Israel finally stopped believing the West's most dangerous illusions.
Israelis are not becoming less Western. They are becoming less naive.
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This is a guest essay by Nachum Kaplan, a longtime journalist and commentator who writes the newsletter, “Moral Clarity.”
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.
October 7th was a catastrophic security failure for Israel and an intellectual demolition.
In a matter of hours, assumptions that had governed Israeli strategy for decades were exposed as manifestly inadequate. Ideas about deterrence, coexistence, economic incentives, technological omniscience, and the supposedly civilising effects of diplomacy were not gently reconsidered. They were dragged from the seminar room into the killing fields of southern Israel and subjected to the rather unforgiving audit of reality.
One of the more provocative arguments to emerge since that day is that Israel is becoming “less Western.” The expression is imprecise, politically loaded and, depending on the speaker, either an accusation or a compliment. Yet it captures something important.
Israel is increasingly abandoning the strategic assumptions of post-Cold War liberalism and adopting a harder, more regional understanding of power. The Israelis are becoming less inclined to believe that every conflict is a misunderstanding, every enemy a potential partner, and every murderous ideology an unmet socioeconomic need waiting for a development grant to address.
This does not necessarily mean Israel is rejecting the West, just that Israel has finally stopped confusing Western fantasies with universal truths.
Every country develops a collection of strategic assumptions so familiar that they cease to look like assumptions at all. They become articles of faith. Governments build policies around them. Intelligence agencies search for evidence that confirms them. Commentators repeat them until they acquire the reassuring patina of common sense. Then history arrives with black gloves and a crowbar.
For much of the period after the 1993 Oslo Accords, a powerful current within Israel’s political and security establishment rested upon several interconnected propositions.
The lists includes: that Palestinian institutions could gradually become responsible governing partners, economic prosperity would reduce enthusiasm for violence, technological superiority and superior intelligence could contain threats that could not be eliminated, limited military operations could reduce enemy capabilities while avoiding the political cost of decisive confrontation, and international diplomacy, though frequently frustrating, remained indispensable to long-term security.
None of these ideas was entirely absurd. That is precisely why they were so influential.
Nor were they universally accepted. Israeli politics has always contained a formidable tradition of strategic scepticism. Critics repeatedly warned that Hamas, Hezbollah, and other armed movements were not justy bargaining actors seeking improved terms. They retained ideological objectives that no increase in employment, electricity, or international legitimacy would dissolve. Calm might indicate deterrence, or indicate preparation.
Nevertheless, the managerial approach prevailed.
Threats were to be contained. Escalations were to be calibrated. Hamas could be deterred. Gaza could be managed. Periodic military operations would “mow the lawn,” a phrase that sounded sophisticated largely because it concealed the fact that the weeds were acquiring rockets, tunnels, and battalions.
Israel had mistaken the temporary suppression of violence for the transformation of its enemy — and October 7th ended that indulgence.
Besides breaching the border, Hamas breached an entire conceptual architecture. The massacres, hostage-taking, and temporary collapse of Israel’s local defences shattered public faith in the proposition that a genocidal movement could be indefinitely managed through surveillance, economic concessions, and occasional bombardment. A sophisticated intelligence apparatus had produced an unsophisticated conclusion: The enemy did not really mean what it repeatedly said.
This is one of the West’s more persistent strategic pathologies. It interprets ideological conviction as theatrical language, then expresses astonishment when zealots proceed to act upon it. Western governments frequently assume that everybody ultimately wants what Western officials want: stability, prosperity, recognition, improved trade, and a favourable paragraph in the communiqué.
Some people want victory, domination, and to kill you for who you are. The inability to comprehend this does not make one humane. It makes one vulnerable.
Whether October 7th represented the final collapse of Oslo-era thinking or just a failure of a particular policy toward Gaza will remain contested. Israelis can argue about terminology while historians argue about causation. What cannot seriously be disputed is that the burden of proof has changed.
Before October 7th, those advocating decisive action were required to explain why management could not work. After October 7th, advocates of management must explain why anyone should trust it again.
Much of the widening disagreement between Israel and European governments is therefore deeper than a dispute over tactics, proportionality, or diplomatic timing. It reflects a collision between strategic cultures.
Post-war Europe, particularly after the end of the Cold War, constructed an elaborate worldview around diplomacy, legal institutions, economic interdependence, and multilateral cooperation. Military power did not disappear, but it was gradually demoted from the central instrument of statecraft to one tool among many, preferably used briefly, reluctantly, and with an accompanying panel discussion.
