Israel’s failure to impose its will on Iran should be treated not as a disaster but as a reality check, exposing the limits of military force and the urgent need to end a politics built on permanent war.
The chorus line, from the right and the “left” (not counting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu): an Israeli defeat, a diplomatic disaster, Trump turned his back on us and Steven Witkoff is a Jewboy. The nation is lamenting a calamity, defeat and a near Holocaust.
The Bennetts immediately jump in and promise a fix. They will restore relations with the United States and bring Israel back to the killing fields to finish the job. That is their only promise on a particularly auspicious day.
But it is neither a disaster nor a Holocaust. In the war with Iran, Israel went through what psychologists call reality testing, during which it was shown the truth. And that could be the most positive development in recent memory if only the country draws the right conclusions. The so-called disaster may turn into a historic opportunity.
In one of its previous disasters, that of 1973, Israel knew how to draw conclusions and open a new and revolutionary chapter in its history – the chapter of peace. The fiasco with Iran now requires us to sober up for a second time, but for now, there is no one to lead the course correction.
Some reality testing: A small country of 10 million people cannot fight the entire world, even if we are the sons of the chosen people, who know everything and do everything better than everyone else. Israel cannot engineer regimes, neither in distant Tehran nor in nearby Gaza, nor in next-door Ramallah either. It is not just us; even the United States cannot pull it off.
It can’t force organisations to give up their arms or uproot political beliefs from people’s hearts. The days when America was in our pocket are over. Acknowledging this reality gives us an opportunity, amid the slew of recent wars, to look in the mirror: This country’s so-called all-powerful army has failed to deliver any significant achievement other than political ruin.
Any rational country would draw the same conclusion – an end to living by the sword and the sword alone. Recent history has provided enough evidence. Maybe all these futile wars were necessary to get us to open our eyes and see that there has never been a war of choice that ended well for Israel.
There’s limited time to reach this conclusion. Withdraw troops from all of Lebanon, before they lead to another pointless war with Iran. Call an immediate halt to the madness in the West Bank, before it, too, turns on its sights on us. Give the army and the air force a little rest, let them breathe. Let the soldiers use their military discounts and lunch at the fast-food joints in Tel Aviv’s Ibn Gvirol Street.
Release the thousands of Palestinian hostages languishing in National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s prisons and start behaving like human beings toward the Palestinians, before the world forces us to. And, decide where we are headed, what we want – two states, one democratic state or one suicidal apartheid state. There is no fourth option and there will never be one.
This week, it was reported that the Israeli military was asking the government to reach an agreement with the Lebanese government before the army would be forced to pull out of the occupied areas with its tail between its legs.
Here, at least, is a case of partial sobriety. After all, the agreement with the Lebanese government could have been reached earlier, but Israel needed the reality testing of war to realize that it cannot disarm Hezbollah, and never will.
The IDF, at least, is beginning to understand that. The same applies to Hamas, resistance to the occupation of the West Bank and the regime in Iran.
The fact that Israel is megalomaniacal does not mean that it is capable of conducting itself according to its megalomaniacal standards, believing that bombing near and far will serve its interests. What happened to us in Iran was not a disaster, but an opportunity. We looked straight at the truth – and it lowered its eyes. Now it is our turn to lower ours.
Republished from Haaretz
Gideon Levy is a Haaretz columnist and a member of the newspaper’s editorial board. Levy joined Haaretz in 1982, and spent four years as the newspaper’s deputy editor. He was the recipient of the Euro-Med Journalist Prize for 2008; the Leipzig Freedom Prize in 2001; the Israeli Journalists’ Union Prize in 1997; and The Association of Human Rights in Israel Award for 1996. His new book, The Punishment of Gaza, has just been published by Verso.