Uncategorized
‘Fleishman is in Trouble’ hits FX Thursday. Just don’t call it a Jewish series, says its creator.
(JTA) — From Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s point of view, her best-selling 2019 novel “Fleishman Is in Trouble” wasn’t all that Jewish. She’s a little perplexed by the deluge of press junket questions about its Jewish essence.
“It’s funny: I don’t think of it as a Jewish book. I know people do,” she said.
Brodesser-Akner, a journalist famous for her sharp celebrity profiles, is now the showrunner of the book’s star-studded TV adaptation, an 8-episode FX series that debuts on Hulu on Thursday. In the story, Toby Fleishman (played by Jesse Eisenberg) is a 41-year-old Jewish hepatologist who has recently divorced Rachel (Claire Danes), his ambitious, icy, blonde theater agent wife. Early on in the story, Rachel disappears in the middle of the night, leaving Toby with their two children and a truckload of resentment. Toby, who had a nebbishy and romantically insecure youth before marrying Rachel, is now drowning in the sexual bounty of dating apps.
On Zoom, Brodesser-Akner was speaking a few days after the show’s blowout bash at Carnegie Hall and Tavern on the Green, an iconic Central Park restaurant. “I’ve never been to an event like that. It was 600 people,” she said. It sounded like a scene that could have been plucked right from “Fleishman,” which is set on the extremely wealthy Upper East Side, and in which the responsibilities of marriage and parenthood are at odds with the ambitions and personal longings of its middle-aged characters.
Brodesser-Akner, 47, who was both adrenalized and a little frazzled, had to balance the premiere with parenting duties — she’s a mother of two boys, ages 15 and 12. “I’m still picking sequins from my teeth.”
As a writer, Brodesser-Akner likes to play with the power of subjectivity, and she built “Fleishman” on it. Though the story begins as Toby’s, it eventually morphs into a “Rashomon”-esque take on the divorce and what really went wrong in the Fleishmans’ marriage. The story is narrated by Libby (Lizzy Caplan), Toby’s friend from their year abroad in Israel. A former men’s magazine writer, Libby is now a lost and frustrated stay-at-home mom in suburban New Jersey (and a stand-in for Brodesser-Akner). Adam Brody steals scenes as Seth, an immature finance bro and another year-in-Israel friend with whom Toby reconnects after the divorce. (His presence is a homecoming of sorts for those of us who spent our tween years watching him play a different Seth in “The O.C.”)
“I don’t think of it as a Jewish book,” says Taffy Brodesser-Akner.
Brodesser-Akner pieced together the story’s Jewish elements: a doctor named Fleishman, a bat mitzvah, Friday night dinners, a year abroad in Israel, a few jokes about Jews being bad at home repairs (which is the subject of a very funny scene in episode six between Toby and Seth). There are a few insidery details that she fails to mention, like a fake Jewish sleepaway camp called Camp Marah, which sounds like the real Camp Ramah but roughly translates to “Camp Bitter” in Hebrew. Does all this add up to a “Jewish” story?
“I read ‘The Corrections’ by Jonathan Franzen, and it mentions Christmas I think 47 times. I read ‘Crossroads’ and it’s about the family of a youth minister. But neither of those is ever called a Christian book. This is called a Jewish book. I don’t object to it being called a Jewish book. But to me it’s mostly an American story. As a writer and as an observer of the culture, I think that calling this a Jewish book is proof of the answer to an old question: are Jews considered Americans? And the answer is no.” She threw in her characteristic meta analysis: “So now you have a very Jewish profile. How Jewish is that, Sarah?”
The self-aware comment is a good reminder that although her responses may be unguarded, she has not forgotten that she’s on the record. A name in New York media, Brodesser-Akner wrote for GQ and is now a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, having profiled Gwyneth Paltrow, Ethan Hawke and Tom Hanks and written about the Joshua Cohen novel “The Netanyahus,” the television show “Thirtysomething” and much more. She inserts herself often into her writing, not to make it about herself, but to remind the reader that every profile is by nature filtered through the lens of the writer crafting it. Her writing is searing, self-deprecating — so raw it’s still bleeding and often quite funny.
“I wrote the book the way I would write a profile, just like I always do. But this man doesn’t exist,” she said.
