Uncategorized
Khamenei long obstructed peace for Israel. But his influence was waning before his assassination.
(JTA) — Six days after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini seized power in Iran on Feb. 11, 1979, he hosted his first foreign dignitary: the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Yasser Arafat.
Arafat, seen then by the Americans and the Israelis as a terrorist, was an ardent opponent of the emerging Israel-Egypt peace deal. Khomeini expelled Israeli diplomats and handed the embassy building over to the PLO.
Arafat relayed the message he got from Khomeini: After the new Islamic regime consolidated its hold over Iran it would turn to “victory of Israel.”
“Today Iran, tomorrow Palestine,” Arafat told reporters.
The symbolism was not lost on the Egyptian, Israeli and American negotiators hammering out the peace deal in Camp David: According to reports at the time, they redoubled their efforts to get to a peace deal before the new Islamist regime in Iran could scuttle it.
Keeping Iran from getting in the way of peace has been a preoccupation of Israeli and U.S. governments from then until the Israeli strike Sunday that killed Khomeini’s successor as Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, a key aim of the latest U.S.-Israel war against the country.
The regime’s hopes of stymying peace scored successes at time, particularly in the 1990s, when the terrorist group it backed, Hamas, undermined the peace process with repeated and massive terrorist attacks on Israeli targets. More recently it spectacularly backfired, when Sunni Muslim states fearful of Shia Iran’s adventurism in the region shed years of resistance to peace with Israel and forged ties under the Abraham Accords.
Iran, with its massive military capabilities, its oil wealth, its appetite for regional hegemony and its obdurate Islamism may have been the foremost obstacle to Israel’s integration into the region since 1979.
“Iran was a continually negative actor trying to prevent any normalization of Israel in the Middle East,” Joel Rubin, a former deputy assistant secretary of state during the Obama administration, said in an interview.
Khomeini had since the early 1960s cast Israel as an enemy of Islam and deplored the young Jewish state’s relationship with Iran and the monarchy he cast aside in 1979. In a landmark 1980 speech he listed four “world devourers” as the United States, communism, Israel and Zionism.
Khomeini lost little time in making good on his pledge to Arafat to seek Israel’s defeat. In 1982, after Israel invaded Lebanon, Iranian agents cultivated ties among fellow Shia who resented Israel’s presence. Within a year, Hezbollah was established, becoming one of Israel’s most implacable enemies.
Working with Iran, Hezbollah delivered some of the bloodiest attacks on Israelis and on Jews in the subsequent decades, among them the bombing of Israel’s embassy in Buenos Aires in March 1992, killing 29, and then the bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in the same city in 1994, killing 85 people, the deadliest attack in Argentine history.
“May this news bring relief to the families and contribute to the acknowledgment of responsibility and to the fight against terrorism and impunity,” the pro-Israel Argentine government said Sunday after Khamenei’s assassination was confirmed.
The timing of the Argentina attacks was not coincidental: The George H.W. Bush administration had in 1991 convened talks in Madrid, bringing around the table for the first time Israel and most of the Arab states in the region. Two years later, Israel and the Palestinians, under the aegis of the Clinton administration, launched the Oslo peace talks.
Arafat by then had done a famous 180-degree turn, embracing peace with Israel and appearing with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on the White House lawn. Iran, wary of Arafat since he first expressed openness to peace talks in 1988, had begun to cultivate ties with Hamas, the Islamist group that rejected any accommodation with Israel.
By 1994, Iran’s support for Hamas, according to officials of Arafat’s Palestinian Authority, was in the tens of millions of dollars. The money funded terrorist attacks that undermined Israeli confidence in the peace process, propelling Oslo skeptic Benjamin Netanyahu to the prime ministership in 1996. The attacks included suicide missions — a method that Hamas operatives had learned from Hezbollah trainers in Lebanon.
Oslo petered out in the late 1990s and then exploded into the Second Intifada in late 2000. In 2006, when it appeared that the second Bush administration was making strides in getting the Israelis and the Palestinians back to the table, Hezbollah, backed by Iran, launched a war against Israel.
Khamenei, who succeeded Khomeini in 1989, only intensified the country’s focus on confronting Israel, spending billions of dollars on terrorist proxies including Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthi militias and investing in his own Islamic Revolutionary Guard Forces and its Quds Force, which both trains proxies and conducts its own operations abroad.
Khamenei periodically posted on social media his “plan for the elimination of Israel.” When Arafat died in 2004, Khamenei reviled him as “a traitor and a fool.”
Khamenei’s hostility to Israel was ideological: He would periodically deride Arab and Palestinian leaders who said the conflict should be left primarily to the Palestinians to resolve. Palestine was an “issue for the Islamic world,” he said.
