Israel has turned national security into a profession reserved almost exclusively for those in uniform. As long as strategic thinking remains solely in their hands, we will continue counting terrorists eliminated, tunnels uncovered, and rockets intercepted, only to discover, round after round, that fundamentally nothing has changed.
There is a familiar moment after every operation. The spokesperson appears on screen, and the numbers begin to roll: so many terrorists eliminated, so many tunnels uncovered, so many rockets intercepted. The presentation is precise, the graphics are impressive, and the feeling is one of victory. Then a month passes, a year goes by, and the enemy is back. The same organization, the same regime, the same ideology. Meanwhile, we too have suffered more casualties, more trauma, and more bills running into the tens of billions. We won the battle. We lost the war.
This is neither an accidental malfunction nor the failure of one commander or another. It is the systematic result of the way the State of Israel thinks about and implements its security doctrine. It is a way in which every national problem is automatically translated into an operational question, and every solution is measured according to what can be achieved through firepower, intelligence, and maneuver. As long as our security thinking remains in the hands of the security forces alone, with their homogeneous, single-perspective approach, we will continue to produce impressive military achievements and zero strategic decisions.
This can be understood by looking at the terrorist organizations we face. They too have understood the need to integrate all levels. Consider, for example, the terrorist organization operating on our northern border. It is not merely a “military wing.” It is a religious identity, an education system, a welfare network, tax collection and courts, an international propaganda apparatus, smuggling routes, and a source of communal pride. At least nine dimensions, each with its own possible response: diplomacy, economics, legislation, public diplomacy, cyber capabilities, and firepower.
Israel, by contrast, places its faith in the defense establishment and effectively ignores eight other critical dimensions. When only the military-physical dimension remains, it becomes the problem. Everything else becomes “noise,” or, in operational language, the “environment.” Intelligence looks for operatives, planners look for structures, and success is measured by casualties and weapons depots destroyed. These are operational input metrics, not strategic outcome metrics.
Whoever Defines the Problem Determines the Solution
The definition of the problem determines the solution. This is the iron rule of every decision. And as long as the military is the one defining the problem, only solutions that the military knows how to execute will reach the discussion table. Even when a prime minister demands that people “think outside the box,” the box itself remains a military one.
The problem is, of course, far broader than what takes place on the battlefield. But when everything is “security-related,” everything is placed in the hands of security professionals. Urban planning, the state budget, the education system, even the press and public opinion, each has a “security dimension,” and therefore all these challenges are passed on to those in uniform. Yet they are not trained to deal with this entire range of issues. They are built to confront security challenges, ones addressed through a hierarchy of senior commanders, officers, and soldiers.
Even public discourse is conducted almost entirely through the mediation of “military commentators”, usually a variety of former officials: generals, former heads of the Shin Bet and the Mossad. These are excellent people, but they carry an inherent bias: they see the world through the eyes of the system in which they served. Their criticism will almost always be, “We should have attacked sooner,” or “We needed more firepower,” but almost never, “We should not have attacked at all.” A public that hears only one voice becomes accustomed to thinking that other voices are either unnecessary or irrelevant.
And so expertise, which has never been neutral, becomes a form of rule. When a prime minister receives a “situation assessment” stating, “Emergency, we need to act now,” he cannot refuse unless he has an alternative knowledge base. He does not. Thus, the “assessment” becomes a “decision,” without anyone having formally transferred authority over such decisions to a security establishment that is dictatorial in character. Democracy becomes a security technocracy: elected officials sign off, but in reality merely approve what has already been prepared for them. And when something goes wrong, responsibility evaporates: the political echelon says, “We relied on the professionals,” while the professionals say, “We acted according to political instructions.” When everyone is responsible, no one is responsible, as we saw with even greater clarity on October 7.
From “The Army Is the People” to “The People Are the Army”
Of course, this was not a problem born of malice or ill intent. Israel was established under an existential threat, and Ben-Gurion saw the IDF as the melting pot that would transform a collection of immigrants into a nation. At the time, this was genius. But the imprint remained. Decades after the economy had matured, academia had flourished, and civil society had grown stronger, military thinking was still at the center. Retired generals moved from the General Staff to ministers’ offices, from there to the Knesset, and then to corporate boardrooms and, at times, the prime minister’s office. A single, almost exclusive path emerged: those who sought to lead passed through the uniform.
And so, almost without noticing, we moved from “the army is the people” to “the people are the army.” The difference is not semantic. In the first statement, the army is a tool in the hands of society; in the second, society is an extension of the army. And when the people are the army, governing the state becomes managing a sector: there are missions, there are timetables, there are “success criteria.” What is missing is a genuine discussion of purpose, of strategy.
Two hundred years ago, the Prussian thinker Carl von Clausewitz wrote a sentence that every officer quotes and few understand: “War is merely the continuation of policy by other means.” What he meant was that war without a political purpose is a sequence of meaningless actions. It can be precise, sophisticated, and effective, and still lead nowhere.
