What will Israel be?

Some years ago, I wrote a textbook for military officers, Survival: The Economic Foundations of American National Security (Lexington Books, 2016), that argued that wars are generally won not by destroying the enemy but rather by engendering in the enemy a sense of “cognitive dissonance” so severe that it is forced to adopt a new narrative consistent with allied war aims.

Cognitive dissonance is a psychological phenomenon experienced when humans identify a discrepancy between their beliefs and their perception of reality. According to those who research such matters, people literally cannot tolerate the sensation that cognitive dissonance induces and will do anything to restore a sense of consonance between their perceptions and their beliefs.  

As long as the deviation between reality and belief is small, the coping mechanism is generally to change your perception of reality rather than your beliefs. But when the gap between perception and belief becomes too large, it becomes prohibitively difficult to maintain illusions about the world around us and people are forced to change their beliefs to conform with reality.

It is for this reason that the “the day after” – what happens when the fighting stops – is so critical to the defeat of Hamas. It is the reality that emerges in the conflict’s aftermath, and not the conflict itself, that will determine if the war has been won or lost. For Israel to win, Hamas has to be confronted with a postwar reality so at odds with its hopes and dreams that it is forced to abandon those hopes and dreams. 

Of course, there has been considerable discussion of what the “day after” in Gaza should look like. What has been lacking is serious discussion of what the “day after” will look like in Israel – and that is even more important in determining the long-term outcome of this war.

Consider the most successful application of cognitive dissonance in warfare – the strategy of “containment” that defeated Communism and won the Cold War.

Containment can be traced back to George Kennan’s 1946 “Long Memo” to the US State Department regarding his thinking about how to handle the emerging conflict with the Soviet Union.  

In Kennan’s vision, the Cold War would be fought in a “battle space” where entire societies struggled to demonstrate their economic, social, and moral superiority, writing that “every courageous and incisive measure to solve internal problems of our own society, to improve self-confidence, discipline, morale and community spirit of our own people, is a victory.”

I think it’s pretty clear where this is going.

To truly defeat the enemy, Israel must seize the opportunity created by this war to address its failings and vulnerabilities.  

To be sure, Israel is today a remarkably strong country, with a vibrant and resilient economy, strong and widely shared civic values, and enviable demographics. It is also simultaneously one of the most religious and most tolerant societies in the world. But Israel clearly faces some challenges that, if not overcome, threaten the well-being of its citizens and the survival of the country.  

There are two serious internal challenges facing Israel that must be overcome to secure the country’s future and force its enemies to recognize the reality that they cannot destroy Israel – something that in the end will lead inexorably, given the power of cognitive dissonance, to the recognition that maybe Israel should not be destroyed.

The first is to integrate the Haredi and Arab communities into the country’s socioeconomic mainstream. The second is to build broad national consensus regarding legitimate governance and the constitutional “rules of the game.” Last week’s riots at the IDF bases at Sde Teiman and Bet Lid, as well as recent calls by Haredi leaders in support of open draft evasion, are illustrative of just how serious the latter challenge is.

There is no better time to confront these challenges than today, precisely because Israel is at war with enemies that seek its destruction.

While it is essential that Israel address the marginalization of its Haredi and Arab communities, the first priority should be to resolve the question of governance.  Because absent legitimate governance you cannot address any other challenge facing Israel coherently. 

Legitimate governance requires political institutions and constitutional arrangements that allow the majority to effectively rule while safeguarding the rights of the minority. And it requires a broad consensus among the citizenry that these institutions are fair and the “game” isn’t rigged.   

Consider Israel’s Supreme Court. There is no question that Israeli society is deeply divided over the constitutional role of the Court. And there should be little doubt that the resultant social strife has encouraged Israel’s enemies. Rather than wasting time assigning blame, it would be more fruitful to restructure the Court in a way that can give it the broad public support that it requires to be effective. 

Current arrangements accord enormous power to the small minority of Israelis who are in the legal profession and allows them to impose their views on the majority whenever they choose. The proposed reforms accord enormous power to the majority – allowing it to ride roughshod over minorities. As such, neither approach will build a broad societal consensus that recognizes the authority of the Court and respects its decisions.

Some fresh thinking is required.

One intrinsically difficult challenge is to identify a sensible method of appointing the Court’s judges. As an alternative to the current system and the proposed reform, consider a system where appointment of Supreme Court Justices requires that any candidate must be approved by a majority of the Knesset Members in the governing coalition and a majority of the MKs who belong to the opposition. Such an arrangement would assure that a majority of the public’s elected representatives approve of the appointment – but would also assure that this majority was drawn from a wide cross-section of Israeli society. And it would do so regardless of which portion of Israeli society was in the majority or minority at any given time.

Such an approach would not make everyone happy – no constitutional arrangement ever does. But I think it would assure that the vast majority of Israelis – regardless of their political attitudes or ideology – would recognize that the selection process was fair and transparent and that everyone had an opportunity to have their voice heard in decisions that affect the lives of all.  

And that would be a victory.