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Novel about Chinese rescuer of Jews raises questions about facts vs. fiction in Holocaust stories
TAIPEI (JTA) — Ho Feng-Shan, the Chinese diplomat stationed in Vienna who helped thousands of Jews escape from Europe during World War II, never met Adolf Eichmann.
But in “Night Angels,” a novel based on his life, Feng-Shan comes face to face with Eichmann several times — and his wife Grace’s Jewish tutor, Lola, tries to kill the architect of the Holocaust.
That detail is one of many that has spurred Ho Manli, Feng-Shan’s daughter, to speak out against “Night Angels,” the fourth novel by the Chinese-American author Weina Dai Randel. Manli says the book distorts elements of her father’s story, which was unknown before she spent decades documenting his heroic efforts to issue visas allowing Jews to escape to Shanghai.
“What I have found in doing this story is it’s very difficult to try to maintain the historical integrity of the facts,” Manli told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “Countless people … want to use this for their own means, whether it be commercial like this novelist, whether it be political, or whatever. So over the two decades that I have been doggedly trying to uncover more and more, I’ve been constantly fending off these sorts of opportunistic assaults.”
The dispute is casting a shadow over the novel, released this month, and reinvigorating longstanding debates over the importance of truth in historical fiction — particularly in stories about the Holocaust.
“Night Angels” follows Feng-Shan and his wife, Grace, as they risk their lives by issuing visas that allow thousands of Jews escape Germany and Austria to Shanghai. Grace, one of the novel’s narrators and main characters, is based on Feng-Shan’s real second wife with the same name who was no longer in Vienna after the Anschluss — Nazi Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938, and the period in which the novel is set. By that time, Feng-Shan had already sent Grace away to Boston. She never witnessed Nazi rule or Feng-Shan’s efforts to save Jews, Manli writes.
Several other events in the book, including Grace’s friendship with a Jewish woman who attempts to assassinate Eichmann and her development of a morphine addiction, are fully fictional.
Manli first took aim at the book in a column last month in China Daily. The novel, she wrote, “exploits real names, real people, real events and places, in what is essentially a Holocaust-themed melodrama.”
“In online reviews, readers say that they are thrilled to learn of my father and this history — except of course, what they have learned is not really history, my father’s, or anyone else’s,” she wrote.
Randel and her publisher, Amazon Publishing, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Randel dedicated the novel to “Ho Feng-Shan, his family, and all the angels in Vienna and beyond.” The book includes a disclaimer disclosing that its contents are a work of fiction and a product of the author’s imagination.
But that’s not satisfactory to some readers, including Tina Kanagaratnam, co-founder of the heritage group Historic Shanghai, whose book group read a previous Randel story set in Shanghai.
“If you’re talking about a historical character, you have to get the history right. Otherwise, just create a fictional character,” Kanagaratnam told JTA. “This is written for people who don’t know the history, but as Manli said, that’s dangerous, because then that’s what they remember. That’s what they take away.”
Ho Monto, left, and Ho Manli stand in front of the Righteous Among the Nations wall at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, Jan. 23, 2001. (Isaac Harari/AFP via Getty Images)
“Night Angels” has accumulated thousands of positive reviews on Amazon and has been promoted by Jewish organizations across the country. On Wednesday, the Jewish Book Council, in collaboration with Tablet Magazine and the Jewish Museum in New York City, will hold an event with Randel and journalist Jonathan Freedland that will explore “fact, fiction, and the sometimes blurred line between them.”
Randel’s book adds to a long list of Holocaust stories occupying that blurry territory, dating from the genre’s early days. Many readers believed, for example, that “The Painted Bird,” the pivotal work of Holocaust fiction from the 1960s, was based on author Jerzy Koszinski’s experience during the Holocaust; it was not. Scholars and booksellers have long agonized over whether to call Elie Wiesel’s “Night” a memoir or a novel, and whether the distinction matters when it is taught in American classrooms.
The fight has extended to questions over who can tell which stories from Holocaust. In 2014, Haaretz journalist Judy Maltz filed a lawsuit against Penguin Canada and author Jenny Witterick alleging that Witterick’s novel, “My Mother’s Secret,” copied Maltz’s documentary film about her family’s rescue during World War II. The court ruled in favor of Witterick on the grounds that copyright protection does not apply to historical events.
“An author is only ever responsible to their own fiction. They have creative license. And fictionalization of other people against their will is part of the history of literature,” said Helen Finch, a professor at the University of Leeds who studies representations of the Holocaust in German literature. “But that doesn’t absolve the writer from criticism.”
Manli — a journalist who has worked for the Boston Globe and helped found the China Daily, a state-backed media outlet, in 1981 — has made it her mission to set the record straight on Feng-Shan’s story. She began researching her father after his death in 1997, while writing his obituary. One line in his memoir from 1990 that recalled “saving who knows how many Jews” piqued her interest and led to a 25-year quest to document the extent of what her father did during the war.
