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A Clear Post-War National Vision Means Returning to the Roots of Zionism
A damaged building lies in ruins, following an infiltration by Hamas terrorists who attacked Israel at a kibbutz in Kfar Aza, Israel, Nov. 8, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
Despite broad Israeli agreement on the immediate goals of the war as formulated by the cabinet, the debate over its ultimate objectives is intensifying.
This dispute will likely be reflected in the fundamental questions that will be asked post-war, and may also penetrate the discussions of the state inquiry committee that will undoubtedly be established. The committee will naturally address operational and technical questions, the workings of the IDF, General Staff, Southern Command, and Air Force, and regulatory relations between the IDF and the civil leadership. But the depth and scope of this crisis require a comprehensive cultural and spiritual rethinking of how we perceive ourselves and the enemy, focusing on the question of why the enemy fights and what we are fighting for.
Hamas and Hezbollah fight out of religious belief. By contrast, we are not clear on our reasons for uniting to fight wars beyond our desire to safeguard our existence and survival.
A.B. Yehoshua once posed an existential question: “Nation of Israel, for what purpose do you live?” Later, he clarified: “Survival is considered the most prominent aspect of the Jewish people … but it is not survival that is the prominent aspect, but rather how it is done, what its agenda is, what values it holds, and primarily, what its cost is.” (A.B. Yehoshua, Haaretz Books Supplement, 20.2.2013)
This question must be applied to clarify the central inquiry: Nation of Israel, for what purpose do you fight, and how do you fight?
I am not aware of a framework for a state inquiry committee that would know how to address such questions and critically examine the connections between them and the focal points of failure in the security system. Nevertheless, this inquiry, whether conscious or subconscious, will shed light on the investigation into everything that happened at the outset of the war and everything that will happen from its conclusion onwards in the context of the ongoing internal struggle in Israel over conflicting dreams.
What has Zionism achieved? The imposition of doubt
The sudden strike by Hamas thrust the Zionist idea back to the dilemma of its earliest days. It prompted an echoing of the doubt cast during Herzl’s visit: “You might solve the Jews’ problem, but you won’t solve the problem of Judaism.” On October 7, we were forcefully confronted with the fundamental Zionist question: What do the Jews want in the Land of Israel?
The current war, which has enveloped us all, is intertwined with the anxiety of the cultural war that erupted in Israel last year. The crisis of the Jews, which focuses on the question of physical existence, has become entangled with the crisis of Judaism, which has lost its spiritual path.
As early as 2005, Dan Meron touched upon the Zionist dilemma in his book Healing for Touching. A professor of 20th century Hebrew literature, Meron cast doubt on the ultimate goal of the Zionist enterprise, questioning what it has truly achieved since its inception:
…[T]he expectation of Zionism that the distancing of Jews from European societies and their concentration in their own country would lead to the disappearance of antisemitism did not materialize. Even the security of Zionism, which was supposed to be able to extricate the Jewish people from existential threats, leading to a new Jewish existential activism, did not come to fruition and may not reach the goal it set for itself…The historical development of Zionism and its success in achieving Jewish statehood have only led to the replacement of one type of existential threat with another. (Dan Meron, 2005, Healing for Touching, p. 63, translated from the Hebrew)
With these words, Meron raises two challenging questions about the state of Zionism, both of which have been debated since its beginnings.
In one dimension of the Zionist vision, Herzl sought a response to antisemitism. With his visionary breakthrough, he acknowledged that the Jews had not succeeded in finding a solution to the problem of antisemitism, even though they had exhausted every possible avenue, including assimilation. He believed that if the Jews could only gather in their own normal state, where they could be accepted as a nation among nations, a state among nation-states, it would bring an end to antisemitism.
We must ask whether over the hundred years since the beginning of the Zionist effort to gather the Jews in their homeland, Herzl’s expectation of the disappearance of antisemitism has been realized.
