In parallel with the war of destruction and annihilation that Israel continues to wage against the Gaza Strip for the sixth consecutive week, the circle of unity of voices calling in Israel to define the central concepts that formed the basis of the Israeli political security vision, which is unanimous in the fact that it has failed miserably and even completely collapsed, is expanding, day by day. In the restructuring of the organs, systems and arms charged with implementing this doctrine in the future.
Foremost among these voices is a joint project recently launched by two Israeli think tanks: the Pearl Katznelson Foundation, which has a slogan that says "We build long-term foundations for the equality camp in Israel" and the "Moulad Center for the Renewal of Democracy in Israel." The project, titled "The Collapse of Concepts: The Road to October 2023 Failure", envisages a detailed map of these concepts that have collapsed, leading themselves to failure. This map includes Ten basic concepts are the following: 1. Conflict management; 2. Strengthening enthusiasm; 3. Who needs the United States and the West?; 4. Peace without the Palestinians; 5. There is enough army for everyone; 6. The right is strong in security; 7. Governance is the foundation; 8. No need for a strong third sector; 9. Incitement does not weaken security; 10. You can drive under the burden of indictments.
We have presented here the vision of this project with regard to the first two concepts, conflict management and the strengthening of Hamas , as the two central concepts that have collapsed and their collapse has led to this terrible failure. The third concept on this list is presented below. Who needs the United States and the West?
The onset of displacement and its first signs
The authors of this concept document stress that the most prominent central feature of the foreign policy adopted by all of Benjamin Netanyahu's governments is the continued disregard for Israel's allies in the West, foremost of which is the United States of America, in exchange for siding with the leaders of the countries who have aligned themselves in the illiberal axis, most notably according to the same diagnosis, Vladimir Putin (Russia), Jair Bolsonaro (Brazil) and Viktor Orbán (Hungary). Signs of this shift in Israeli foreign policy emerged shortly after Netanyahu's return to In 2009, it began to distance Israel from its traditional allies and bring it closer to the counter-axis.
The document outlines key milestones in this transition, beginning in early 2010, months after Netanyahu's return to power, when a large number of Knesset members from right-wing parties in Israel held extensive public meetings with leaders of far-right parties in a number of European countries, breaking Israel's unofficial and undeclared boycott of those parties, many of which have anti-Semitic features and fascist roots. In 2015, Netanyahu creates the first and unprecedented rift in the relationship. Between Israel and the US Democratic Party when he addressed a joint meeting of the US House of Representatives and Senate, despite the opposition of then-US President Barack Obama to the move. In July 2017, Netanyahu participated in the Visegrad Group conference (a cultural and political alliance of four Central European countries – the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, members of the European Union and NATO) and gave a speech at the conference in which he launched a sharp attack against the EU, which he said "conspires against the State of Israel."
In between, Netanyahu participated in two official inauguration ceremonies for Viktor Orbán and Jair Bolsonaro in Hungary and Brazil along with a group of prominent leaders of the anti-liberal axis, amid the absence of all leaders of Western countries classified as "liberal axis." In April 2019, in the midst of Israel's general election battle, the Likud party placed large banners on its central headquarters in Tel Aviv showing its leader and candidate for prime minister, Netanyahu, in one photo with Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump and above it. Central electoral slogan: "Netanyahu, a leader of another category." In January 2020, Netanyahu received Putin in Jerusalem and said in his welcoming speech: "I want to welcome our great friend, the Russian president, and thank him for these courageous relations with us." Over the past decade, Netanyahu has visited Moscow at least ten times. In January 2023, Meir Rubin, director of the Cohalet Forum ("We are the brain of the Israeli right, most of what the right does comes through us"—in the words of Moshe Koppel, the association's president—that the Israeli government "stop receiving security assistance from the United States and look for another ally in the world." In February 2023, the "exile minister," Amichai Shekli (who moved from Naftali Bennett's Jewish Home to Likud), launched a sharp personal attack on the US ambassador to Israel, saying, "Stop interfering in Israel's internal affairs." The following month, March 2023, Minister of National Security and leader of the Otzma Yehudit party, Itamar Ben-Gvir, said that "Israel is not another extra star in the American flag," while MK Nissim Faturi (Likud) said, "We know how to defend ourselves even without the United States." In July 2023, against the backdrop of the high tension that overshadowed bilateral relations between the United States and Israel against the backdrop of Netanyahu and his coalition government's insistence on continuing to legislate "judicial coup" laws, Netanyahu announced that he would pay an official visit to China, attaching a personal photo of him with a signed copy of Chinese President Xi Jinping's book. In September 2023, Netanyahu met with US President Joe Biden on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York, but the White House insisted on not inviting Netanyahu to the White House.
