Two new Israeli books on the war … promote inaccurate views – from Israeli media

First, the author says, the October 7 attack, Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza border region and Upper Galilee, and the difficulties it faces in defeating Hamas, returning hostages, and deterring Hezbollah and Iran, have reminded Israelis of the question that scares the father of Zionism: Can a Jewish state survive in an Arab-Islamic region where half the people seek to destroy it and the other half accept it with at best mild enthusiasm?
Here, Ari Shavit, author of the book “War of Survival: From Catastrophe to Victory to Resurrection” published by Novaya Gazeta and a enthusiast of documenting Zionism and Israeli society, and University Professor Uri Bar-Joseph, author of the book “The Israeli Security Concept” published by Kinneret Publishing House, propose, “Behind the Iron Wall: What is Missing”, modernizing the Israeli security concept and adapting it to the requirements of current wars.
Both Shavit and Bar-Yoseph wondered whether the principles laid down by one of the Jewish state’s earliest founders, David Ben-Gurion, apply today — to stand firm against the Arabs until they tire of the conflict and leave us forever.
The answer given by the two Hebrew books is, to some extent, yes. Bar-Yoseph and Shavit do not believe, as the protest movement claims, that the Netanyahu government is the root cause of Israel’s social unrest and the current war. Their disagreement centers on the answer to how to save Israel and guarantee its survival for future generations—war or peace.
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Shavit supports Barak’s view that Israel is a “villa in the jungle” or, as he puts it, an “oasis of freedom surrounded by hostility, tyranny and intolerance.” Therefore, Shavit expects Western powers to see Israel as a “second Ukraine” and support it unreservedly.
But there is a small problem with this narrative: the world does not see the IDF as the modern incarnation of the Warsaw Ghetto rebels. Instead, a large body of critical Western opinion compares Israel’s actions in Gaza to the Roman and Assyrian methods of suppressing the uprising, including siege, starvation, occupation, destruction and killing. On the other hand, Shavit ignores the tens of thousands of Palestinians killed in Gaza and the statement issued by Netanyahu and the army leadership that “Israel will be responsible for Gaza’s security” – a statement explicitly aimed at reoccupation.
But Shavit makes up for the superficiality of his historical analysis with a detailed national mobilization action plan before launching a preventive war against Iran. He recommends that Israel work to reduce its losses in Gaza and the north, agree to a ceasefire and return the hostages, and then quickly hold parliamentary elections that would produce a new national leadership.
In the same context, Shavit argues that Israel must take a number of steps to become “Sparta.” First, double the funds allocated to security. Second, extend compulsory military service to forty months. Third, reserve service to sixty-five. Fourth, refocus the industry on weapons production. Fifth, all servicemen, both men and women, will become fighters. Sixth, increase the number of ground forces by 40 percent. Seventh, create a conventional missile force and a “real National Guard” to respond to “Palestinian offensives and uprisings in sovereign Israel.” Eighth, collect illegal weapons. Ninth, transform border communities into fortifications. Tenth, replace the Israeli army with a new force to perform “police” tasks in the occupied territories, with a focus on war preparations. Eleventh, recruit religious figures into the “religious rear corps.” Twelfth, the Arab community must “do its part” by serving in medical and rescue services and in organizations that “do not participate in active combat.”
But one question remains unanswered: Who wants to live in this country? Shavit is certainly aware of the wave of emigration from Israel by scholars and wealthy secular families, which began last year with the constitutional coup and fears of religious repression and escalated during the war. Does Shavit imagine that those who left Israel will return and enlist their children in the military forever in hopes of defeating Iran? In fact, the opposite may be the case, with some other citizens emigrating to avoid such a fate. Except that Shavit is aware that the Orthodox refuse to be drafted given the current situation.
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In contrast to Shavit, Bar-Yoseph supports peace through diplomacy. In the book’s preface, he says: “The October 7 attack surprised the concept of national security, but its outcome was largely the result of poor decisions made in the hours before the attack.” The more important question, in his view, is why, seventy-six years after its founding and after huge investments in defense, has Israel failed to fulfill its fundamental Zionist mission of providing a safe homeland for the Jewish people?
The essence of Beyond the Iron Wall is a comprehensive historical presentation of how Israel’s security perspective was formed. In his book, he relies on the foundations laid by his late colleague Avner Yaniv at the University of Haifa in a book published in the 1990s entitled “Politics and Strategy in Israel.” Bar-Yoseph calls for a discussion of Israel’s objectives in possessing nuclear weapons and the extent of its ability to prevent its enemies from possessing them.
Another piece of information is that Bar-Yosef’s vision of Israeli security focuses on diplomatic arrangements to achieve peace, which is unpopular in Israel. His model relies on agreements that serve the interests of both parties and proposes, for example, a peace treaty with Egypt—a treaty that could have been reached before the Yom Kippur War and prevented its outbreak, but was not reached until after the war and the political unrest in Israel.
In the same context, Bar-Yoseph believes that an agreement with the Palestinians is possible and necessary, because reducing the intensity of the conflict with the Palestinians will reduce hostility toward Israel and deprive Iran and its supporters of an excuse to continue the struggle. That’s not all, Bar-Yoseph also proposed a regional denuclearization arrangement instead of holding on to the false hope that Israel can bomb and destroy the enemy’s nuclear program.
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The main problem with Bar-Yoseph’s book – like Shavit’s – is that they ignore the changes Israel has gone through and is still going through. Both books are full of nostalgia for the Israel created by the Labor Party, Mapai, Ben-Gurion and Moshe Dayan. Just looking at the list of sources for each of them is enough to realize that they still live in their comfort zone: former intellectual groups in the defense establishment and their academic counterparts, as well as the public representatives of the old regime, that is, relying on experienced people who sat in operating rooms and cabinet meetings, but whose influence has weakened and they have been replaced by religious Zionist rabbis and their students.
The author emphasizes that Israel’s security concept deserves in-depth discussion and adjustment to the realities that have emerged after the October 7 attacks. But it is crucial that this debate begins with the recognition that Israel is ruled by an ethno-religious government, however painful it may be – a government that declared at its inception that only Jews have the right to “all the land of Israel,” and that seeks to annex the West Bank and Gaza, and dismantle patriotism, judicial independence, and institutions that deepen “Jewish identity” at every step.
That is the story, and it will not go away on its own if we return to the heroic battlefields of past wars such as Ammunition Hill, China Farm, etc. Therefore, those who advocate war, like Shavit, and those who advocate peace, like Bar-Yoseph, must first explain how they will achieve their goals in an internally divided right-wing religious Israel.

Aluf Bin
Haaretz
Translated and summarized by: Wafaa Hani Omar
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