Arab Muslim societies chose to embed their longstanding disdain for Jews in the struggle against Zionism. As a result, these societies' anti-Jewish rage fueled the new Jewish state and served as further evidence of its necessity.

The huge boost that Arab Muslim societies inadvertently gave to Zionism did not spur a mindset change. Far from it – their struggle deepened and expanded among Arabs and non-Arabs, who pushed forward iterations rooted in Arab nationalism, Marxism, Islamism, and post-modern neo-Marxism. These iterations kept the Palestinian national cause focused on eliminating Jewish sovereignty. They also caused societies to spiral out of control.

Maddened by failure but convinced that victory is inevitable and even imminent, these societies have forgone the slightest introspection, choosing instead to blame everyone but themselves for their humiliating setbacks. Each delusion breeds dysfunction. This leads to more delusions, which in turn exacerbate the dysfunction. With no safety net or rock bottom, the cesspool of narcissism gets ever deeper.

This self-sabotaging cycle extends beyond the Middle East. In powerful Western countries, supporters of the struggle against Zionism have made a habit of harassing and attacking local Jews, especially since Hamas' October 7th attack on Israel. In so doing, they present voters with small but meaningful samples of what drove Jews out of dozens of countries in the twentieth century. For portions of these electorates, including those whose political choices affect the Middle East, watching the resurgence of antisemitism on home soil has made them appreciate the Jews' need for a sovereign safe haven. 

Arab Muslim societies' propensity for peddling delusions is definitively a curse for Zionism more than it is a blessing. If these societies had dared to engage in any sort of serious introspection, Israel could have had durable peace (including a two-state solution) many years ago. Instead, the Jewish state faces terrorism and war launched from societies that are yet to hit rock bottom.

But while it is more of a curse, it is somewhat a blessing. Insofar as these societies remain bent on annihilating Jewish sovereignty, their rage and delusions perpetuate the very ineptness that makes it easier to stay several steps ahead of them. This is why, with every step they take, no matter how much their blood vessels throb as they scream that Zionism is the source of all pain in the world, people who hate the Jewish state cannot help but further solidify its permanence.

Josh Warhit runs Warhit Media Services. He made aliyah from the United States in 2012 and served in the Nahal Brigade (infantry) in the Israel Defense Forces.

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The danger of longing for normalcy https://www.israelhayom.com/2024/12/04/the-danger-of-longing-for-normalcy/ https://www.israelhayom.com/2024/12/04/the-danger-of-longing-for-normalcy/#respond Wed, 04 Dec 2024 05:30:00 +0000 https://www.israelhayom.com/?p=1017051 For decades, the Israeli Left asserted that the Palestinians should be given a state of their own. It asserted this out of an intense longing for normalcy. To the Left, Palestinian statehood was the key to peace, and peace was the key to a normal existence. Yet this longing for normalcy emboldened not peace-seekers, but […]

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For decades, the Israeli Left asserted that the Palestinians should be given a state of their own. It asserted this out of an intense longing for normalcy. To the Left, Palestinian statehood was the key to peace, and peace was the key to a normal existence.

Yet this longing for normalcy emboldened not peace-seekers, but rather our Palestinian attackers. It signaled to them that we sovereign Jews may be compelled to surrender entirely. And as our attackers made it clear that Israel giving them land would not lead to peace, many Israelis abandoned the Left's approach. They now sought to spare themselves and their loved ones from what they had come to deem a dangerous delusion.

Having detached itself from the imperative of self-preservation, the Israeli Left became marginalized. But while much of its voter pool evaporated, its desperate longing for normalcy did not. The only thing that changed was how the Left came to frame its longing.

Before, the Left framed its longing as our only chance to achieve peace. After peace processes blew up in our faces, the Left repackaged its longing as our only chance at democracy. A dire warning over our essence replaced the failed promise of peace. Irrespective of peace, they argue, if we rule over millions of non-citizens, we forgo our status as a democracy.

Over the years, mainstream Israel learned to ignore the marginal Left on the topic of peace. The vast majority of Palestinians made this quite easy. They made it clear that they would not supply peace in return for concessions. But today, mainstream Israelis cannot afford to ignore the Left's repackaged longing for normalcy. Even a Left without political teeth can encourage foreign liberal audiences, who long for normalcy no less, to pressure Israel from the outside.

When former member of Knesset Yair Golan tells The Guardian that he is "not sure whether Israel right now is truly a democratic state… [because] the Right today in Israel is people who think we can annex millions of Palestinians," we should not dismiss this as Left-wingers venting to each other. Rather, we must confront such words head-on.

Former MK, senior IDF officer, and leader of the Democrats party in Israel, Yair Golan

If a peaceful person is attacked with violence, does defending themselves mean they are no longer peaceful? Of course not. They maintain the label 'peaceful' because they are peaceful when given the chance to be. The same reasoning applies to a country that strives to be democratic. Such a country does not lose its democratic status when it rules over people who seek to destroy it.

The Jews whom Zionism made sovereign are overwhelmingly committed to democratic principles. We accepted the United Nations Partition Plan, which would have created two new countries from land that was under interim British rule. Partition would have preserved everyone's homes and would not have stymied anyone's democratic rights.

It was never implemented because opponents of Jewish sovereignty rejected it. They considered any Jewish sovereignty in their midst to be an affront to their own sense of dominance. So, under the banner of 'Palestine,' they waged a fateful struggle against such sovereignty. Far from accepting partition, proponents of this struggle promised a war of annihilation, and to this day, they try to eliminate Israel. They insist that they will kick, scream, stab, and shoot ("by any means necessary") until someone pacifies their rage by forcing the Jews to surrender.