"Netanyahu's friends and the new right are enemies of Israel"
The central message Netanyahu wanted to convey was, according to the analysis of this document, clear: he (Netanyahu) is the "master of diplomacy" who will build for Israel a new network of alliances and allies with illiberal leaders around the world, leading Israel towards a new era in the international arena and in its international relations so that it does not remain "captive to privileged relations with the United States and the West." Over the past 14 years, Netanyahu has brought relations between Israel and the United States in particular to a nadir not seen since the creation of a state. Israel, mainly by violating one of the basic axioms of all previous Israeli prime ministers, whether on the right or on the "left", has transformed American support for Israel from a matter at the heart of the consensus in American policy into a divisive one.
This "irresponsible" behavior, as the document describes it, has inflicted enormous damage on Israel, some of which has been a dramatic loss of support, both among elected Democratic Party and among U.S. Jews, most of whom support the party. Polls in the United States in recent months have shown that "the younger generation there supports the State of Israel much less than in the past, due to the policy of right-wing governments."
However, October 7, 2023 and the war that followed "revealed a painful truth: "The diplomatic strategy adopted by right-wing governments constituted a resounding failure." It turns out that all of Israel's new right-wing friends are nothing more than an unreliable "tilted wall," with some "choosing to publicly side with Hamas, while others have made do with timid denunciations." The two stars of Likud's 2019 election campaign "stood out particularly in the hostility they showed toward Israel in its harshest days in its history": Donald Trump used a speech to supporters a few days later to praise Lebanese Hezbollah and mock Israel's security services, while Putin persistently refused to condemn the killings and kidnappings in the "Gaza envelope" towns and then vetoed Russia's veto to thwart a draft resolution condemning Hamas in the Three weeks after Black Saturday, he received a Hamas delegation in Moscow.
In contrast, Western allies traditionally allied to Israel were those attacked by Netanyahu and his allies the first to come up to support Israel in its predicament, both in words and in deeds. While Russia stood up for Hamas, the United States sent massive military forces to the region, which also included two aircraft carriers and an air train for advanced defense equipment and systems, including to deter Hezbollah from attacking Israel. While China refused to condemn what happened on "Black Saturday," the European Parliament declared " This was followed by a series of visits of support and support by a number of leaders of Western countries, led by France, Italy and England, as well as US President Joe Biden and the secretaries of state and defense in his administration, following his "historic speech of support and support that will be remembered by many generations to come."
In the final analysis, within a few hours, "we witnessed the complete collapse of the diplomatic concept and orientation on which right-wing governments and their leaders have underpinned over the past decade and a half," when it tried to distance Israel from its traditional allies in the West, which were considered "too liberal," and replace it with "non-democratic states that support terrorist organizations in the region (such as Russia and China) and countries led by illiberal leaders (such as Hungary, India, and Brazil)."
The authors of the document conclude by recording the following conclusion: Behind this historic shift that Netanyahu governments sought to achieve in Israel's foreign relations is a simple motivation: None of these "new friends" shows any interest or concern about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, criticizes the government's policies in the OPT, or cares about Israel remaining a democratic state. "In other words, Netanyahu was looking for comfortable political partners, even at the cost of harming Israel's national security."
