From the outside, the Israeli government’s policies appear both brutal and inexplicably self-destructive.
Its war in Gaza has claimed thousands of Palestinian lives and destroyed much of the physical infrastructure needed for society to function, such as schools and hospitals. Despite heavy casualties, Israeli forces have yet to bring Hamas close to “total defeat”. And there is still no credible plan to prevent Hamas from returning to power after the war, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly ruled out handing over control of Gaza to the moderate Palestinian Authority (PA).
These policies have some real public support. A recent survey of Israeli Jews found that the majority of Israeli Jews Supports the behavior of the Israeli army in Gazabelieve Israel must maintain control over Gaza After the war, and Express deep skepticism Regarding the two-state solution through negotiations with the Palestinians (At least for now)
To understand how Israel got here, you need to understand how most Israelis think about security.
Israel’s ruling security ideology centers on the country’s collective “trauma,” a ubiquitous term when you talk about the conflict with Israelis. Its main premise is the idea that the country has gone beyond trying to make peace with its neighbors and met with violence at every turn. Near-term peace is seen as a pipedream; Stopping terrorism and countering the enemy is paramount. In this view, securing Israel requires unilateral military action – as aggressive as necessary.
This is not the only worldview held by large numbers of Israeli Jews; An alternative is glimmering on the horizon. But if you want to understand why Israel behaves the way it does, you have to start by grappling with the ideology of trauma at the heart of its politics.
A voice from within
One of the best windows into this worldview I’ve encountered recently is a podcast conversation between Ezra Klein and Israeli journalist Amit Segal.
To call Segal prominent is an understatement: one ranking puts him as such Israel’s single most influential journalist. He is also an unstoppable right winger; When I attended CPAC Israel in 2022, Segal’s interview with American conservative pundit Ben Shapiro was the main event.
That discussion was on Segal’s home turf, literally and figuratively. In contrast, the interview with Klein puts Segal in a position to explain his country’s politics to a New York Times audience. The result was an unusually clear window into an Israeli psyche that outsiders often find difficult to grasp.
Broadly, Segal tells the story of Israeli politics One of the left – A decline fueled in large part by the failure of its security agenda. “The Israelis stopped believing in the two-state solution, which would be achieved through a bilateral negotiation, because they saw what happened last time,” Segal said.
In this story, Israel offered a generous peace to the Palestinians at the Camp David summit in 2000 – only to be promptly rejected and met with four and a half years of the Second Intifada, the most violent Israeli-Palestinian period. Conflict up to the current Gaza war. Shortly after the end of the Intifada in 2005, Israel tried a different path to peace: unilateral withdrawal of troops from the Gaza Strip and settlement. The ultimate result of that decision was Hamas seizing the Gaza Strip, using it as a launching pad for rocket fire, and (eventually) the October 7 attack.
This recount is at best selective, only telling facts flattering to Israel and leaving out its own mistakes. Jeremy Pressman, a political scientist who Study Camp David talks, Accused Segal “Peddling a completely discredited version” of events – which makes Israel’s proposal seem more generous than its research suggests it actually was.
But putting the facts aside for a moment, there is no doubt that Segal’s story is influential among Israeli Jews. They don’t just believe it intellectually, but feel it in a visceral way. The past 25 years of suicide bombings and rocket fire have left an open psychological wound, pushing politics to the right even in the decade of relatively low casualties before October 7.
Now, Segal argues, Israelis believe they have no choice but to defend themselves through force — and a lot of it.
“We’ll probably see more troops fighting in the north [in Lebanon] and to the south [in Gaza] For years to come, perhaps decades. And there will be a death toll. It is not going to be a permanent war but a permanent state of ongoing operations,” he said.
In response, Klein suggests that this is “a theory of occupation”: Israel can only be secure if its military is physically present and in control of Palestine and even parts of Lebanon. And indeed, Segal all but openly admits.
“Gaza, West Bank and Lebanon are three different situations. But there is one principle that I think most Israelis accept, which is that the only guarantee of Israeli life is that there will be an Israeli soldier in every place,” he said.
On top of all this is the threat from Iran, the main sponsor of both Hamas and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
For many outside Israel, it’s hard to imagine how a terrorist group like Hamas could feel like an existential threat to an armed state like Israel. But from the Israeli perspective, Hamas is just an arrow in Tehran’s quiver, and it aims to shoot them all down eventually.
