Elliott Abrams, Linda Robinson, Ray Takeyh, and Steven A. Cook
Israel’s Year of Trial and Reckoning on Defense
Most of 2023, which overlapped with the Jewish years 5783-4, was marked by deep internal divisions in Israel over “judicial reform”. Large demonstrations, vicious political rhetoric, and a sharp split between those who favored the reform as a way to limit excessive judicial power and those who saw it as the end of democracy in Israel heated Israeli politics to the boiling point.
But then came October 7, 2023, and the judicial reform was forgotten. The country came together in shock and horror at the magnitude of the loss of life and the brutality of the Hamas-led Palestinian armed groups who crossed the border from the Gaza Strip to kill, maim, rape, and take hostages. In the ensuing months of 2023, there was broad agreement on the need to defeat Hamas, and moreover, unified support for the soldiers of the Israeli Defense Forces. Some senior officers resigned quickly and others more slowly in the aftermath, taking responsibility for the security disaster, but the bravery and commitment of the young soldiers, most of them reservists, taught Israelis a lesson about their younger generation. There had been loose rhetoric by old-timers wondering whether the great generations who founded the state in 1948 and guided it through the wars of 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973 were being followed by a new generation not up to the task of defending Israel. That argument is over.
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