Lessons from Israel

For a country to be powerful and enjoy the respect of both its friends and rivals, it needs to steer clear of profound domestic crises. This is an axiom that was recently confirmed in the case of a country that had cast itself as invincible, Israel. The events of last Saturday were a strategic disaster and there’s a reason for this.

Lesson number one: Division always brings strife. Israeli society was deeply divided and polarized. Entire families were split in two, with one side not speaking to the other.

Lesson two: Allowing politics to govern the state’s security mechanism both weakens it and lowers its prestige in the eyes of rivals. What had been happening in Israel lately was without precedent. Six former Mossad directors had warned that the policy pursued by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was disastrous; 1,000 reservists refused to take part in exercises and there were many pilots among them, causing a serious operational problem. Netanyahu had a vicious rivalry with the entire traditional deep state, with the heads of the armed forces, the secret services and the foreign ministry. He often ignored them or refused meetings. Morale plummeted and influential former security service officials accused the premier of harming Israel’s operational capacity while appointing people to key posts on political considerations alone.

Lesson three: No matter how powerful a state you are, in this day and age you always have to be prepared for what tomorrow may bring. Technology is changing very rapidly and war techniques are changing with it. Access to information and technology is much easier, and cheaper. Smug complacency will come at a cost.

Lesson four: Simple proportional representation is disastrous for a country that faces significant threats and needs a firm and steady hand at the wheel. Israel is paying a steep price for its electoral law. Small ultra-Orthodox or religiously extreme parties make it into parliament with ease and can hold the bigger parties hostage. This is what happened in the last Netanyahu government. 

Israel, one hopes, is a mature society that will be able to heal its wounds. The attack by Hamas has already united the Israeli people. Netanyahu has a lot of questions to answer, but patriotism and a sense of duty are the overriding sentiments right now.

The above lessons are not exclusive to Israel; they concern Greece too. We were, thankfully, spared from simple proportional representation but on the matter of division and the politicization of security mechanisms we have been guilty of both and are always at risk of slipping again. As far as what it means to be prepared for war in 2023, I hope the necessary and extremely pressing conclusions have been drawn by those it concerns.