How Israel Succeeds While Annoying Its Critics
When we Jews are resilient, when we fiercely defend ourselves, the world’s comforting narrative of helpless Jews to pity, to memorialize — but not to respect — falls apart.
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People love an underdog because, deep down, we resonate with their struggle and determination to overcome the odds.
Some of us see a bit of ourselves in the underdog. Few people go through life as the obvious, untouchable favorite. Instead, most of us face our own struggles and setbacks, so seeing someone else tackle overwhelming odds can inspire us to confront our own challenges. The underdog reminds us that even if we are not the biggest or the best, there is a chance to overcome and succeed.
With fewer resources, the underdog has to rely on heart, ingenuity, and authenticity, qualities that feel sincere and relatable. Unlike favorites who may seem distant or untouchable, underdogs are often rough around the edges, making them feel more genuine. People find it easy to root for someone who seems humble, relatable, and sincere in their struggle.
The payoff of an underdog victory is especially exhilarating because of the unlikelihood of success. When the favorite wins, it is expected — business as usual. But when the underdog pulls off a victory, it feels like we are witnessing a rare event, a triumph against the odds which adds to our belief that anything is possible.
In the early days of the Zionist movement, dating back to the 1800s, Jewish settlers in Ottoman-era Palestine were quintessential underdogs. Driven by centuries of persecution in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East — as well as a desire to reclaim our indigenous homeland — the first Zionists faced unimaginable odds: an underdeveloped and inhospitable terrain ripe with disease, scarce resources, and a population of locals who were openly hostile to their arrival.
These early Zionists were impoverished, frequently disease-stricken, and had to cultivate a barren land with little outside support. They built kibbutzim from scratch, drained swamps, created infrastructure, and fought to survive amid both natural and political challenges. Their struggle resonated as one of perseverance and self-determination, portraying them as David against a world of Goliaths, striving to carve out a safe haven in a world that had persistently denied them one.
For much of the 20th century, the Jewish community in Ottoman-era and then British-era Palestine — and later, the State of Israel — retained this underdog status. They were a tiny minority in a region dominated by much larger and often adversarial Arab states and militias. As we all know, Israel’s establishment in 1948 was met with an immediate war when neighboring Arab countries launched attacks, determined to prevent the nascent Jewish state from taking root.
Israel’s early wars for survival solidified its image as a vulnerable yet resilient outpost of Jewish autonomy against an array of powerful foes with rising international leverage. Each military victory was hard-fought, feeding the perception of a people triumphing against seemingly insurmountable odds.
At the same time, the Palestinian movement began to shift the narrative in the mid-20th century, especially as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict grew more complex and more visible to the world.
The 1967 Six-Day War, in which Israel captured significant territories, marked a turning point in global perceptions. In the eyes of the international community, the Israelis were no longer seen as the small, scrappy nation fighting for survival but as a dominant force in a region of dispossession.
Palestinians, now dispersed in refugee camps and without statehood that they denied themselves in the 1930s and 1940s, effectively rebranded themselves as the underdog, aligning with a growing global emphasis on anti-colonialism and indigenous rights.
This rebranding has proven to be incredibly effective; the Palestinian cause now regularly attracts overwhelming sympathy on the world stage, baselessly casting Israel as the “occupying” power and an “oppressor” — thanks to Palestinian narratives that center on themes of dispossession and oppression. They have successfully reframed the conflict in terms that resonate with people who have no idea how the world works, lack historical knowledge, and enjoy selective outrage as a favorite pastime.
In this shift, the underdog mantle has been stolen from Zionist pioneers by the Palestinian movement, nefariously positioning itself as the beleaguered party in an asymmetrical struggle for the destruction of Israel, disguised as self-determination.
Meanwhile, the Israelis have developed one of the most successful countries on this planet, including pound-for-pound the world’s greatest military, defense, and intelligence — no less an impressive economy that produces foremost innovations. Never mind Israel’s vibrant culture and constant contributions to medicine, the arts, science, agriculture, and academia.
The more Israel breeds success, the more it irritates critics at every turn.
One of the core reasons why Israel succeeds so much more than it fails is because Zionism created the “New Jew.”
Early Zionists were motivated by the alarming rise of violent antisemitism. In their quest to rescue the Jews of the pre-Holocaust era, Zionists aimed for much more than just physically protecting Jews. Rather, the goal was to change the relationship between Jews and Gentiles — by changing Jews themselves.