RELATED: 5 Jewish places that inspired Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s ‘Fleishman Is in Trouble’
We had tried to meet in person near her home on the Upper West Side, but by the time she was available, I was in Tel Aviv, placing us along the Israel-New York axis on which “Fleishman” is set. When Toby suddenly calls Libby to tell her he’s getting divorced, he catapults her into memories of their early twenties in Jerusalem. Those thoughts make Libby miss the possibilities of her youth, the ones time has ruthlessly and inevitably extinguished. Eventually her longing for her past becomes so overwhelming that it threatens her marriage to her menschy and patient husband, played by Josh Radnor. (For more longing-for-younger-days while in Israel content, Brodesser-Akner wrote a Saveur essay about vegetable soup in Jerusalem — her Proustian madeleine. Interviewing Brodesser-Akner from my friend’s apartment in Tel Aviv, a city where I lived in my twenties, I found the theme of longing for the past hit almost too close to home.)
Part of the reason Brodesser-Akner doesn’t think the “Fleishman” story is all that Jewish is that she doesn’t feel all that Jewish — at least not relative to her mother and sisters, who are aligned with the Hasidic Chabad-Lubavitch movement and live within a few blocks of each other in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.
“I don’t think any writer has ever gotten it right,” she says of her Jewish background. “They say I was raised Orthodox. It’s interesting because it always makes me look like the black sheep in my family, when really they are. I’m exactly how I was raised to be until I was 12.”
After her mother, a secular Israeli, and her father, a Conservative Long Islander, divorced, her mother put Brodesser-Akner and her sisters in Jewish school. Some Jewish observance trickled back to her mother, who ended up going the Chabad route.
“My mom had never been inside a synagogue until the day she married my father. Now that is what we call ironic,” Brodesser-Akner said.
Brodesser-Akner’s two sisters followed, and her mother eventually remarried and had another child, the only sibling born into a religious household.
“The thing that made me a journalist was being raised in a home where, at age 12, I was relegated to observer. I had to learn how to understand other people’s points of view. And now that’s what I do,” she said.
Despite their religious differences — Brodesser-Akner attends an Orthodox synagogue but sends her children to an unaffiliated Jewish school and says she wakes up “every morning with new ideas” — the author is very close with her family, and her sisters were at the “Fleishman” premiere.
“They were at the premiere of my perverted sex show,” she joked with a laugh referring to the Hulu series, which features some sexual content as Toby explores the post-divorce New York dating scene. “They show up for me and I show up for them. I have my challenges with it, but I think their challenges must be greater. They never say this to me, but they must think that my life is comparatively…” She looked away thoughtfully, trying to find the right words. “They must think my lifestyle is comparatively less worthwhile. But we really love each other.”
To Brodesser-Akner, the most Jewish show on television is “The Patient,” which she calls “the best show I have seen in 100 years.” And that’s not because it (like “Fleishman”) is on FX. “I’m not that kind of interview!” she said.
Lizzy Caplan plays Toby’s friend Libby. (FX Networks)
“It’s the most Jewish show in all of the Jewish ways. It grapples with a Jewish prisoner; with the difference between a Conservative Jewish female cantor whose son becomes ultra-Orthodox — I’d never seen that on screen. It was kind of the only relatable Jewish matter I’ve ever seen. People ask me if I’ve watched ‘Shtisel.’ And I always say, I’m in the 47th season of an ultra-Orthodox family drama myself and not really interested!” She laughed. “But also I think of the other Jewish matters on television, which are adapted memoirs of people who were ultra-Orthodox and now aren’t. It’s like no one can imagine religious people being happy in their lives. And that’s really shocking to me. My family is very happy.”
Brodesser-Akner wound up with her dream cast: she had a list of five actors — Lizzy Caplan, Jesse Eisenberg, Claire Danes, Josh Radnor and Adam Brody — and no backup plan. She noted the fact that viewers have seen them grow up on screen as one reason they were right for the roles. For many, watching Caplan, Eisenberg and Brody sit across from each other in a diner will feel like a camp reunion, the fulfillment of a Jewish television fantasy they never knew they had.
“One thing that we were trying to get across is ‘how could it be that I am this old when I was once this young?’ And the fact that you have a memory of Claire from ‘My So-Called Life,’ or Jesse from ‘The Squid and the Whale’ — that does so much of the work of the show without writing a word,” Brodesser-Akner said.
Besides Danes (who plays the only main character with a non-Jewish parent, whom the book makes clear she resembles) the lead actors are all Jewish — a notable fact in a time when Jewish representation on screen, and who should be allowed to play Jewish characters, is the subject of continued debate.