It appears that the opposite has occurred. Antisemitism has emerged in a new form that is more sophisticated, as it is shielded by a kind of vaccine: it is ostensibly not hatred of Jews as Jews, but merely criticism of the State of Israel. Yet fierce antipathy is directed against Jews worldwide whenever they voice complaints about actions that threaten the State of Israel, actions they feel endanger them as well. Jews around the world are thus forbidden to defend Israel or the Jews who live in it or be themselves the victims of antisemitism. The process that was supposed to solve antisemitism has instead generated, over the past two decades, a new and equally dangerous form of it. In this way, Meron argues, the Zionist vision has become caught in a deadlock.
In the second dimension, Zionism sought a response to the problem of the need to physically protect Jews, who have never ceased suffering persecution, pogroms, and other threats around the world. In this dimension as well, Meron raises a concern that has troubled many Israelis. There is a fear that despite Israel’s independence and military strength, Zionism has achieved nothing more than to replace one existential problem, like pogroms in Kishinev, with another one, like the Iranian nuclear threat that threatens Tel Aviv or the Simchat Torah massacre of the northwestern Negev. In essence, Zionism has merely swapped ailment A for ailment B.
Yet despite Meron’s reservations, to those who witness the combat spirit of the IDF soldiers and the full support of their parents, the Zionist narrative manifests itself in all its practical simplicity by demonstrating a readiness to fight without hesitation to defend the people and the country. This is a major historical achievement.
Cracks in the “Iron Wall”
A hundred years ago, in the article “The Iron Wall,” Ze’ev Jabotinsky laid the cornerstone for the foundations of Israel’s security perception. As early as 1923, he identified the motivations behind Arab resistance to the Zionist enterprise in the Land of Israel and proposed a strategic approach to achieving Zionist goals.
The relevance of his article to the security challenges of modern-day Israel can be summarized in three statements.
First: The Arab resistance and struggle against Zionism express a religious-nationalist struggle with enduring motivational roots. The idea promoted by the American government and European Union leadership that a positive, lasting solution to the conflict can be arrived at through suitable compensation and willing compromise has been repeatedly revealed as overly optimistic.
Second: The Arab struggle and adoption of terrorist methods and violence do not stem from economic hardship, poverty, and despair, as many in the West and certain prominent Israeli “peace-seekers” claim. Instead, it arises from the Arab hope that Zionist dominance can be consistently challenged and weakened until its ultimate demise. It is not despair that generates Arab terrorism but hope.
Third: In recognizing the first two statements as true, the concept of the “Iron Wall” negates the Arab hope of achieving gains through incessant resistance to the Zionist Israeli presence and authority.
In 1936, during a discussion at the Mapai Center, David Ben-Gurion stated that “there is no chance for an understanding with the Arabs.” Therefore, efforts should be directed towards an understanding with the British. He said, “What can push the Arabs towards mutual understanding with us? Facts! Only after we manage to create a significant Jewish presence in the Land of Israel, with a Jewish force that everyone will see cannot be moved, only then will the preliminary conditions for discussion with the Arabs be established.”
The language and spirit of these words express the Iron Wall position as articulated in Jabotinsky’s article: “As long as the Arabs have even a glimmer of hope of getting rid of us, they will not give up on this hope … A living people agrees to concessions on fateful questions whose importance is immense only when it has no hope, only when not a single crack is visible in the Iron Wall.”
In recent years, deep cracks have appeared in the Zionist Iron Wall. The goal of the current war should be to restore the Zionist Iron Wall and establish it with renewed strength for the next hundred years.
Within this context, the rehabilitation of the communities damaged in Hamas’s attack and the return of the communities to the Galilee and Negev are critical components in the reconstruction of the Iron Wall. This means far more than simply renovation and construction. Ben-Gurion wrote about the sources of strength for victory in 1948: “We reached victory through three paths: the path of faith, the path of pioneering creativity, and the path of suffering.”
These will be the paths to victory in today’s war as well.
