What Netanyahu’s Israel is costing American Jews
As an American Jew and former US national security official, I have spent my adult life navigating the complex relationship between my Jewish identity, my American values, and my support for Israel. Like many in my generation, I was raised on stories of the Holocaust and the miracle of Israel’s rebirth, schooled in the necessity of Jewish self-determination, and taught that Israel represented the best of Jewish values made manifest in a modern democratic state. That faith is now shattered.
The war in Gaza has revealed something deeply disturbing about what Israel has become under Benjamin Netanyahu’s leadership – and about what American Jews like myself have enabled through decades of reflexive support and willful blindness. What we are witnessing is not just a military campaign gone awry, but the triumph of a destructive mythology, the Masada Complex: a siege mentality that glorifies victimhood, sanctifies self-destruction as heroism, and transforms every challenge into an existential battle that justifies any response, no matter how morally bankrupt.
This complex draws its power from the ancient story of Jewish rebels who chose death over surrender to Rome atop a clifftop fortress. But what was once a tragic tale of desperation has become, in Netanyahu’s hands, a strategic doctrine that frames Israel’s relationship with the world in terms of permanent siege and inevitable betrayal. Every criticism becomes antisemitism, every compromise becomes surrender, and every moral consideration becomes a luxury Israel cannot afford.
The results of this worldview are now visible for all to see in Gaza. What began as a legitimate response to Hamas’s horrific October 7 attacks has devolved into something that violates every ethical principle Judaism holds sacred. Entire neighborhoods have been erased. Families starve while food trucks wait at borders. Children die from preventable diseases as food and medicine are weaponized. The images that flash across our screens each day represent not just a humanitarian catastrophe, but a moral collapse that should horrify anyone who claims to speak in the name of Jewish values.
Incoherence
As someone who spent years in government analyzing threats and responses, I am struck by the strategic incoherence of Israel’s approach. If Israel controls most of Gaza, why has humanitarian aid been systematically blocked? If the goal is eliminating Hamas, why have Israeli actions created conditions that virtually guarantee the group’s regeneration? If security is the objective, how do starving children and destroyed hospitals serve that end?
The answer lies not in rational strategy, but in the psychological dynamics of the Masada Complex. Netanyahu’s government has embraced a logic of collective punishment that treats Palestinian suffering not as a tragic byproduct of necessary action, but as a strategic asset, a way of demonstrating Israeli resolve and satisfying a domestic population traumatized by October 7 and conditioned to view Palestinian pain as proof of Jewish strength.
This represents a profound betrayal of Jewish ethical teachings. We are commanded to be “rachamim b’nei rachamim” – compassionate children of compassionate ancestors. We are taught that saving a single life is like saving the entire world. We learn from our sages that “the way of the Torah is to feed even our enemies when they are hungry.” And the lessons of the Holocaust, of “never again,” must be placed in the broader teaching of Rabbi Hillel, and his second famous question: “If I am only for myself, who am I?” Yet Israel today systematically violates each of these principles, committing war crimes and violating international humanitarian law, while claiming to act in our names.
The corruption extends beyond Gaza to the very foundations of Israeli democracy. Netanyahu’s coalition includes ministers who openly call for ethnic cleansing, rabbis who bless the killing of civilians, and settlers who terrorize Palestinians while claiming divine mandate.
Blindness
American Jews bear particular responsibility for this catastrophe. For decades, we have provided support for Israeli policies while insulating ourselves from their consequences. We have celebrated Israel’s achievements while ignoring its failures, donated billions to sustain settlements, while claiming ignorance of their purpose, and reflexively defended actions we would condemn if taken by any other nation.
This complicity has been enabled by our own version of the Masada Complex, a mythology that frames any criticism of Israel as disloyalty to Jewish survival, any expression of Palestinian humanity as betrayal of Jewish pain, and any call for justice as an invitation to another Holocaust. We have allowed trauma to become doctrine, turning the lessons of Jewish suffering into justification for Palestinian oppression.
The cost of this moral blindness extends beyond Israel and Palestine. At home, American Jews find ourselves increasingly isolated – viewed by progressive allies as complicit in war crimes and by conservatives as useful idiots for their ethno-nationalist fantasies we neither share nor understand. Our synagogues debate loyalty tests, our families fracture over dinner table arguments, and our young people abandon institutions they see as morally compromised.
Meanwhile, real antisemitism flourishes on both left and right, feeding off the very polarization our uncritical support for Israel has helped create. When Jewish identity becomes synonymous with defending the indefensible, we make ourselves vulnerable to those who would exploit Jewish suffering for their own political ends while doing nothing to protect Jewish security.
The path forward requires moral courage American Jews have not yet shown. We must acknowledge that the occupation has corrupted Israeli democracy and betrayed Zionist ideals. We must demand that American aid come with conditions that protect both Israeli and Palestinian civilians. We must support voices within Israel calling for justice rather than those demanding vengeance.
Most fundamentally, we must reject the Masada Complex in all its forms. Jewish survival does not require Palestinian suffering. Jewish security cannot be built on permanent oppression. Jewish values cannot be defended through their systematic violation.
The choice before us is stark: We can continue down the path of moral complicity, watching Israel destroy itself and take American Jewish credibility with it, or we can reclaim the prophetic tradition that demands justice even when – especially when – it challenges power.
Israel stands at the edge of an abyss, and American Jews stand with it. The question is whether we will finally find the courage to pull back from the brink, or whether we will follow the logic of Masada to its inevitable conclusion: a murder-suicide pact in the name of hollow victory.