Last month, New Yorker TV critic Emily Nussbaum, who is Jewish, tweeted, “There is a simple solution to the question of whether various non-Jewish actors are allowed to play Jews & that is to ask me.” Brodesser-Akner responded to the tweet, writing “[Non-Jew] Oscar Isaac in Scenes from a Marriage is the best ex-ortho I ever saw on screen!”
About casting Jewish actors, Brodesser-Akner noted a legal issue rarely mentioned in the representation debate: one can cast based on looks, but it’s illegal in the United States to cast based on religion. She took this very seriously.
“I spoke to [‘The Plot Against America’ director] David Simon about it and he said, ‘They’re actors. You let them act.’ And I agree with that. The question that I asked myself was who was perfect for it?” she said.
Even if Brodesser-Akner rejects the claim that “Fleishman” is a definitively Jewish story, wasn’t she consciously playing with some Philip Roth-inspired Jewish archetypes? Toby the nice Jewish doctor, the devoted, idealistic dad who’s also self-righteous, horny and insecure.
No, she insists she wasn’t. But also Philip Roth is so ingrained in her that who’s to say? And isn’t the question flawed in the first place?
“All I can say is that I am made out of Philip Roth. I’m so formed by his books. I actually would say that you have a bias in the asking of your question, in that you’re Jewish too. And you also are made out of Philip Roth books since you’re a writer. Again, that goes back to the same question as ‘are we American?’ To me, Toby is not ‘a Jewish guy.’ He’s just a guy! He’s the kind of guy I know! I was just trying to be myself.”
“Fleishman is in Trouble” premieres its first two episodes on Hulu on Nov. 17. It will release each of its six remaining episodes weekly on Thursdays.
—
The post ‘Fleishman is in Trouble’ hits FX Thursday. Just don’t call it a Jewish series, says its creator. appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
First-Ever Study on Antisemitism in Ireland Reveals Most Incidents Go Unreported
Anti-Israel demonstrators stand outside the Israeli embassy after Ireland has announced it will recognize a Palestinian state, in Dublin, Ireland, May 22, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Molly Darlington
The main body representing the Irish Jewish community on Sunday released what it described as the “first-ever” report on antisemitic acts in Ireland, revealing 143 incidents tracked between July 2025 and January 2026, with analysts warning these findings represented only the iceberg’s tip of a much larger unreported total
“The incidents span public spaces, workplaces, educational institutions, health-care environments, retail and hospitality settings, and digital communications,” Maurice Cohen, chairman of the Jewish Representative Council of Ireland (JRCI), said in a statement. “A recurring feature is hostility triggered solely by Jewish identity or perceived Jewish identity, including visible symbols, the Hebrew language, or accent.”
Thirty percent of the reported incidents began as normal interactions but became hostile when some “cue” revealed the soon-to-be victim’s Jewish or Israeli identity, triggering antisemitic abuse, the data shows.
The report emphasizes that the incident count should be understood in the context of the low population — only 2,200 Jews in Ireland.
According to the JRCI, the research fills the void caused by “the absence of a national system for recording antisemitic hate incidents.”
The data shows that 75 percent of the recorded incidents occurred in “everyday environments,” with 50 in public spaces, 21 in educational settings, and 13 in stores. The types of incidents in this category include verbal abuse (52), vandalism or graffiti (47), threats (35), exclusion or discrimination (29), and Holocaust denial (10). Researchers also received three reports of antisemitic assaults.
The other 25 percent of incidents researchers analyzed qualify as what the report describes as “direct digital targeting,” 47 percent of which included violent language and death threats. These digital messages refer to threatening emails or direct messages which are specifically sent to individuals or organizations. This category does not include social media antisemitism, which the JCRI notes will come in “a separate comprehensive report dedicated to that issue.”
Cohen noted that researchers observed “conspiracy narratives, Holocaust distortion, collective blame, and identity-based hostility,” which “reflect forms of antisemitism observed across Europe.” He said that “these dynamics cannot be adequately addressed through generalized anti-racism frameworks alone. Antisemitism presents distinct characteristics requiring targeted policy responses.”
The report emphasizes that the incidents themselves are only the beginning of harm for victims, explaining that institutional responses can exacerbate the experience. Common institutional failures cited include refusals to recognize antisemitism, premature closures without investigations, the reframing of incidents of hate as “neutral conflicts,” and offering “generic, unhelpful responses without resolution.”
