ISRAEL AND THE ENIGMA OF THE FUTURE: THE DIFFICULT ACCEPTANCE OF PERMANENT VULNERABILITY AND PERSISTENT DELEGITIMIZATION

After almost three years of war, what, ultimately, is the picture that emerges for Israel and for Jews around the world? The truth, harsh and difficult both to accept and to communicate, is that a war won halfway can also be interpreted as a war lost halfway. The boundary is so blurred that it depends only on the point of view and on the narrative one wishes to construct. It is true that Israel has achieved important tactical successes, but it struggles to transform them into a medium- or long-term strategic victory. The war has weakened some adversaries, but it has also revealed the limits of military power as the sole instrument of regional stabilization.

Regarding Iran, killing an elderly man who was already close to death resulted in his replacement by a younger and resentful leader. Mojtaba Khamenei is 56 years old; this means that, despite having been wounded, he could remain in power for another 10 or 20 years. And would a man whose father, mother, wife, and a son have been killed truly want to reach a peace agreement, or would he be interested solely in buying time, waiting for leaders to change and for the situation to shift in his own favor? The second hypothesis is the most plausible, all the more so because the new Khamenei knows perfectly well that, even in the event of a truce, his own personal security would continue to be threatened.

The human cost, moreover, has undoubtedly been enormous. The Arab and Iranian world has paid a very high price for the massacre of October 7, with interest, but Israelis and Jews have also paid a significant price—perhaps too high when compared with the advantages, which remain, even today, uncertain and absolutely not decisive. The Palestinian deaths in Gaza have been approximately 81,000, and, including indirect deaths, it is plausible that the real number is close to 100,000. The war in Iran (and its ramifications) caused the deaths of at least 3,468 Iranians, 1,000 Hezbollah fighters, not counting hundreds of terrorists of every kind, including Houthis and PMF members. In almost three years of war, adding together the various fronts, Israeli deaths, both civilian and military, have been almost 2,100—not enough for every family to have a relative directly involved, but enough for almost every family to know a victim within their circle of friends, colleagues, or acquaintances.

To this must be added the price paid by Jewish communities in the Diaspora: according to Israel’s Ministry for Diaspora Affairs, in 2025 alone at least 20 Jews were killed in various attacks, while antisemitic incidents reached levels unprecedented since the end of the Second World War, reinforcing among many Jews the perception that the conflict does not concern only Israel, but the entire Jewish people. Western Jews are aware of this climate of paroxysmal and irrational hostility, and those who have a clearly recognizable Jewish surname are now hesitant to leave their personal details with the hairdresser or the restaurant owner of the moment. In many cases, it is far wiser to use a false surname and avoid leaving one’s family name on the apartment intercom.

By now, hatred toward Israel and Jews has become extremely visible, almost media-"polished," flaunted and legitimized, even imposed as a cultural identity, both on the right and on the left. The internet is full of people who rant every day about "genocide" and "Ashkenazi conspiracy"; people who are easily influenced, who do not even know the difference between Sephardim, Ashkenazim, Italkim, Romaniotes, and Mizrahim; people who hysterically shout "From the River to the Sea," ignoring (or pretending to ignore) that implementing such a proposal presupposes the disappearance of Israel and the diaspora of millions of sabra. The comment "The Austrian painter was not entirely wrong" has become a disturbing leitmotif, and it can be found beneath almost every political post—even cultural or archaeological ones—related to Israel and Jews. A schizophrenic and contradictory conception of Jews by Europeans is also emerging. In previous centuries, and especially during Nazifascism, Jews were considered "allogenic," "Semitic foreigners," "non-Aryans," "not sufficiently white." Today, the descendants of those same Europeans accuse them of being "too white," "too European," "fake Asians," "pale people" who stubbornly insist on living in Asia.

While the most extremist positions of the right are partly marginalized in official political debate, above all because of institutional ties with the United States, on the other hand, in environments closer to the left-wing opposition, the issue is often exploited as an element of mobilization and political distinction from the governments in power. Some left-wing leaders have Jewish origins or a law degree and know very well the difference between "genocide" and "war crimes," yet they continue to exploit this issue to attract potential voters. Many of these people, if they were in power, would never have the courage to shout "genocide," for opportunistic and strategic reasons, but also because they would be forced to use academic and legal language. Yet now they do it: they shout genocide almost every day because the masses need an enemy, especially at a time when the West is undergoing an evident systemic crisis. The result is an overall polarized climate, in which rhetoric tends to become increasingly extreme and simplified, trivializing very serious issues and creating an atmosphere of verbal and physical violence. European history demonstrates that, whenever an external conflict is transformed into a powerful ideological symbol, the transition from verbal radicalization to forms of organized political violence cannot be excluded a priori. In this sense, the general climate is so toxic that the risk of the emergence of new movements analogous to the Revolutionäre Zellen and of actions similar to the Entebbe hijacking is by no means an unrealistic hypothesis.

CAN ISRAEL LIVE IN A STATE OF PERMANENT WAR WITHOUT INTERNAL EXHAUSTION?