“Zionism was never just a political project, but a cultural one — to create a new type of Jew,” according to Rabbi Mishael Zion, founding director of the Mandel Leadership Institute’s Program for Leadership in Jewish Culture.1
This objective was based on a robust, critical analysis of how Jews had lived in their 2,000 years of exile and the effects this had on the Jewish character. Frankly, it made many Jews soft, quiet, shy, and reserved. The “New Jew” is exactly the opposite: outwardly, brashly, stubbornly, optimistically, and even obnoxiously proud to be Jewish.
But Zionism did not convert all Jews into “New Jews.” During the decades that followed Israel’s 1948 declaration of independence and still to this day, many Jews in the Diaspora have been living with “Old Jew” characteristics. Part of this can be attributed to the non-Jewish societies in which they live — societies that celebrate Jewish people’s suffering after they are gone (through monuments, museums, and memorials) while disregarding the lived experiences and rights of Jews in the present.
As professor Dara Horn brilliantly described in her 2021 book, “People Love Dead Jews,” societies honor Jews as victims of past atrocities like the Holocaust, but frequently turn a blind eye to contemporary antisemitism and minimize the legitimacy of Jewish self-determination, as seen in debates over Israel and the unique scrutiny applied to Jewish communities worldwide. This paradox reveals a discomfort with the idea of Jewish people as active, resilient agents of their own history rather than passive subjects of tragedy.
Early Zionists wanted nothing of this narrative, a mentality that still permeates Israeli society today. Israelis have no problem asserting their identity, culture, and politics even if it comes with criticism, suspicion, or exclusion. While much of the world seems more willing to mourn Jews after they are gone than to celebrate their presence, protect their rights, or engage with their contributions, Israelis enjoy vibrant Jewish lives that refuse to fit neatly into a narrative of tragedy.
This does not mean that Israelis are invincible, and they certainly are fallible — both of which we witnessed on October 7th, a complete debacle of the Israeli defense, security, and intelligence establishments.
But Israel has ferociously rebounded since that unprecedented Saturday, and the Jewish state’s critics knew it would. Hence why, already on October 8th and in the weeks leading up to Israel’s eventual ground incursion into Gaza, which took place some three weeks later, we saw hundreds of anti-Israel demonstrations across the world. These demonstrators plainly knew that, if Israel decided to go after Hamas in ways that it is more than capable of, Hamas’ days would be numbered.
Indeed, that is exactly what has happened. In addition to dismantling 23 of Hamas’ 24 battalions, Israel has taken out the vast majority of Hamas’ top leadership including its most important leaders, Yahya Sinwar and Ismail Haniyeh.
The IDF has also kept Israeli casualties incredibly low — at less than one per day, compared to the 20 per day that American generals predicted immediately after October 7th. And, as highly respected Israeli journalist Ohad Hemo reported three weeks ago (citing Hamas sources), some 80 percent of the supposed 40,000-plus casualties in Gaza are believed to be Hamas terrorists and their families (typically used as human shields).
Recently, the IDF has geared its operations in Gaza according to a “disappearing enemy.” Except for the first days of Israel’s maneuver, when there were indeed demonstrations of resistance by dozens of terrorists, now Hamas operatives are not looking for the forces, but fleeing from them and mainly hiding in the tunnels.
Against Hezbollah in Lebanon, Israel is putting on a masterclass that would make Sun Tzu blush. Four weeks ago, Shaldag (one of the premier Israeli Air Force commando units) raided and destroyed a secret Hezbollah missile production facility built inside a mountain in Syria.
Around the same time, The New York Times reported that Israel had sent undercover commandos “deep into Lebanon” to carry out “sensitive intelligence missions.” Officials told the outlet that Israel’s willingness to carry out daring missions sets it apart from the intelligence agencies and units of other countries.
Then followed the unprecedented pager and walkie-talkie attacks that Israel presumably launched against Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria — injuring at least 3,000 of the terror group’s operatives — as well as assassinations of its top brass, most notably longtime Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah. Israel has also eliminated Nasrallah’s replacement, and the replacement of his replacement. Both Hezbollah and Hamas are now refraining from appointing new leaders in fear that Israel will promptly eliminate them.
During the last several weeks, Hezbollah rocket attacks on Israel have slightly increased in amount, range, and damage — amounting to between 100 to 200 per day — but they do not remotely match the uptick in attacks that Israel has justifiably unleashed. It seems that Israel upped the ante significantly and Hezbollah cannot keep up.
