Israel and the Spirit of ‘Great War’

“Israel at the start of the 21st century is undoubtedly one of the greatest success stories of the twentieth century.” Benjamin Netanyahu, A Durable Peace: Israel and its Place Among the Nations (2000).

Building a country’s success story is not an easy task. It takes the decades of hard work, determination and dedication of strong-willed people. But the real challenge does not lie there. A story can be called a real ‘Success’ when it is conveyed well to its intended audience, and in the case of democracies like India and Israel, the audience is generally the entire global community!

In today’s environment, conveying the Success Story of a country’s trajectory and vision is nothing less than fighting a War. Why? The behaviour/habits of the audience (global community) are going through a massive transformation, which is visible but remains unnoticed/unacknowledged at the same time! And the emerging patterns of ‘dismiss’ culture are making things more difficult.

Rise of a ‘Dismiss’ Culture

We are in the middle of a great digital disruption and can sense a rising ‘dismiss’ culture around us. The word ‘dismiss culture’ may sound lighter than the ‘cancel’ or ‘rejection’ culture but in its true sense, it is more impactful than its predecessors. Why? when we ‘dismiss’ a notification/feed or an alert on our smart screens (and we do that many times in a day) we don’t even care to know what was that which we just ‘dismissed,’ and we often do that with a more natural ease than cancelling or rejecting something.

Imagine a whole generation ‘dismissing’ something here and there, every minute or so, consciously or unconsciously, on their smartphones, for a major part of their routine life. what will be the impact of that activity on their mind? Some reports suggest that it takes from 18 to 254 days for a person to form a new habit, so we can say with some certainty that the ‘dismiss’ culture is now a part of popular human habits of the world (at least for some 5.35 billion internet users).

In a nutshell, the audience to which we are trying to convey our side of the story is not only disinterested or distracted but they are habitual to ‘dismiss’ things they don’t find comfortable to their eyes, ears or their mood at the moment.

They will rather prefer switching to some ‘cat’ video than putting their mind under stress! This is the scenario in which countries like India and Israel navigate and not acknowledging this reality is not an option any more.

The Spirit of ‘Great War’

“Who is truly wise? He who foresees the future.”  [A Hebrew Proverb]

What’s the difference between a War and a Great War?

Traditionally, the idea of the ‘Great War’ is associated with size, scale and gravity. That’s the way journalists and analysts term the events and there is some rationality behind it too but that is now becoming an obsolete view.

In its true sense, a War can be called a ‘Great War’, when a nation, despite the gravity of unfolding situations and crises, continues to pursue the path of construction, progress, innovation and Global Good! In the middle of enormous negativity, destruction and plunder, how quickly a nation collects and restores its optimism and will to return to the path of construction, matters! This can be called the real Test of a Nation’s character and resilience too.

Israel is one of those few countries that have tasted this spirit of ‘Great War’ many times in the past and nothing could have distracted it from that path so far!

Before the horrific attacks of October 7, despite a highly chaotic atmosphere, domestic/global, Israel was marching well on a path of being a contributor to the innovation, development and progress of the world and was able to narrate their Success Stories too. If Israel gets distracted from that path, who will benefit most from that? The same enemies to which Israel is engaged in a War, on the physical fronts!

This is a moment for Israel to take a pause and consider this aspect of present-day reality too!

For vibrant democracies like India and Israel, sustaining their image of contributors to the development, innovation, progress and prosperity of the planet is the real ‘Great War’, as here on this front, we sometimes confront the interests/aspirations of almost all major players of the world!

Every single well-wisher of Israel, the tiny bright democracy in the Middle East, wishes in their heart that Israel would never lose this spirit of the ‘Great War’ and continue to pursue its role for the larger good of the planet. Doing this in parallel to fighting the War that was imposed upon her, is not going to be an easy task but Israel is known to bounce back strong!