If the external front continues to represent an unknown factor, the internal front is no less important. Can Israel truly afford to live, for years and years, in a state of almost permanent mobilization without paying the price also on an economic and social level? If a comparison must be made with its enemies, Israel wins, because it can afford this condition more than they can. However, it is equally fair to remember that thousands of reservists have been called up multiple times, that several productive sectors have suffered slowdowns, and that tourism has collapsed compared with pre-conflict levels. The Dead Sea is now almost deserted. Foreign tourists can be counted on one hand. The war has also intensified divisions that already existed between secular and religious Israelis, between the center and the periphery (one only has to think of the inhabitants of the Negev), between those who considered the return of the hostages the only priority and those who consider the continuation of military operations decisive.

The next Israeli elections will therefore be much more than a simple competition between political parties. They will probably become an implicit referendum on the way Israel interprets its own security after the trauma of October 7. The vote will not concern only the figure of the prime minister, but rather a choice between two visions of the country: on one side, an Israel that considers the external threat a permanent condition and believes it is necessary to maintain a line of maximum intransigence; on the other, an Israel that, while not giving up security, considers it necessary to rebuild a new diplomatic architecture. The truth is not that Israelis have suddenly become pacifists; it would be masochistic to be so. The majority of the population continues to consider the State’s military capability indispensable and would hardly accept a policy perceived as one of surrender and naïve goodwill toward its neighbors. But a very pragmatic question is emerging: how can force be used effectively without transforming it into a permanent condition? In A Taste of Armageddon from Star Trek TOS, two planets at war for centuries had found a system to continue the conflict without destroying their economies: clashes were simulated by computers and virtual casualties were eliminated in designated disintegration centers, without opposition or protests. It was a way to preserve infrastructure and the productive apparatus, but at the cost of transforming death into a bureaucratic procedure. The implicit question was: can a society rationalize war to the point of making it mentally acceptable, while keeping intact the system that produces it? The Iron Dome, at least in part, brings us closer to this possibility, and helps us understand that the danger is not only being defeated (a disastrous hypothesis with major macroeconomic consequences), but reaching the point where an endless war becomes a normal condition, making millions of citizens accustomed to death. In this sense, an increasingly substantial part of public opinion appears to be seeking not a weaker leadership, but a strategic leadership, capable of alternating military ruthlessness and diplomatic initiative, offensive actions and moments of political openness, even sufficiently long ones to give people breathing space and allow them to pursue their legitimate aspirations, a strategy similar to the old policy of Golda Meir, Israel’s unforgettable mother.

It is within this political space that the figure of Gadi Eisenkot emerges, former Chief of Staff of the IDF and one of the possible protagonists of Israel’s political future. His popularity also derives from the fact that he paid the price of the war with the death of a son and two grandsons in Gaza. However, Eisenkot does not convince everyone. For some, he is merely a very clever man who identified the right moment to replace Netanyahu. Nevertheless, the model he proposes during the electoral campaign—using force when necessary, but without abandoning diplomacy when it can better serve Israeli interests—seems to respond to a widespread need within society: winning wars without remaining trapped in them. And in reality, a similar logic would not even be new. For years, Israeli forces have applied the doctrine of MABAM (Campaign Between Wars), a strategy founded on the idea of striking adversaries without necessarily moving toward a total conflict. The objective is not to achieve a definitive and immediate victory, but to continuously alter the balance of power, gain time, and prevent the enemy from reaching a position of potential advantage. Cyberwarfare, clandestine operations, sabotage, targeted eliminations of commanders, and weapons transfers: tools that were much more widely used in the past, when resources and plans allowed it.

However, every security strategy, even the most rational and necessary one, ultimately confronts a deeper and, in some way, philosophical question: what relationship should exist between ethnic survival and the value of every human life, even one that is hostile or potentially hostile? For Israel, this is not merely a rhetorical question: a people born from millennia of experiences of discrimination and oppression must be able to defend itself without forgetting the moral principle that attributes value to life.

The Bibas brothers killed by Hamas deserved to live, exactly as the Iranian girls who died under the rubble of a school or the many amputated children of Gaza deserved to live. The media attention that the Israeli world devoted to the young Bibas children is understandable also because their image possessed an extraordinary communicative force in Western societies, where many perceived them, perhaps unconsciously, as children aesthetically "closer" to themselves. However, precisely a tradition that has experienced firsthand the aberrant and devastating effects of Positivism should remember that ethics cannot depend on anthropometric characteristics. Israel certainly does not need the intermittent and self-serving pity reserved for victims considered more "closer" to Western aesthetic standards, but rather a coherent recognition of its rights, regardless of the appearance of those who suffer. A child with red hair and a pale complexion is not worth more than a dark-haired child, with olive skin and Arab or Persian origins. Every life possesses the same intrinsic value and the same undeniable rights. And perhaps this is precisely one of the most difficult questions for Israel: how to defend its ethnic survival without losing the connection with those moral principles that its own history, both religious and secular, has made so central in the global imagination.

REFERENCES

1- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_war

2- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Iran_war

3- https://www.gov.il/en/pages/antisemitism_report_2025?