Even when Hezbollah tries to launch rockets at Israel, the IDF preemptively attacks Hezbollah’s weapons stores and missile launchers, greatly minimizing their output. In instances when Hezbollah does successfully send a volley toward Israel, the IDF instantly detects the source of fire and counter-attacks to destroy it.
While the Islamic Republic of Iran attempts to resupply its brainchild Hezbollah with weapons, Israel reportedly hacked the communication network of a control tower at Beirut International Airport and warned an Iranian airplane (presumably carrying weapons) not to land, prompting the aircraft to turn around and return to Tehran.
Iran has become so fed up with Israel’s successful operations that it set up a secret service unit to target Mossad agents working in the Islamic Republic. The only problem is that the head of this unit turned out to be an Israeli agent himself, according to an interview that former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gave this week.2 Ahmadinejad added that another 20 agents on the Iranian intelligence team tasked with monitoring Israeli spying activities also turned against Tehran, providing Israel with sensitive information on the Iranian nuclear program.
Then, over this weekend, Israel made Iran’s energy and nuclear facilities more vulnerable than ever. The Israeli Air Force destroyed the Iranian regime’s most advanced anti-aircraft systems and struck a dozen targets in Iran that were used to produce solid fuel for long-range ballistic missiles, crippling Iran’s ability to produce them. One report said that a secret ballistic missile factory which was the “backbone of Iran’s missile industry” has been completely put out of commission.3
We should also note that four female Israeli Air Force soldiers participated in the retaliatory attack against Iran, which can be described as poetic because the Iranian regime is known for tremendous oppression against women.
Thus, the successes of the IDF and the Mossad have deep regional significance: They are the opening to an Israeli victory and a change to the face of the region, as the Iranian axis is increasingly defeated and Arab rulers observe with astonishment.
For the first time since the start of the war, it can be said with complete certainty that the Iranian regional axis and Iranian deterrence has been strategically weakened. Many people in the West, of course, do not understand these regional subtleties.
When Jews began arriving to our indigenous homeland in the 1800s, the Galilee was swampy, the Judaean mountains were rocky, the south of the country (the Negev) was a desert, and Tel Aviv did not exist. (The area where it stands today was just a bunch of sand dunes.)
In 1867, Mark Twain visited the region and remarked it is “desolate and unlovely.” Of Jerusalem, he wrote: “… the stateliest name in history, has lost all its ancient grandeur, and is become a pauper village.”
Eighty years later, in 1947, when the Zionists accepted the United Nations Partition Plan for British-era Palestine — one state for the Arabs and another for the Jews — the Zionists accepted, even though the bulk of the proposed Jewish state’s territory consisted of the Negev Desert, which was mostly unsuitable for agriculture and urban development at the time.
Here is how Israel’s first and only female prime minister, Golda Meir, described it: Moses brought us “to the one spot in the Middle East that has no oil.”4
Yet tiny Israel, with no substantial natural resources and surrounded by genocidal enemies, has emerged as the heavyweight, eating the Iranian regional axis as a nosh in between breakfast and lunch.
If a group not named “The Jews” was in Israel’s place right now, the entire world would be cheering them on, praying for a victory over these barbaric jihadists while lobbying for their political leaders to offer every ounce of possible support — just like we all got behind Ukraine after Russia’s invasion two years ago.
But because it is “The Jews” in question, suddenly the world finds its conscience clouded with “complexities” and “both sides” rhetoric. The atrocities committed are somehow debated rather than condemned, dissected rather than denounced. It is as if the sheer fact that “The Jews” are defending themselves transforms an otherwise straightforward struggle for survival into an intellectual and/or emotional dilemma.
If any other group was under constant threat of annihilation — indiscriminately attacked with rockets, hostages taken, children murdered — there would be no “nuance.” Yet with Israel, international support is never without an asterisk. Apologies are demanded, restraint is preached, and aid is scrutinized. People who have never read a page of history are suddenly self-proclaimed experts on the “real issues” behind the violence.
But we know exactly what is happening: For much of the world, the existence of a strong, unyielding Jewish state disrupts their comfortably selective empathy, and the very idea that Jews refuse to be perpetual victims bothers them more than the jihadist terrorism aimed at us Jews.