The collapse of the dream of peace
In his eulogy at the grave of Ro’i Rothberg in Nahal Oz in April 1956, Chief of Staff Moshe Dayan said: “A generation of pioneers we are, bareheaded, with steel helmets and the rifle. We cannot plant a tree and build a home. Our children will not have a life if we do not dig shelters…” The speech concluded with the statement: “Ro’i — the light in his heart blinded his eyes, and he did not see the flash of the mortar. The yearning for peace silenced his ears, and he did not hear the voice of the ambush…”
In the midst of the War of Attrition, at the end of the Command and Staff College course in 1969, Moshe Dayan stated his existential philosophy: “Rest and heritage are longed-for aspirations for us, not realities. And if we occasionally achieve them, they are only short intermediate stations — aspirations for the continuation of the struggle.”
Explaining the necessity of an endless struggle, he said: “The only basic answer we can give to the question ‘what will be’ is — we will continue to fight, just as we did in the past, and now too. The answer to the question ‘what will be’ must focus on our ability to withstand difficulties, our ability to cope — more than on absolute and final solutions to our problems. We must prepare ourselves mentally and physically for a prolonged process of struggle.”
These words differ significantly from those expressed by the Israeli leadership in recent decades. For instance, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, in his speech at the UN, chose to emphasize: “What Israelis want is a good life for themselves and their families and a future ready for their children.”
Moshe Dayan, despite his emphasis on normalcy, always highlighted the presence in our consciousness of the struggle. This was brutally expressed in his will, where he instructed his three children: “Serve the inheritance of the fathers each one, and the sword over your beds, and in the evening, it will become a legacy to your sons. And now, let each one take his backpack and stick and cross the Jordan in his own way…” (Yael Dayan, My Father’s House, p. 207).
Yael Dayan, representing a generation that has refused to reconcile with the inevitability of constant struggle, described in her book her deep dissociation from her father’s will: “I felt like a person banished from paradise, a curse more than a blessing. We were all destined to work the land and fight, and this was a commandment for our children.” (ibid.)
On Saturday, October 7, the dream of an Israeli paradise collapsed. With the war in Ukraine and even in Western Europe, it has become clear that despite hopes for peace everywhere, there is no paradise on Earth. As expressed in the Negev lullaby my mother sang to me in my childhood, “There is no deep silence without a weapon … sleep, son.”
The State of Israel is in one of the most difficult crises it has ever known. It suffered an unprecedented blow and is required to receive an unprecedented punishment. Asking to return to the familiar track after making technical repairs is asking to escape the true magnitude of the repair that is required. The national leadership of the State of Israel, together with the security system, must be committed in the face of this crisis to formulating a new national security concept.
After the surprise attack by Hamas on October 7, will residents of Rosh HaAyin and Kfar Saba lend a hand in the establishment of a Palestinian state that would turn them into border settlements akin to Nahal Oz or Metula? Any arrangement of the territory of Israel between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea that aims at a Jewish withdrawal from Judea and Samaria, an uprooting of Israeli settlements, and a defining of the eastern border of the State of Israel in the Rosh HaAyin-Kfar Saba region along Highway 6 would be a Palestinian national victory and an Israeli defeat.
Despite all our faith in the IDF and its capabilities, there is not now, and there will not be, an option to defend the State of Israel along the coastal strip. This fact must be brought to broad national consensus and placed at the center of the Israeli security perception.
Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen is a senior research fellow at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies. He served in the IDF for 42 years. He commanded troops in battles with Egypt and Syria. He was formerly a corps commander and commander of the IDF Military Colleges. A version of this article was originally published by The BESA Center.
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Hamas Says No Interim Hostage Deal Possible Without Work Toward Permanent Ceasefire

Explosions send smoke into the air in Gaza, as seen from the Israeli side of the border, July 17, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
The spokesperson for Hamas’s armed wing said on Friday that while the Palestinian terrorist group favors reaching an interim truce in the Gaza war, if such an agreement is not reached in current negotiations it could revert to insisting on a full package deal to end the conflict.