When people attack Israel, it is right and wise for Israel to defend itself adequately, including through military rule. That Judea and Samaria and the Gaza Strip do not constitute an independent country is not an inevitable undemocratic feature of Israel's existence. It is rather the outcome of others' rage over Israel's existence.

Israel need not enfranchise those who seek to destroy it and kill its people. If certain individuals or groups cannot tolerate Jews being sovereign in their homeland, that should be their own problem. It is not on Jews or on anyone else to placate them. The moral onus is on those who are kicking and screaming and stabbing and shooting to stop. Adequate self-defense is good and right, and makes one responsible, not undemocratic.

People, countries, and world orders that insist unconditionally on normalcy in the name of liberalism will lose to illiberal attackers. If liberalism is to survive against illiberal attackers, it has to be willing to be abnormal when pushed against a wall.

Josh Warhit runs Warhit Media Services. He made aliyah from the United States in 2012 and served in the Nahal Brigade (infantry) in the Israel Defense Forces.

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Liberals try to avoid reality; Israel makes this hard https://www.israelhayom.com/2024/08/21/liberals-try-to-avoid-reality-israel-makes-this-hard/ https://www.israelhayom.com/2024/08/21/liberals-try-to-avoid-reality-israel-makes-this-hard/#respond Wed, 21 Aug 2024 04:35:12 +0000 https://www.israelhayom.com/?p=989337   Israel's circumstances test the limits of ideas that are core to liberalism. This causes discomfort for liberal countries, which prefer to keep liberalism's limitations out of view.  The laws of war, for example, cannot guarantee the prevention of human suffering. This is especially true when a party wages battle from behind and below its […]

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Israel's circumstances test the limits of ideas that are core to liberalism. This causes discomfort for liberal countries, which prefer to keep liberalism's limitations out of view. 

The laws of war, for example, cannot guarantee the prevention of human suffering. This is especially true when a party wages battle from behind and below its own civilians. Even if this party's adversary complies with the laws of war scrupulously, preventing harm to non-combatants is next to impossible. 

A man waves an Israeli flag during a protest called by the Union of Jewish Students of France (UEJF) at Place de la Republique in Paris on May 17, 2024 (AFP / Dimitar Dilkoff) AFP / Dimitar Dilkoff

Liberal countries fear that people will lose faith in international law if they understand this to be the case. Out of this fear, these countries obstruct honest assessment of the laws of war. They cave to the actors (including Israel's enemies) who thrive on maximizing their own civilians' suffering, all but declaring that if such suffering is unavoidable, fighting these actors adequately is forbidden. 

They demand that Israel end the ongoing war not due to violations of international law, but rather because international law is, on the whole, being upheld. They are distraught precisely because Israel is following international law, and thus placing its limitations in full view. This is why Israel's wars always trigger a moral narrative among liberal countries, whereas most war-related human suffering does not.

Liberal countries also fear that people will stop believing in the inevitable triumph of humans' innate capacity for good. A core myth of liberalism is that most people in any society, when given the opportunity, will strive to live in peaceful productivity. Practically every general consensus in Palestinian society flies in the face of this myth.

The liberal world refuses to acknowledge Palestinians' insistence on rejecting peaceful coexistence alongside Jewish sovereignty. It cannot fathom that an entire society would overwhelmingly condone the deliberate targeting of non-combatants with violence to compel the surrender of territory. It won't bring itself to accept that the Palestinian national cause values liberation only insofar as the reward is domination, and that it bemoans the lack of such domination more than it bemoans a lack of safety and well-being.

Desperate to escape the need to take Palestinians at their word, liberal countries deny Palestinian agency altogether. They claim that Palestinians "don't mean it," and if they do, it's only because of what the Israelis do to them. Everything bad in Palestinian society is the result of Israeli policy. That's why there's no peace. 

Liberal countries understand that they must be delicate in camouflaging liberalism's limitations. Blaming Israel too explicitly or directly may draw too much attention to the hypocrisy of demanding standards of behavior these countries would not uphold.

These countries have found a solution in Israel's Center-Left, which for decades has sought to soothe its own anxieties over how the country that was cast in its likeness has changed its face. Not unlike how societies across Europe, North Africa and the Middle East scapegoated the Jew to ease popular fears concerning the complex hardships of modernization, many of Israel's more liberal constituents sought and found a scapegoat to soothe their own societal trauma. His name is Benjamin Netanyahu.

In the portions of Israeli society that are mad with anti-Netanyahu frenzy, liberal countries find more than common cause. They find an escape from potential calls of hypocrisy or prejudice. "If so many Israelis say that it's all his fault, it must be fine for us to say it too."

Liberal disdain for Netanyahu is more than a way for people to pretend that without him, Israel would be a version of itself they find more pleasing. It's also a mechanism by which people pretend that without him, liberalism would not be tested so brutally and so honestly.

Absent Netanyahu, Israeli policy preferences on issues important to the liberal world would be remarkably similar to what they are with Netanyahu as prime minister. Liberal countries are careful to refrain from pointing this out, though. They maintain a tight grip on anything that, at least for now, shields their myths from being exposed as idealized fantasies.

If it were not for Netanyahu absorbing left and right the wails and whimpers of an agitated liberal world, these wails and whimpers could very well be directed at Israel as a whole. If we were virtuous, we would stand shoulder to shoulder and inform the liberal world that the best chance for liberalism to flourish is for it to be evaluated and implemented sincerely. Since we are not virtuous, let's at least be clever and not try to push the scapegoat aside so hastily.

Josh Warhit runs Warhit Media Services. He made aliyah from the United States in 2012 and served in the Nahal Brigade (infantry) in the Israel Defense Forces.

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