Therefore, the first question that should be asked before a war is not “how,” but “what for.” What political order is supposed to emerge the day after? Without an accepted answer to this, the use of force is merely maneuver. It seems that in Israel, this question is not only left unasked, but is even considered bothersome, “too political,” and something that undermines morale. The prevailing approach is, “First we win, then we talk.” But the Nobel Prize-winning thinker Thomas Schelling added an important insight: force is not merely destruction; it is communication, a message to the adversary, a message about the degree of determination, the price, and the demand. If you destroy a thousand targets without the adversary understanding what is expected of them, you have destroyed a thousand targets for nothing. Force without a political message is merely noise.
For twenty years, we pursued a policy of “mowing the grass” toward Hamas. Every few years, an operation; every operation, achievements; and at the end of every round, a return to the starting point, only with more holes in the wall and more names on gravestones. The logic rested on three assumptions: that we could live with the threat, that the threat would not evolve, and that time was working in our favor. On the morning of October 7, 2023, all three collapsed simultaneously. It became clear that it is possible to live with a threat only until it becomes impossible; that the threat trains and develops plans precisely while we tell ourselves that it is deterred; and that time works in favor of whoever has patience and vision. Hamas had both. We did not.
Since 2006, we have told ourselves that we had achieved “deterrence,” and that the quiet along the northern border was proof of it. But during that period of quiet, Hezbollah transformed itself from a guerrilla organization into a genuine military force: hundreds of thousands of missiles, some of them precision-guided, trained ground forces, and maritime and cyber capabilities. Deterrence did not stop it. It bought it time. While we said, “They are afraid of us,” they said, “We are building the infrastructure for victory at a time of our choosing.” What kind of deterrence is it if its only function is to extend the period during which the enemy grows stronger?
Iran as a Project
Iran is the greatest hybrid of them all. It has not functioned merely as a state, but as a regional project, an “Axis of Resistance” stretching from Tehran to Sana’a. It harms us without firing a single missile from its own territory and applies pressure without sending an ambassador. Against it, military action, important as it may be, is always partial. One can strike a weapons shipment, perhaps even hit a nuclear facility. But the regime, the ideology, and the network of proxies and alliances continue to exist. Iran cannot be subjected to a “military decision.” It can be shaped, and shaping it requires tools that are not found in the military arsenal.
It is important to emphasize that the arguments presented here are not directed against the defense establishment. It is important to ensure that any solution does not amount to throwing out the baby with the bathwater. The military is a national asset, dedicated and professional, and there is no dispute about its capabilities. The argument is that its role is to implement strategy, not to write it. Where the military creates the strategy, a structural distortion emerges that inevitably leads to failure.
The correction is not a magic formula, and it will take years. It requires a strong National Security Council capable of presenting a civilian-political alternative to military planning; Knesset committees with real authority and expertise of their own; public discourse that balances the military commentator with a historian, an international law expert, and a Middle East scholar; and an education system that teaches love of country, which includes cultivating citizens’ personal responsibility to take part, to scrutinize the systems, and to participate in shaping them. As part of this, we need to embrace the understanding accepted throughout the Western world that paths to leadership do not necessarily pass through the uniform.
Above all, the correction requires courage. The courage of an elected official to say, “I will make a decision even against the recommendation of the military echelon.” The courage of a journalist to say, “I do not want to hear only one voice.” The courage of an academic to say, “I have something to contribute, even though I did not serve on the General Staff.” And the courage of a citizen to say: security is too important and too consequential to remain in the hands of a single institution.
השורה התחתונה
ב-7 באוקטובר קיבלנו תזכורת אכזרית למה שקורה כשמערכת הביטחון הופכת להגמוניה בתחום החשוב ביותר לקיומה של המדינה. כל המערכות נכשלו, כל ההנחות התרסקו, וכל הסיפור שסיפרנו לעצמנו על “הרתעה” ועל “שליטה” התברר כאשליה. אסון בסדר גודל שכזה ראוי שיוביל אותנו לחשוב מחדש, להפנים שהביטחון אינו עולם נפרד מהפוליטיקה, מהערכים ומהדמוקרטיה, אלא חלק מהם, וחייב להיות חלק מהם.
אם נצליח בכך, נחזור להיות מה שהיינו אמורים להיות מלכתחילה: לא צבא עם מדינה, אלא מדינה עם צבא; נבין כי הצבא הוא רק חלק מהפאזל הגדול של ניהול העמידה מול האויב ונחשוב ונדבר אסטרטגיה ויעדים מדיניים שראויים להישגים הצבאיים. כך ניצור את המציאות שאנחנו רוצים במקום להתגונן מזו שאחרים יוצרים לנו. זהו בסופו של דבר ההבדל בין לשרוד לבין לנצח.