Hamas has previously offered to release all the hostages held in Gaza and conclude a permanent ceasefire agreement, and Israel has refused, Abu Ubaida added in a televised speech.
Arab mediators Qatar and Egypt, backed by the United States, have hosted more than 10 days of talks on a US-backed proposal for a 60-day truce in the war.
Israeli officials were not immediately available for comment on the eve of the Jewish Sabbath.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement on a call he had with Pope Leo on Friday that Israel‘s efforts to secure a hostage release deal and 60-day ceasefire “have so far not been reciprocated by Hamas.”
As part of the potential deal, 10 hostages held in Gaza would be returned along with the bodies of 18 others, spread out over 60 days. In exchange, Israel would release a number of detained Palestinians.
“If the enemy remains obstinate and evades this round as it has done every time before, we cannot guarantee a return to partial deals or the proposal of the 10 captives,” said Abu Ubaida.
Disputes remain over maps of Israeli army withdrawals, aid delivery mechanisms into Gaza, and guarantees that any eventual truce would lead to ending the war, said two Hamas officials who spoke to Reuters on Friday.
The officials said the talks have not reached a breakthrough on the issues under discussion.
Hamas says any agreement must lead to ending the war, while Netanyahu says the war will only end once Hamas is disarmed and its leaders expelled from Gaza.
Almost 1,650 Israelis and foreign nationals have been killed as a result of the conflict, including 1,200 killed in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on southern Israel, according to Israeli tallies. Over 250 hostages were kidnapped during Hamas’s Oct. 7 onslaught.
Israel responded with an ongoing military campaign aimed at freeing the hostages and dismantling Hamas’s military and governing capabilities in neighboring Gaza.
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Iran Marks 31st Anniversary of AMIA Bombing by Slamming Argentina’s ‘Baseless’ Accusations, Blaming Israel

People hold images of the victims of the 1994 bombing attack on the Argentine Israeli Mutual Association (AMIA) community center, marking the 30th anniversary of the attack, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, July 18, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Irina Dambrauskas
Iran on Friday marked the 31st anniversary of the 1994 bombing of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) Jewish community center in Buenos Aires by slamming Argentina for what it called “baseless” accusations over Tehran’s alleged role in the terrorist attack and accusing Israel of politicizing the atrocity to influence the investigation and judicial process.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry issued a statement on the anniversary of Argentina’s deadliest terrorist attack, which killed 85 people and wounded more than 300.
“While completely rejecting the accusations against Iranian citizens, the Islamic Republic of Iran condemns attempts by certain Argentine factions to pressure the judiciary into issuing baseless charges and politically motivated rulings,” the statement read.
“Reaffirming that the charges against its citizens are unfounded, the Islamic Republic of Iran insists on restoring their reputation and calls for an end to this staged legal proceeding,” it continued.
Last month, a federal judge in Argentina ordered the trial in absentia of 10 Iranian and Lebanese nationals suspected of orchestrating the attack in Buenos Aires.
The ten suspects set to stand trial include former Iranian and Lebanese ministers and diplomats, all of whom are subject to international arrest warrants issued by Argentina for their alleged roles in the terrorist attack.
In its statement on Friday, Iran also accused Israel of influencing the investigation to advance a political campaign against the Islamist regime in Tehran, claiming the case has been used to serve Israeli interests and hinder efforts to uncover the truth.
“From the outset, elements and entities linked to the Zionist regime [Israel] exploited this suspicious explosion, pushing the investigation down a false and misleading path, among whose consequences was to disrupt the long‑standing relations between the people of Iran and Argentina,” the Iranian Foreign Ministry said.
“Clear, undeniable evidence now shows the Zionist regime and its affiliates exerting influence on the Argentine judiciary to frame Iranian nationals,” the statement continued.
In April, lead prosecutor Sebastián Basso — who took over the case after the 2015 murder of his predecessor, Alberto Nisman — requested that federal Judge Daniel Rafecas issue national and international arrest warrants for Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei over his alleged involvement in the attack.