These experiences of inadequate law enforcement response correspond with a reluctance among Irish Jews to report incidents. The report cites a 2026 analysis which found only 10 percent of victims of racist incidents in Ireland report the crime to police, a figure aligning with the 11 percent report rate for Jewish victims across Europe found by a 2024 EU Fundamental Rights Agency survey.
The JCRI data follows a report released in January by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference), a nonprofit organization that negotiates and secures compensation for survivors of the Nazis’ atrocities worldwide. The report analyzed Holocaust denial in Ireland and found higher levels among the young. For the total adult population, 8 percent of respondents agreed that “the Holocaust is a myth and did not happen.” The number rose to 9 percent among those 18-29.
Similarly, 17 percent of total Irish adults agreed that the Holocaust happened but thought that the number of Jews murdered had been “greatly exaggerated,” while 19 percent of those 18-29 embraced this conspiracy theory.
Researchers also found that 20 percent of total Irish adults and 23 percent of adults 18-29 disagreed with the statement “the Holocaust happened, and the number of Jews killed has been accurately and fairly described.”
The JRCI emphasizes in its new report that unlike 17 other EU member states, Ireland lacks a national antisemitism strategy.
“The EU Strategy establishes a dual responsibility: combating antisemitism and fostering Jewish life. These objectives are interdependent. Communities cannot flourish where hostility is insufficiently recognized or addressed,” Cohen said. “A dedicated national strategy, aligned with European standards, is the necessary and logical next step to ensure both the protection of Jewish citizens and the fostering of Jewish life and to remove contemporary, ambient antisemitism from our society.”
Gideon Taylor is a prominent Jewish American born in Ireland who discussed the report’s findings with The Algemeiner, describing the research as “the lived experience of Irish Jews,” who inhabit an environment today he described as infused with an “ambient antisemitism.”
“This is very different from an Ireland I grew up in,” Taylor told The Algemeiner. “The Irish youth community was a very robust, very active community, very involved in the public life of the country and the social life of the country and the cultural life of the country.”
Taylor recalled that Ireland “was a very warm place to grow up. I think what this report brings out is a very different Ireland and a very different part of living in Ireland today with its rise in antisemitism.”
Taylor added that he thought “there are people who are very concerned about this in government and others about this rise in antisemitism, and you see it from the statement of the prime minister down.”
Ireland has been one of Europe’s fiercest critics of Israel since the outbreak of the Gaza war in October 2023, a posture that, according to critics, has helped foster a more hostile environment for Jews.
In 2024, for example, an Irish official, Dublin City Councilor Punam Rane, claimed during a council meeting that Jews and Israel control the US economy, arguing that is why Washington, DC did not oppose Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.
Antisemitism in Ireland has become “blatant and obvious” in the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, according to Alan Shatter, a former member of parliament who served in the Irish cabinet between 2011 and 2014 as Minister for Justice, Equality and Defense.
Shatter told The Algemeiner in an interview in 2024 that Ireland has “evolved into the most hostile state towards Israel in the entire EU.”
In recent weeks, however, Irish officials have expressed support for the Jewish community amid mounting concern over antisemitism.
The “report from the Jewish Representative Council of Ireland is a sobering reminder of the increase we are experiencing in the scourge of antisemitism, both here in Ireland and internationally,” Irish Foreign Minister Helen McEntee said in a statement. “The report provides a clear and undeniable picture of the difficult situation currently experienced by Ireland’s Jewish communities.”
“This is completely unacceptable in the modern, inclusive republic we aspire to, and I condemn these incidents unreservedly,” she continued. “This government is committed to countering all forms of antisemitism and all forms of racism. The Program for Government sets out a clear commitment to implement the EU declaration on ‘Fostering Jewish Life in Europe’ and to give effect to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance ‘Working Definition of Antisemitism.”
Weeks earlier, Prime Minister Micheál Martin expressed similar sentiments ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
“I am acutely conscious that our Jewish community here in Ireland is experiencing a growing level of antisemitism,” he said. “I know that elements of our public discourse have coarsened.”
Taylor told The Algemeiner that, in response to the JRCI report’s findings, a goal should be to look at “how to move forward, how to have a national plan that will be clear, laid out with guidelines to try to combat this pernicious hatred.”
Uncategorized
Suspect in Brooklyn Chabad car-ramming incident faces federal charge
The man who repeatedly rammed his car into the Chabad-Lubavitch world headquarters in Brooklyn in January has been federally charged with intentionally damaging religious property, the Department of Justice said Monday.