This model was not irrational. For Europe, Western Europe in particular, it was extraordinarily successful.
Former enemies integrated their economies. Borders softened. Institutions multiplied. National rivalries were sublimated into regulations, summits, and arguments about agricultural subsidies. Generations of Europeans came to regard war not as a recurring feature of human politics but as an atavistic malfunction committed by societies that had not yet attended the correct conference.
Israel had a rather different education.
Since 1948, it has confronted interstate war, terrorism, insurgency, missile attacks, proxy armies, and adversaries that periodically declare its elimination a sacred duty. Its citizens serve in the military. Its reservists leave homes and professions when war comes. Its enemies are not theoretical constructs encountered in policy papers. They live across the border, dig beneath it, and fire over it.
That tends to focus the mind.
Europe built its strategic culture in an environment where security was largely guaranteed by American power. Israel built its strategic culture in an environment where a single major defeat could end the country and results in yet another genocide against the Jews. These experiences naturally produce different appetites for risk.
A European foreign ministry may prioritise preserving the possibility of future negotiations. Israel may prioritise ensuring that the prospective negotiating partner has fewer missiles tomorrow morning. One culture regards restraint as a demonstration of legitimacy. The other has learned that enemies often interpret restraint as uncertainty, fatigue or fear.
One emphasises proportionality as a moral and legal principle. The other asks blunter questions: Proportionate to what? To the most recent attack? To the enemy’s current capabilities? To its declared intentions? Or to the consequences of allowing it to recover and try again?
These are not semantic distinctions. They determine whether a state just responds to violence or prevents its repetition.
The philosophical divide is familiar. Realism begins with the unpleasant recognition that states operate in an environment where security cannot ultimately be outsourced. Treaties matter, institutions can help, diplomacy has value — but when those mechanisms fail, survival depends upon military capability, credible deterrence, intelligence competence, and the willingness to use force.
Liberal internationalism places greater confidence in institutions, law, economic integration, and negotiated cooperation. It assumes that conflict can be mitigated by constructing systems in which violence becomes costly and compromise becomes rational. The problem is not that liberal internationalism is always wrong, just that it works best among actors who already accept its premises.
The European Union can regulate fishing rights between France and Spain because neither country regards exterminating the other as a religious obligation. Economic interdependence can moderate rivalry between states that value prosperity more than conquest. International law can constrain governments that care about international law. They are considerably less effective against revolutionary movements that regard martyrdom as triumph, civilian suffering as propaganda, and temporary peace as an opportunity to rearm.
After October 7th, Israeli discourse shifted sharply toward this realist understanding. Israelis began asking questions that should have been asked far earlier.
Can an ideological movement be pacified through economic incentives when its leadership openly celebrates death? Can a heavily armed organisation be permanently “managed” without eventually reducing its capacity to wage war? Can international guarantees protect a country when the guarantors lose interest, change governments, or discover a more pressing diplomatic priority? Can deterrence exist when every Israeli act of retaliation is treated as more morally troubling than the aggression that necessitated it?
These questions do not signify the rejection of diplomacy, only its demotion from theology status.
Negotiations are useful when they advance national interests. Agreements are valuable when they are enforceable. International cooperation matters when international partners are prepared to impose consequences upon those who violate it. However, diplomacy unsupported by power, is not strategy so much as correspondence.
Some observers describe Israel’s changing outlook as becoming more “Middle Eastern.” The phrase can obscure as much as it reveals.
If it means Israel is adopting the region’s authoritarian traditions, the claim is plainly inadequate. Israel remains a noisy parliamentary democracy with competitive elections, independent institutions, aggressive journalism, and a citizenry that treats every political disagreement as though it were a family argument conducted across three adjoining balconies. Israel’s internal debates have intensified since October 7th.
Yet if “Middle Eastern” means understanding that regional politics is shaped by unstable alliances, proxy armies, revolutionary regimes, sectarian ambitions, and rapidly shifting balances of power, then the description contains more truth.
The Middle East is not a malfunctioning version of Scandinavia. Its political actors cannot be understood by mechanically applying European assumptions about state interest, secular rationality, or negotiated compromise. In this region, ideological conviction matters, as does honor, humiliation, perceptions of strength matter, regime survival, and religious history.
Israel increasingly appears to understand itself not as a European outpost unfortunately located in the Middle East, but as a Middle Eastern power that happens to possess democratic institutions, Western alliances, and a highly developed economy. That distinction is crucial.
A country that imagines itself as an extension of Europe may expect the regional environment to become progressively more European. A country that understands itself as part of the Middle East recognises that it must master the region as it exists. Israel may still prefer peace. It simply no longer assumes that everybody else prefers it on remotely similar terms.
