Terrific analysis. Netanyahu has done more to create hatred for us around the world by the way he pursued the Hamas war. His brutality was counterproductive. Then there is the mistake to believe Trump was not going to do to him what he has done to others. Even now Dan Senor somehow believes it’s Trump’s cleverness at work and not what has been evident to most Americans. So much hatred for Obama that he can’t recognize the obvious. Face it, Trump is a racist and anti semite at heart.
I wonder how you imagine Israel ‘squandered’ public support by their actions though? The narrative about Israel has been thoroughly insinuated into Western academia and from there throughout liberal institutions including the k-12 and graduate education systems, journalism and into health education and therapeutic professions for the past 20 years it has taken root and become the only opinion‘good people’ can have.
No matter what Israel did or didn’t do was going to have the same result.
The problem is that diaspora Jewish institutions have failed to respond to this and have been complicit by their failure
Israel has become the world’s most despised country because of the indiscriminate killing in Gaza and now the harassment in the West Bank. We see the religious extremists killing, terrorizing and harassing the residents with Gvir and others urging it on. Every day with no punishment of the perpetrators. Shameful and contributes to the growing antisemitism.
Perhaps Nadav would like to explain to the residents of Metulla, Maalot and Kiryat Shmona how the first Lebanon War (whose goal was to stop endless terror attacks) was such a disaster, and how Israel will be much better off if the IDF just pulls out of Lebanon altogether.
I despise Bibi as much as the next guy, for his constant lying, manipulation and emboldening the charedi stranglehold. And his “total victory” populist rhetoric was certainly counterproductive. But to claim that the formerly overthrown and currently “pay for slay” PA should have been given control of Gaza on a platter is both unrealistic and dangerous.
Thank you so much Nadav. I rarely have read a more thoughtful or balanced perspective. Your narrative doesn’t provide any easy answers because of course there are none.
The upcoming election and what the candidates running from the center say and what they intend to do and if they win what they actually will do provides the best hope for a slow and hopefully steady de-escalation of violence and a knitting together again of Israeli society.
The level of trauma that affects many perhaps most Israelis as an understandable result of the past two years needs to be acknowledged and dealt with openly and honestly. That will obviously not happen if Netanyahu somehow prevails in the election.
As an American Jew who worked for months in some of the happiest days of my life as a volunteer at Kfar Aza in 1971 and who mourns the deaths there and elsewhere to this day I can only pray that the extraordinary Israeli resilience that been shown for the past century can overcome the challenges - perhaps larger than ever - that it faces today.
Israel never squandered public support. Again, we Jews somehow feel responsible for the moral and intellectual failings of others. In a sense self-criticism is an act of wishful thinking: that somehow if we only did things differently we wouldn’t be hated so much. Will we ever learn that we are hated simply for who we are (and we aren’t) and not for what we do or what others imagined us to have done (the genocidal Jew, which is so pernicious in having turned the horror of the Holocaust on its head and against us). We have little agency, if any, in changing the world’s view of us; we have tremendous agency in our own preservation in spite of it.
For those that say it doesn't matter what Israeli does, consider this statement - that no one in the Netanyahu governement refuted - that was picked up worldwide. Multiply this by hundreds of similar comments and actions coming from the right wing extremists, all reported in newspapers and social networks, and we can understand how the antisemitism continues to grow.
From TOI: On Friday, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir posted one of his most extreme and inflammatory tweets yet. Demanding that “1,000 Lebanese mothers must weep” for every Israeli soldier or officer killed by Hezbollah fire, he declared: “All of Lebanon must burn.”
Terrific analysis. Netanyahu has done more to create hatred for us around the world by the way he pursued the Hamas war. His brutality was counterproductive. Then there is the mistake to believe Trump was not going to do to him what he has done to others. Even now Dan Senor somehow believes it’s Trump’s cleverness at work and not what has been evident to most Americans. So much hatred for Obama that he can’t recognize the obvious. Face it, Trump is a racist and anti semite at heart.
I wonder how you imagine Israel ‘squandered’ public support by their actions though? The narrative about Israel has been thoroughly insinuated into Western academia and from there throughout liberal institutions including the k-12 and graduate education systems, journalism and into health education and therapeutic professions for the past 20 years it has taken root and become the only opinion‘good people’ can have.
No matter what Israel did or didn’t do was going to have the same result.
The problem is that diaspora Jewish institutions have failed to respond to this and have been complicit by their failure
Israel has become the world’s most despised country because of the indiscriminate killing in Gaza and now the harassment in the West Bank. We see the religious extremists killing, terrorizing and harassing the residents with Gvir and others urging it on. Every day with no punishment of the perpetrators. Shameful and contributes to the growing antisemitism.
Perhaps Nadav would like to explain to the residents of Metulla, Maalot and Kiryat Shmona how the first Lebanon War (whose goal was to stop endless terror attacks) was such a disaster, and how Israel will be much better off if the IDF just pulls out of Lebanon altogether.
I despise Bibi as much as the next guy, for his constant lying, manipulation and emboldening the charedi stranglehold. And his “total victory” populist rhetoric was certainly counterproductive. But to claim that the formerly overthrown and currently “pay for slay” PA should have been given control of Gaza on a platter is both unrealistic and dangerous.
Thank you so much Nadav. I rarely have read a more thoughtful or balanced perspective. Your narrative doesn’t provide any easy answers because of course there are none.
The upcoming election and what the candidates running from the center say and what they intend to do and if they win what they actually will do provides the best hope for a slow and hopefully steady de-escalation of violence and a knitting together again of Israeli society.
The level of trauma that affects many perhaps most Israelis as an understandable result of the past two years needs to be acknowledged and dealt with openly and honestly. That will obviously not happen if Netanyahu somehow prevails in the election.
As an American Jew who worked for months in some of the happiest days of my life as a volunteer at Kfar Aza in 1971 and who mourns the deaths there and elsewhere to this day I can only pray that the extraordinary Israeli resilience that been shown for the past century can overcome the challenges - perhaps larger than ever - that it faces today.
Israel never squandered public support. Again, we Jews somehow feel responsible for the moral and intellectual failings of others. In a sense self-criticism is an act of wishful thinking: that somehow if we only did things differently we wouldn’t be hated so much. Will we ever learn that we are hated simply for who we are (and we aren’t) and not for what we do or what others imagined us to have done (the genocidal Jew, which is so pernicious in having turned the horror of the Holocaust on its head and against us). We have little agency, if any, in changing the world’s view of us; we have tremendous agency in our own preservation in spite of it.
Question from the diaspora. Would any of the putative leaders (Bennett, Eisenkot, Lapid?) acted in a materially different way post Oct 7?
For those that say it doesn't matter what Israeli does, consider this statement - that no one in the Netanyahu governement refuted - that was picked up worldwide. Multiply this by hundreds of similar comments and actions coming from the right wing extremists, all reported in newspapers and social networks, and we can understand how the antisemitism continues to grow.
From TOI: On Friday, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir posted one of his most extreme and inflammatory tweets yet. Demanding that “1,000 Lebanese mothers must weep” for every Israeli soldier or officer killed by Hezbollah fire, he declared: “All of Lebanon must burn.”