Dan Sohail, a 36-year-old resident of Carteret, New Jersey, allegedly rammed his car into the Chabad building at 770 Eastern Parkway in Crown Heights five times after gesturing at bystanders to move out of the way, knocking the door off of its hinges and destroying his car’s bumper. Earlier in the night, Sohail allegedly removed stanchions that block cars from going down the driveway toward the building.
The incident took place as thousands were gathered at Chabad’s headquarters in Crown Heights to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the date that Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson became the leader of the Lubavitch movement. No one was injured.
Sohail is also facing state charges of reckless endangerment and attempted assault as hate crimes. The newly unsealed federal charge was not labelled as a hate crime.
The day of the incident, Rabbi Mordechai Lightstone, Chabad’s social media director, said in a post on X that the attack did not appear to be antisemitic, while the NYPD investigated the incident as a hate crime.
The federal case does not include hate crime charges, which would have required proof of a bias motivation.
During a post-arrest interview, Sohail told authorities he had recently discovered he had Jewish heritage and was learning more about the Jewish tradition. Sohail had previously visited several other Chabad locations and Yeshiva Gedola of Carteret, where Rabbi Eliyahu Teitz said Sohail ranted about his experience with Chabad the day before the car ramming attack.
Sohail also told police he had lost control of the car because of icy conditions and because he was wearing heavy boots, which caused him to press the gas pedal.
If convicted of the federal charge, Sohail faces up to three years in prison.
The post Suspect in Brooklyn Chabad car-ramming incident faces federal charge appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
In three days, Israel and the US reshaped the Middle East
The first three days of the new war in Iran will be studied in military academies for decades. They may also be remembered as the moment the Islamic Republic’s long arc of regional intimidation finally broke.
Israel and the United States swiftly eliminated much of Iran’s command structure. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Senior Revolutionary Guard commanders. The military high command. Key ministers. Even former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who had dedicated years of rhetoric and policy to Israel’s destruction. Roughly forty senior officials were killed in a synchronized operation that combined intelligence penetration, precision strike capability and political nerve.
It is difficult to identify a modern precedent for such a comprehensive and instantaneous decapitation of an adversary. States have targeted leaders before. They have crippled command structures before. But to reach so deeply, so quickly, and with such apparent accuracy into the inner sanctum of a regime long defined by paranoia and internal security is extraordinary.
Whatever follows, that message will linger. Israel can reach you. It can map your hierarchy, and then collapse it in a night.
For once the cliché is true: This is truly a pivotal moment. Here’s a look at the interlocking elements, and the possible directions in which this unpredictable situation could next unfold.
Air supremacy without precedent
Perhaps most striking has been the dominance in the skies.
Israel fields more than 300 combat aircraft of the highest caliber. The U.S. has surged at least a comparable number into the region. Together, they have established near-total air superiority over Iranian territory.
Iranian air defenses — already degraded in strikes in late 2024 and mid-2025 — have proven unable to contest sustained sorties. Launchers that reveal themselves are rapidly destroyed. Radar systems are neutralized in cycles.
Wars between states are rarely so asymmetrical in the air. Iran has invested heavily in layered defenses and missile deterrence. But technology, training and integration have won the day. For the Israeli Air Force, this is an operational achievement of historic scale.
The alliance factor
Just as consequential is the political dimension: Israel and the U.S. fighting shoulder to shoulder in a major offensive campaign.
For much of Israel’s early history, U.S. military cooperation was uncertain. Even after the strategic partnership deepened in the 1970s, it was never a given that Washington would participate directly in high-risk regional operations. That barrier has now been crossed.
President Donald Trump’s decision to align so closely with Israel in a war of this magnitude will be remembered in Israel for a generation. Many Israelis have long believed him to be uniquely aligned with their security worldview. After three days of joint operations, the strategic intimacy is undeniable.
This does not resolve every question about long-term regional strategy, or about how steady of a partner the U.S. will prove to be. But in the immediate sense, Israel’s foundational anxiety — that in an existential confrontation it might stand alone — has been decisively eased.
Iran’s gamble in the Gulf — and Lebanon’s unfinished business
Tehran’s response to Israeli and U.S. strikes has been to widen the field.
By striking at Gulf states and issuing threats beyond Israel, Iran appears to be attempting escalation in order to generate pressure on Washington. The logic is clear: If oil markets tremble and regional capitals feel directly endangered, the U.S. might be compelled to restrain Israel to prevent broader instability. .