There is, of course, a danger of overcorrection. National trauma can clarify, but it can also distort. The U.S. transformed its security system after September 11th, expanding intelligence coordination, reorganising institutions, and becoming far more willing to use preventive force. Some reforms corrected obvious weaknesses. Others produced grave strategic errors.
Britain repeatedly revised its counterterrorism policies during the conflict with the Irish Republican Army. India changed its posture after the 2008 Mumbai attacks. France strengthened its security authorities after the 2015 Paris massacres. Every attacked democracy confronts the same dilemma. The first danger is failing to learn; the second is learning the wrong lesson.
Israel must therefore distinguish between abandoning delusions and abandoning prudence. A harder strategic culture need not become a reckless one. Recognising that military power is indispensable does not mean military power is sufficient.
Understanding that some enemies cannot presently be reconciled does not mean every diplomatic opening should be rejected. Accepting that international institutions are often hypocritical does not make international legitimacy worthless.
Yet the reverse is equally important. Prudence must not become paralysis. Diplomacy must not become escapism. Concern for legitimacy must not become the outsourcing of national survival to governments that will issue sympathetic statements after the funeral.
Critics warn that Israel’s post-October 7th worldview may become excessively security-centred, reduce political flexibility, and deepen international isolation. These are serious concerns.
Yet the critics frequently evade the more immediate question. What precisely is the responsible alternatives? Return to containment? Reconstruct the same border assumptions? Restore the economic incentives? Rebuild the surveillance system and hope the next collection of jihadists proves more amenable to behavioural economics?
The advocates of restraint often speak as though moderation consists of repeating a failed policy with improved vocabulary.
Supporters of Israel’s harder approach argue that diplomacy without deterrence is wishful thinking and that agreements with actors committed to Israel’s destruction are just intermissions unless backed by overwhelming force. They have the stronger case.
The defining strategic lesson of October 7th is not that diplomacy is useless. It is that diplomacy cannot redeem an enemy from its ideology or transform genocidal ambition into municipal grievance. It cannot substitute for borders that hold, intelligence that understands and an army capable of destroying threats before they mature into massacres.
So, is Israel becoming less Western?
That depends on which West we mean. If “Western” refers to democracy, political pluralism, institutional accountability, and individual liberty, Israel remains thoroughly Western, often chaotically so.
If “Western” refers to the post-Cold War belief that history naturally bends toward compromise, prosperity dissolves fanaticism and international institutions will ultimately defend those who obey their rules, then yes. Israel is becoming less Western.
Good — much of that worldview was never a description of reality. It was a luxury purchased by societies protected from reality’s harsher consequences. Israel does not possess that luxury.
Geography shapes strategy. History shapes perception. Repeated attack shapes national tolerance for elegant theories. Israelis have discovered that the price of strategic error is not an unfavourable editorial or a difficult diplomatic summit. It is murdered families, abducted children and communities reduced to ash.
October 7th did not end Israel’s internal arguments; it changed who must justify themselves.
Those advocating force must still explain its objectives, costs, and limits. Democracies must demand nothing less. Yet those promising coexistence, deterrence through prosperity, or security through international guarantees must now answer a more brutal question.
What happens when you are wrong?
For years, Israel’s strategic establishment treated that question as almost impolite. October 7th provided the answer. Israel is not necessarily becoming less Western. It is becoming less credulous.
And in the Middle East, credulity is not a virtue. It is an invitation.
Israel is now in a position to serve as the West’s dragoman to explain precisely what’s in this article. The Middle East is not Europe, its cultures and traditions do not track those of Europe and, not to put too fine a point on it, Islam is neither Christianity nor Judaism.
What should have happened as a result of October 7 is a reversal of expectations. Rather than ask “what can Israel do to convince the Palestinians to agree to a lasting peace?” - a fool’s errand if you listen to what they’ve always said in Arabic - now the question should be “what can Palestinians do to convince Israel to agree to a lasting peace?”
For starters, Israel should be demanding of France, the UK and Canada, all of whom recognized “Palestine” to provide an update on what steps the Palestinians have taken to meet the conditions each had set out for the recognition.
Israel had to undergo a very painful learning curve. It seems like most of the West will have to undergo similar tribulations before the scales fall from their eyes.
Nachum - you write like an archaeologist unearthing the buried truth and brushing off the dirt so we can all see it clearly. Simply put, “when someone shows you who they are the first time, believe it.” Now if only the West would believe it too.