“They will spend time preparing for the final mission to destroy Israel,” Segal said. “There is a square in Tehran where A clock is counting down to 2040, so that Israel would be exterminated. And Israeli intelligence says they are no longer looking at 2040 as a date but much earlier.”
From the outside, Iran’s rhetoric can appear like saber-rattling — threats that don’t match its capabilities.
Israel possesses one of the strongest conventional military forces in the world, equipped with a sophisticated American technology. Iran’s armed forces are very weak; It primarily projects power through asymmetric terrorist groups that cannot hope to defeat the IDF in open warfare. Iran’s recent attack on Israel with its drone armada has proved a colossal flop. Israel’s nuclear arsenal provides a final deterrent: it ensures that any serious attempt to destroy Israel would be national suicide, even in the event that Israel is protected by Iran. acquires its own nuclear weapons.
Yet none of this is reassuring enough for many Jewish Israelis. Living in a country that rose from the ashes of the Holocaust and fought three wars to survive in its first three decades, Israelis have long had reason to worry. The events of the past 25 years have shattered much of their remaining sense of security, teaching them that calm can be deceptive and that risk is always present. They will tell you over and over again that you cannot understand this reality unless you have lived through the depression and death of the last few decades.
This, more than a particular strand of Zionist theory, is Israel’s reigning national philosophy: an ideology of trauma and a vow never to let it happen again.
Can Israel change?
When you really try to think about the world through this lens, Israel’s response on October 7 makes complete sense.
If you believe (as I do) that Israel’s long-term security can only be achieved through peaceful negotiations, then there is no way to justify the horrors of Gaza. But if you believe that peace is a mirage, as many Israelis do, it may seem that Israel has no choice but to destroy Hamas. From their point of view, thousands of civilian casualties in Gaza are a dire necessity – because the only option is to abandon their own hope of living without fear of another October 7.
But while this view has supported the IDF’s operation in Gaza, it does not fully describe Israeli Jews in politics. And this, I think, is where Segal’s narrative begins to break down.
While it is true that trauma shapes everything in Israeli politics, it does not unilaterally point to greater and greater aggression. Even months after the war, when the horrors of October 7 were still fresh, there were clear signs that Israel’s national political ideology had never required a rightward shift in politics. That sign is still evident today.
Trauma doesn’t just lead to anger: it can also create solidarity and empathy. During the war, it was revealed A kind of peace movement A cease-fire agreement centered on demands for the repatriation of hostages in Gaza. A recent poll found that most Jews care more about Israelis taking hostages in Gaza than repatriating them. The ongoing military operation in Rafah continues.
Relatedly, there is widespread public disillusionment with the current far-right government — and support for a return to the center.
Even before the war, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was unpopular. His far-right government was pushing through a law that seized power over the judiciary — a tyranny that sparked the largest protest movement in Israel’s history. The incident took place on Netanyahu’s watch on October 7, and he has yet to take responsibility for the massive failure of Israeli defenses, further reducing his popularity.
Today, most Israelis want Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to step down and Fresh elections will be held before the end of this year; Polls consistently show his coalition partners at large margins. The main beneficiaries are: A centrist coalition is waiting in the wings to replace him.
Moreover, the Israeli military has increased Openly skeptical Current direction of the country. inside A recent interviewThe IDF’s chief spokesman — Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari — characterized Netanyahu’s promise of “total victory” without a political settlement in Gaza as a fantasy.
“The idea that it is possible to destroy Hamas, that it is possible to wipe out Hamas is throwing sand in people’s eyes,” he said. “If we don’t bring anything else to Gaza, at the end of the day we’ll get Hamas.”
It is therefore important to distinguish between Segal’s interpretation of consensual Jewish politics on the one hand, and his tendency to project his particular brand of right-wing politics as the true center. Segal engages in such projection when he suggests that Israelis are “angry at Netanyahu because he failed to be as horrifying as they are.”
But aside from the occasional overstatement, Segal mostly does a valuable service by explaining the beliefs that define Israeli politics today. While the future of Israeli politics is in flux, understanding its present requires keeping pace with the reality it presents.