The gamble is that, with the exception of Qatar, few Gulf governments harbored much sympathy for the Islamic Republic to begin with. Iran’s support for militias across the Arab world has long been viewed as an assault on Arab sovereignty. So, instead of fracturing the U.S.-Israel coalition, Iran risks pushing Gulf states to join it.
Faced with direct attacks and threats, a group of Arab foreign ministers convened and issued a notably unified statement warning Iran of consequences. Even Doha has publicly criticized Tehran’s moves.
Threats toward Cyprus have also stirred a European reaction. What had been a near-global consensus around three core American demands — no military-level nuclear enrichment, no offensive long-range missile program, and an end to proxy warfare — is hardening rather than eroding. Only China and Russia stand conspicuously apart.
And then there is Lebanon. After Hezbollah joined the conflict, Brigadier General Effi Defrin declared that the conflict would end “with Hezbollah severely damaged, not just Iran.” That was not rhetorical flourish. It was a warning that the scope of the war could shift.
After striking significant blows against Hezbollah in the war that unfolded after Oct. 7, Israel gave Lebanon space to implement what had been promised: the disarmament or at least meaningful curtailment of the militia’s independent military capacity. That has not happened. Hezbollah, though badly thrashed in that earlier round, has preserved significant capabilities, and appears to believe it can fight another day.
Israel sees Hezbollah’s engagement as an invitation for a renewed campaign designed to decisively degrade the group. Should Washington prefer to limit escalation inside Iran itself, the center of gravity could shift northward, toward a resumption of intensive Israeli operations in Lebanon.
The war, in other words, has multiple possible theaters.
Missiles versus interceptors
Informing Israel’s choices is a grim arithmetic.
Iran retains a substantial stockpile of ballistic missiles. Israel’s layered defense is formidable but not inexhaustible. The strategic question is simple: Will Iranian missiles run out before Israeli interceptors do?
Iran’s firing patterns suggest awareness of this calculus. Rather than saturating Israeli defenses with hundreds of missiles at once, it has launched in more measured waves. Preserving inventory matters.
For Israel, two parallel imperatives follow: destroy as many launchers and depots as possible, and accelerate interceptor production and deployment. Both are underway. Strikes on missile infrastructure are a central component of the air campaign. Reports also indicate targeted killings of Iranian personnel involved in advanced missile research and development.
This is a race of attrition beneath the spectacle of air supremacy.
Jerusalem’s dilemma
If the war were to end now, Israel would not have achieved everything it wants. Iran’s nuclear infrastructure may not be fully dismantled. The missile threat would not be entirely erased. Hezbollah would remain armed, though weakened. The broader militia network would not yet have withered away. (Trump has suggested the conflict will continue for some weeks, but he is also notoriously changeable.)
Yet there is a serious argument in Jerusalem for exploring whether surrender terms can now be imposed while the balance of power is overwhelmingly favorable. The gains already secured are historic. The Iranian regime’s top tier is gone. Its air defenses are crippled. Its deterrent mystique has collapsed.
The alternative to a truce — escalation toward maximalist objectives, including outright regime change — entails unpredictability.
So Israel must now decide how hard to press Washington. Should it urge the U.S. to seize the moment and push for more profound structural transformation in Tehran? Or should it consolidate the gains already achieved and lock them into enforceable constraints? Should it pivot north and finish what it regards as unfinished business in Lebanon?
These are strategic questions. They are also political ones.
The domestic shadow
A large majority of Israelis believe that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is politically cynical enough to initiate or expand military confrontations to serve his own political survival. The trauma of Oct. 7, and the government’s earlier attempt to overhaul the judiciary in ways widely seen as authoritarian, left him deeply unpopular and mistrusted across much of the electorate.
A successful war against Iran could restore Netanyahu’s standing to a degree few would have imagined only months ago, and plausibly position him to win upcoming elections.
For Israel, that prospect is enormously consequential. A renewed Netanyahu mandate, built on the back of a historic military triumph, would likely entrench a version of Israel that is more nationalist, more religious, and more dismissive of liberal constraints. The tensions between secular and religious communities, between the judiciary and the executive, between integration and isolation, would only grow.
Israel’s most globally connected and economically productive sectors have already shown signs of anxiety about the country’s democratic trajectory. A perception that authoritarian tendencies have been vindicated by war could accelerate emigration among parts of the professional class. Over time, that would reshape not only Israel’s politics but its economy and society.
In that sense, the most consequential outcome of this war for Israel may not lie in Tehran or Beirut, but in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
The post In three days, Israel and the US reshaped the Middle East appeared first on The Forward.