“Khamenei was critical” to obstructing peace with Israel, said Trita Parsi, an Iranian-born analyst who is the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. “There were others in the system that were more amenable to the idea of adopting a more flexible position on Israel in order to resolve their problems with the United States.”
Confronting Israel was also a means of stemming U.S. influence in the region. A key rationale for U.S. and Israeli peacemaking in the 1990s was to placate other conflicts and focus on Iran.
“The view was that Iran was the bigger threat, and so for Israel’s peace camp it was, ‘Let’s get over the Palestinian issue, to consolidate support in the Arab world, to enable us to deal with that bigger Iranian threat,’” Rubin said.
Matt Duss, the executive vice president at the Center for International Policy and a former foreign policy adviser to Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, the progressive leader, said Iran was able to exploit resentment against American and Israeli influence in the region because at times the influence was itself toxic.
“Iran supported terrorist groups that supported violence against civilians, horrific violence, both against its own people and people in the region and elsewhere,” he said. “Iran clearly exploited anger at both Israel and the United States for its own political ends. It did not invent that opposition. It did not invent those grievances. It successfully exploited and weaponized them.”
Parsi, too, noted that Iran did not operate in a vacuum: It at times exploited existing tensions stoked by Israeli actions.
“If there wasn’t a problem at the outset, there’s no way for an outside power to be able to take advantage of it and be able to push for it, and we’ve seen that as long as the situation on the ground between Israel and Palestine remains what it is, and you have more settlements being built and disregard for international law,” he said.
Iran was influential but not instrumental in inhibiting peace, said Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and a top Middle East peace negotiator in Republican and Democratic administrations.
Iran looked askance at Israeli talks with Iran’s ally, Syria, in the 1990s, but ultimately it was Syrian President Hafez Assad’s obduracy that scuttled those talks, Miller said.
“The major determinant was the inability, in my judgment, of Assad to understand that if he wanted more than Sadat got, he would have to give at least as much as Sadat got,” Miller said, referring to Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian president assassinated in 1981 for making peace with Israel.
“Assad was not willing to do nearly as much on the issue of personal diplomacy, public diplomacy, as what Sadat did,” Miller continued. So, no, Iran was not the major constraint or the major reason why we don’t have an Israeli-Syrian agreement.”
Iranian backing, training and funding for terrorist attacks inhibited popular support for peace, said Shira Efron, the Pentagon-aligned RAND Institute’s Israel policy chair.
“It was tangible in the sense that you see Iran’s different ways of altering the security situation” with terrorist attacks. Iran’s hand and this was always their plan,” she said. “Khamenei was talking about it, this idea of creating the ‘ring of fire’ around Israel — it originated in Tehran.”
The “ring of fire” — the threat to Israel composed of militias in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and as far afield as Yemen and Iraq — was the construct that Hamas hoped would trigger a massive multi-front war when its terrorists raided Israel on Oct. 7, launching the conflict that culminated this weekend with the U.S.-Israel attacks on Iran.
Khamenei hoped that the ring of fire would prevail in a looming conflict with the United States, tweeting just weeks before his death, “The Americans should know if they start a war, this time it will be a regional war.”
But Israel and the United States launched the current war without fear of igniting the region, in part because of the Abraham Accords, the normalization agreements with Arab countries near Iran. Those accords came about in part because those countries saw working with Israel and the United States as the most effective means of stemming Iran’s hostile adventurism.
Some of those countries are now reaping consequences of allying with Israel, taking blows from Iranian missiles and drones. Some are emphasizing that they reserve the right to join the fight against Iran.
“Look at the proximity between the Islamic Republic of Iran and key Gulf states which have either made peace with Israel or want to,” Miller said. “How could anybody in their right mind argue that Iran has been the major constraint, or even a constraint?”
Iran’s regime, Rubin said, was ultimately the author of its own diminishment. “Imagine Iran had said, ‘We’re going to back peace. We’re going to respect the Palestinians whatever they decide. We’re not going to undermine their politics. We’re not going to support Hamas in the case that they blow up Israelis and kill Palestinians who talk to the Israelis. We’re going to actually be a constructive player.’”
With Khamenei assassinated, the question is whether Iran’s future leadership might take more of that approach. That’s the hope of the United States and Israel, which have urged the Iranian people to take hold of their destinies following the war. But the Islamic Republic swears that it is strong and has said it would name a successor to Khamenei imminently. According to reports that emerged after his death, the CIA has assessed that it is likely that a hardliner, perhaps with ties to the IRGC and certainly with opposition to Israel, is the most likely to take his place.
The post Khamenei long obstructed peace for Israel. But his influence was waning before his assassination. appeared first on The Forward.
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.