Since 2006, Argentine authorities have sought the arrest of eight Iranians — including former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who died in 2017 — yet more than three decades after the deadly bombing, all suspects remain still at large.
In a post on X, the Delegation of Argentine Israelite Associations (DAIA), the country’s Jewish umbrella organization, released a statement commemorating the 31st anniversary of the bombing.
“It was a brutal attack on Argentina, its democracy, and its rule of law,” the group said. “At DAIA, we continue to demand truth and justice — because impunity is painful, and memory is a commitment to both the present and the future.”
31 años del atentado a la AMIA – DAIA. 31 años sin justicia.
El 18 de julio de 1994, un atentado terrorista dejó 85 personas muertas y más de 300 heridas. Fue un ataque brutal contra la Argentina, su democracia y su Estado de derecho.
Desde la DAIA, seguimos exigiendo verdad y… pic.twitter.com/kV2ReGNTIk
— DAIA (@DAIAArgentina) July 18, 2025
Despite Argentina’s longstanding belief that Lebanon’s Shiite Hezbollah terrorist group carried out the devastating attack at Iran’s request, the 1994 bombing has never been claimed or officially solved.
Meanwhile, Tehran has consistently denied any involvement and refused to arrest or extradite any suspects.
To this day, the decades-long investigation into the terrorist attack has been plagued by allegations of witness tampering, evidence manipulation, cover-ups, and annulled trials.
In 2006, former prosecutor Nisman formally charged Iran for orchestrating the attack and Hezbollah for carrying it out.
Nine years later, he accused former Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner — currently under house arrest on corruption charges — of attempting to cover up the crime and block efforts to extradite the suspects behind the AMIA atrocity in return for Iranian oil.
Nisman was killed later that year, and to this day, both his case and murder remain unresolved and under ongoing investigation.
The alleged cover-up was reportedly formalized through the memorandum of understanding signed in 2013 between Kirchner’s government and Iranian authorities, with the stated goal of cooperating to investigate the AMIA bombing.
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Jordan Reveals Muslim Brotherhood Operating Vast Illegal Funding Network Tied to Gaza Donations, Political Campaigns

Murad Adailah, the head of Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood, attends an interview with Reuters in Amman, Jordan, Sept. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Jehad Shelbak
The Muslim Brotherhood, one of the Arab world’s oldest and most influential Islamist movements, has been implicated in a wide-ranging network of illegal financial activities in Jordan and abroad, according to a new investigative report.
Investigations conducted by Jordanian authorities — along with evidence gathered from seized materials — revealed that the Muslim Brotherhood raised tens of millions of Jordanian dinars through various illegal activities, the Jordan news agency (Petra) reported this week.
With operations intensifying over the past eight years, the report showed that the group’s complex financial network was funded through various sources, including illegal donations, profits from investments in Jordan and abroad, and monthly fees paid by members inside and outside the country.
The report also indicated that the Muslim Brotherhood has taken advantage of the war in Gaza to raise donations illegally.
Out of all donations meant for Gaza, the group provided no information on where the funds came from, how much was collected, or how they were distributed, and failed to work with any international or relief organizations to manage the transfers properly.
Rather, the investigations revealed that the Islamist network used illicit financial mechanisms to transfer funds abroad.
According to Jordanian authorities, the group gathered more than JD 30 million (around $42 million) over recent years.
With funds transferred to several Arab, regional, and foreign countries, part of the money was allegedly used to finance domestic political campaigns in 2024, as well as illegal activities and cells.
In April, Jordan outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood, the country’s most vocal opposition group, and confiscated its assets after members of the Islamist movement were found to be linked to a sabotage plot.
The movement’s political arm in Jordan, the Islamic Action Front, became the largest political grouping in parliament after elections last September, although most seats are still held by supporters of the government.
Opponents of the group, which is banned in most Arab countries, label it a terrorist organization. However, the movement claims it renounced violence decades ago and now promotes its Islamist agenda through peaceful means.
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