{"id":3922,"date":"2025-06-19T16:37:00","date_gmt":"2025-06-19T16:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.developeternal.com\/?p=3922"},"modified":"2025-06-20T17:26:42","modified_gmt":"2025-06-20T17:26:42","slug":"the-end-of-israeli-exceptionalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.developeternal.com\/index.php\/2025\/06\/19\/the-end-of-israeli-exceptionalism\/","title":{"rendered":"The end of Israeli exceptionalism"},"content":{"rendered":"

The West\u2019s proxy state is burning out<\/strong><\/p>\n

Israel has now been at war with its neighbours for nearly two years. The latest round began with the Hamas-led terrorist attack on 7 October 2023. In response, West Jerusalem launched an aggressive military campaign that has since expanded to touch nearly every country in the region. The escalation has placed the Jewish state at the centre of Middle Eastern geopolitics once again \u2013 this time, dragging in Iran, a state that had long avoided direct confrontation through strategic caution. Now, even Tehran finds itself under fire, with US backing making the stakes far higher. Iran is left facing a grim choice between the bad and the very bad.<\/p>\n

But this isn\u2019t about Iran. It\u2019s about Israel, a country that has for decades functioned as the West\u2019s forward operating base in the Middle East. Since the mid-20th century, Israel has enjoyed a privileged position \u2013 a bridgehead of Western power in a volatile region, while also deeply enmeshed in its politics and rivalries. Its success has rested on two pillars: the unshakable support of the United States, and its own internal capacity for innovation, military strength, and a unique social model.<\/p>\n

That second pillar, however, has weakened. The clearest sign is in demographics: Israel is facing rising negative migration. In 2024, some 82,700 people are expected to leave the country \u2013 a 50% increase from the year before. It is not the unskilled or disengaged who are leaving, but the young and educated. The people who are needed to sustain a modern state are choosing to go.<\/p>\n

Of course, Israel\u2019s troubles are not unique. Like many developed nations, it is struggling under the weight of a decaying neoliberal economic system. The pandemic made things worse, exposing the fragility of the model and encouraging a shift toward a \u201cmobilisation\u201d<\/em> mode of governance \u2013 rule through emergency and constant readiness for conflict. In the West more broadly, war and geopolitical confrontation have become a way to delay or disguise necessary systemic reform.<\/p>\n

\n Read more<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\n \"FILE
Trump says \u2018chill,\u2019 Bibi goes full thrill. So, who\u2019s in charge of the Middle East?<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In this regard, Israel has become a laboratory for the West\u2019s emerging logic: permanent war as a method of governance. In the autumn of 2023, the Israeli establishment embraced this fully. Conflict became not just a tactic, but a way of life. Its leaders no longer see peace as the goal, but war as the mechanism for national unity and political survival. In this, Israel mirrors the broader Western embrace of conflict with Russia and China \u2013 proxy wars chosen when actual reform is off the table.<\/p>\n

At the global level, nuclear deterrence limits how far such wars can go. But in the Middle East, where Israel wages war directly, those constraints don\u2019t apply. This allows war to serve as a pressure valve \u2013 politically useful, even as it becomes self-destructive.<\/p>\n

But even war has limits. It cannot indefinitely mask economic decay or social unrest. And while conflict tends to cement elite power \u2013 even among incompetent leadership \u2013 it also drains national strength. Israel is now consuming more and more of its own resources to sustain this permanent state of war. Its social cohesion is fraying. Its once-vaunted model of technological and civic progress is no longer functioning as it did.<\/p>\n

Some in West Jerusalem may dream of \u201creformatting\u201d<\/em> the Middle East \u2013 reshaping the region through force and fear. If successful, it could buy Israel a few decades of security and breathing room. But such outcomes are far from guaranteed. Crushing a neighbour doesn\u2019t eliminate the threat; it merely brings distant enemies closer. Most importantly, Israel\u2019s deepest problems aren\u2019t external \u2013 they are internal, rooted in its political and social structures.<\/p>\n

War can define a state, yes. But such states \u2013 Sparta, North Korea \u2013 tend to be \u201cpeculiar,\u201d<\/em> to put it mildly. And even for them, war cannot substitute for real diplomacy, policy, or growth.<\/p>\n

So has Israel, always at war, truly developed? Or has it simply been sustained \u2013 politically, militarily, and financially \u2013 as a subdivision of American foreign policy? If it continues down this path of permanent conflict and right-wing nationalism, it risks losing even that status. It may cease to be the West\u2019s bridge in the Middle East \u2013 and become something else entirely: a militarised garrison state, isolated, brittle, and increasingly alone.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

This article was first published by the\u00a0magazine Profile<\/a><\/em>\u00a0and was translated and edited by the RT team<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The West\u2019s proxy state is burning out Israel has now been at war with its neighbours for nearly two years. The latest round began with the Hamas-led terrorist attack on 7 October 2023. In response, West Jerusalem launched an aggressive military campaign that has since expanded to touch nearly every country in the region. The…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3910,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.developeternal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.developeternal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.developeternal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.developeternal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.developeternal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3922"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.developeternal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3922\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3924,"href":"http:\/\/www.developeternal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3922\/revisions\/3924"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.developeternal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.developeternal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.developeternal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.developeternal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}