After all, if “The Jews” are resilient, if we fiercely defend ourselves, the world’s comforting narrative of helpless Jews to pity, to memorialize — but not to respect — falls apart. Because it is easier for so much of the world to mourn dead Jews than to stand with living ones, especially when those Jews are unapologetically strong, determined, and capable of defending themselves.
The truth is, it is not this war or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that makes people uncomfortable. It is the idea of Jews as anything other than a symbol of tragedy. A Jewish state that is powerful, resilient, and unashamed of its right to exist seems too much for some people to handle.
“Old Jew, New Jew, Israeli Jew: A Fresh Look at the Jews of Zion.” Shalom Hartman Institute.
CNN Turk
“‘Backbone of Iran’s missile industry' destroyed by IAF strikes on Islamic Republic.” The Jerusalem Post.
“Mrs. Meir Says Moses Made Israel Oil‐Poor.” The New York Times.
You nailed something I hadn't considered before, which is that not just not just the middle eastern countries, but also that the Christian west thinks of Jews as dhimmis. So the most galling thing about a successful Israel and The New Jew is that it challenges that hierarchy. And that's the real reason why calling someone a Zionist has become like calling them evil incarnate.
In the past few years a few Christians have mentioned to me in passing how the Jews are the Chosen People, so much that I think it's a bit of a hangup. I explain to them, "No, it's not that God plays favorites, you gotta be kidding, Jews are massacred in every generation, it's just that God said "Who will jump this high" and the Jews were the only ones who raised their hands." They never ever buy that explanation, which I also think is interesting. And then in the past year or two I read about the doctrine of supercessionism, which is essentially that the Jews got everything wrong and the Christians are the real Chosen People now. Like, it really really matters that you get to call yourself the Chosen People.
And all that leads into why it's so important for Jews to lose. Christianity took Judaism and "fixed" it, and Islam took Judaism and "fixed" it, and if the Jews don't lose, then that opens a crack of doubt that there was nothing wrong with Judaism in the first place. And that is intolerable because if your whole life is wrapped around the idea that your faith is the New Better Best, The One True Faith in the zero-sum Best Faith game, then maybe your whole life has been barking up the wrong tree. There's no consideration of that notion the Dalai Lama, said, that your religion in large part is your culture and you should stick to your culture, which means there is no One True Faith. No, if religion has to be One True Faith, then the Jews have to go or at least be miserable victims.
The Jew absolutely positively has to be the dhimmi, for now and forever. And when individual Jews pull themselves up despite great discrimination, again and again, when Israel wins against astronomical odds, over and over, that makes people who are hung up on that Chosen People thing think, those fricking Jews can't lose, they're God's favorites, it's so unfair. Let's kill the Jews, they fricking deserve it.
I think the problem is that most people just don´t know anything or not enough about the history of the Jews and their ages and centuries long struggle. For many, their history appears to have begun with the persecution and mass murdering by Hitler, very many are not aware of jews being oppressed, expelled, killed and "converted" everywhere countless times. - In addition, Hitler's greatest campaign and the greatest destruction by Hitler was seen as that against Eastern Europe; there were feelings of guilt towards "the Russians", although "the Russians" did not actually have the most victims to mourn, but rather Jews, Poles, Ukrainians (around 7 mio. deaths in the "Holodomor" famine caused by Stalin long before WW II and before Hitlers reign), Belarusians. In large parts of Europe and the world, gratitude towards the Allies USA, UK, France did not prevail, but rather the false "Soviet historiography", according to which "capitalism" was supposedly a "precursor to fascism".
The fact that "leftists", for example, themselves contributed significantly to driving voters into Hitler's arms during and after the global economic crisis, became forgotten.
Thus, after the Second World War, a "left" worldview largely prevailed in the "West" and especially great parts of Europe: Russians and socialists as "poor victims", although Hitler himself was a ("National") socialist.
But "the Jews"/Israel did not adhere to these rules and views and sought help from the "class enemy", "big capitalism" USA, and the fact that the so-called Palestinians themselves had missed the opportunity to establish their own state, that Israel was largely surrounded by enemies who were anything but democratic or liberal, was not perceived in Europe - which had been granted freedom through the intervention of the USA and capitalist "colonialist" Great Britain - due to the "left" spirit of those times. It was not understood that Jews did have enough of being victims again and again and that they felt entitled to seek support wherever they could get it. The fact that the USA also pursued its own interests in doing so was not appreciated in moralizing, idealistic, cheaply "anti-fascist" Germany and Europe.