His story of defying both his own government and the government of Germany to write Shanghai visas for thousands of persecuted Jews had been previously unknown, even to the refugees themselves — most of whom never met Feng-Shan.
Manli’s research led to Feng-Shan’s recognition by Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust museum and memorial authority, in 2000 as “Righteous Among the Nations,” an honor given to those who risked their own lives to help Jews during World War II. Since then, greater attention has been paid to his story, and memorials across the world, from Israel to China to Italy, bear his name today.
Manli said Randel reached out to her several times before her book was published but after it had already been written. According to Manli, Randel sought out her blessing on the book by phone and email, saying that “the Holocaust history and your father’s history is now being forgotten” and adding that she wanted to help spread that history. Manli, who is working on a book of her own about her father, said she refused to answer, “just from the tone of her letter and what she wanted.”
“I have been burned before by this,” Manli told JTA. “I knew immediately that this was not something that I wanted to participate in and certainly that I wasn’t going to endorse.”
In an email shared with JTA in response to Manli’s editorial, Randel wrote that she has “great respect for Dr. Ho Fenghan[sic] and his family. I’m surprised to hear such strong negative criticism. I’m puzzled to see my gesture of respect is viewed in such a hostile way. If Ms. Manli Ho wishes to speak to me, I’m here.”
Randel, according to a biography on her website, came to the United States from China at 24 and became “the first Asian American novelist who intertwined Chinese history with the Jewish diaspora in Shanghai during WWII.”
Her previous novel, “The Last Rose of Shanghai,” follows a Chinese woman who falls in love with a German Jewish refugee living in the Shanghai Ghetto, the restricted area in which over 20,000 displaced Jews lived during World War II, under brutal oversight by Japanese officials who occupied the area. In interviews before the book’s 2021 release, Randel recalled hearing about Jewish refugees while she was living near the district that housed the ghetto.
After moving to the United States, she married an American Jew and is raising her children with both cultures in Boston. She has said “The Last Rose of Shanghai” was inspired by her interest in the history she saw in Shanghai and a desire to pay homage to her Jewish side of the family.
“I think it’s apt to say the survival of Shanghai Jews is also a story of how we as different races and as human beings shine and triumph over war and adversity,” she said in a January 2022 interview with World Literature Today.
But other researchers and authors deeply familiar with Feng-Shan’s story and Jewish history in Shanghai told JTA that “The Last Rose of Shanghai” also contained historical inaccuracies, including misrepresentation of real people who appear as characters, such as Victor Sassoon, a Jewish businessman and member of the dynasty known as the “Rothschilds of the East,” and Laura Margolis, the first female Joint Distribution Committee representative.
The book also includes a character named Goya, described as “a shameless Jew … who somehow had won the Japanese’s trust.”
The Jewish character is based on the real Kanoh Ghoya, who was not Jewish, but a notoriously cruel Japanese officer who had dubbed himself “king of the Jews” and “was infamous for his inhumane treatment of ghetto inhabitants,” according to the USC Shoah Foundation.
According to Publisher’s Marketplace, “The Last Rose of Shanghai” was sold to Lake Union Publishing — an imprint of Amazon Publishing — in 2021 as half of a two-book deal worth between $100,000 and $250,000. It was a finalist for a Jewish National Book Award that year. (The Jewish Book Council, which confers those awards, did not respond to multiple requests for comments about the “Night Angels” event.)
Kanagaratnam said Historic Shanghai’s book group read “The Last Rose of Shanghai” in 2021 and hosted Randel for an event. The group was unsatisfied by Randel’s response when factual issues were brought to her attention, particularly the characterization of Ghoya as Jewish, Randel dismissed them, Kanagaratnam said.
Randel’s novel is only part of a growing consciousness among the general public of the Shanghai Jewish refugee story. In recent decades, especially following the normalization of Israel-China relations in 1992 and Feng-Shan’s recognition by Yad Vashem, both governments have promoted the history, sometimes distorting facts to push different narratives about their wartime past.
New books and other media adaptations about the Shanghai Jewish refugee story have proliferated, such as the musical “Shanghai Sonatas” (2022) and the novels “Someday We Will Fly” (2019),“The Lives Before Us” (2019), and “The World and All It Holds” (2023). Other films and books are forthcoming.
“The audience of people who are interested in, if you will, an ‘exotic’ Jewish story, I think has meant that we’re seeing more and more of these. Everyone’s heard the Holocaust story. But now here’s one in an exotic setting,” said Kanagaratnam. “I think authors need to take responsibility. But honestly, I also blame the publishing industry, because where are the fact-checkers? A lot of the stuff in this can be really easily googled.”
Finch said novels that are set during that period are “always a work of fiction about the present.”
“So the question is, why is this author writing this book now? What does that say about the current moment when she’s writing? And what is with Randel trying to reflect either consciously or unconsciously in contemporary politics as well?”
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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.”
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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.
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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.
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