Don't drink the Sparta Kool-Aid. Israel is hurting from Iran war

By the sixth week of the US-Israel war on Iran, Israeli society is beginning to feel the consequences of the war, yet it is drawing the wrong conclusions and increasingly viewing escalation as the only solution.

While the world watches with concern the aggressive and uncalculated rhetoric of the American administration in the current war, alongside a growing crisis in global energy markets, from Israel’s perspective, Trump appears to be on the right path.

In a press conference with foreign media, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu even proposed a workaround for the Strait of Hormuz via an oil pipeline that would run from Saudi Arabia to Israel and then to Europe.

This proposal demonstrates how Israel perceives the world. Besides the fact that the closure of the Strait of Hormuz is a global issue—not just a European one, and one that would primarily impact East Asian and African nations—there is an inherent absurdity in the Israeli approach: proposing a solution that benefits itself to a problem it has helped create for Gulf states.

At the same time, Netanyahu’s readiness to drag the US into a prolonged war and a global crisis stems from the widespread support for the war within Israeli society, including opposition leaders’ backing and the almost complete lack of media criticism of the war’s impact on the public itself.

While opposition leaders are busy advocating to foreign media about the justness of the war, Israeli media outlets focus on segments about types of Israeli and American weapons, or which type of Iranian missile struck Dimona or Arad—while neither the opposition nor the media ask the most basic question: what is the objective of this war?

This is especially striking given that only ten months ago, following the so-called 12-day war, Netanyahu and Trump declared that they had successfully dismantled Iran’s nuclear programme and ballistic missile capabilities. Now, the same aims are reiterated, yet no one questions the feasibility of these objectives or considers diplomatic and political alternatives to resolving conflicts.

In reality, Israeli society is paying a heavy price. Since the onset of the war, the Israeli economy has been nearly paralysed except for what is deemed essential. Millions of Israelis are not working, the education system operates via Zoom—forcing parents to stay home—and every night, millions of Israelis run to shelters.

Elderly people and those with disabilities are often forced to gamble with their lives, unable to reach protected spaces in time. For example, an elderly couple in Ramat Gan was killed after a missile struck their home while they were on their way to a safe room.

Even after the heavy strikes in Dimona and Arad on the night between Saturday and Sunday, hundreds of families found themselves homeless after missiles hit their homes, and dozens were injured. Yet media coverage continues to focus on whether the missile was a standard ballistic one or carried a special warhead.

The absence of political and media criticism of the war’s objectives reflects a kind of “Spartan” political consciousness within Israeli society—one that assumes every problem can be solved by force, without any objective or substantive discussion of the war’s actual goals.

The Israeli government itself keeps shifting the war’s objectives from one press conference to another: initially speaking about regime change, then about eliminating ballistic missile production capabilities, and now about reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

Amid all this absurdity, Israeli commentators speak about “liberating the Iranian people” from the Ayatollah regime, while Israel maintains close ties with authoritarian regimes worldwide. Not to mention that after two and a half years of war in Gaza, it has failed to topple Hamas or disarm Hezbollah in Lebanon.

At the same time, Netanyahu continues to fight what may be the most important battle of his life—in Israeli courts. Despite many of his rivals prematurely eulogising his political career when corruption charges were filed against him in 2019, he continues to fight and incite against the judicial system.

He has now even managed to recruit Trump to his cause, exerting pressure on President Herzog to grant him a pardon (despite the fact that a conviction is required for a pardon). Meanwhile, Netanyahu is leveraging the wartime consensus to prepare the ground for elections expected by the end of this year.

Within Israeli society, the war also highlights how the settler right is leveraging its power to further entrench control over resources, budgets, and policymaking. While Israelis in the northern border regions—traditionally aligned with the right—complain about a lack of resources to address damage from earlier clashes with Hezbollah, the state budget being advanced benefits settler-oriented ministries, directing more resources into settlement expansion and what seems to be a gradual annexation of Area C.

It remains unclear what the outcome of the current war with Iran will be. However, the absence of a critical Israeli discourse and the direction Israel is heading reflect a vision of the most extreme factions within Israeli society—those who believe in territorial expansion, endless wars, and the use of large-scale destruction to achieve their goals.

Although the outcome of the war is uncertain, countries in the region must pay close attention to the Israeli consensus around war and not assume that the problem lies solely with Netanyahu or his government. Rather, this is the result of a long-term process to which Arab states have also contributed—particularly through normalisation agreements with Israel without resolving the Palestinian issue.

Israelis have come to believe that the Arab world only understands force, and that with enough force and destruction, normalisation can be imposed across the Arab and Muslim world—even after the devastation of Gaza, Beirut, and Tehran.

Abed Abou Shhadeh is a political activist based in Jaffa who served as a city council representative of the Palestinian community in Jaffa-Tel Aviv from 2018 to 2024 and holds a Master of Arts degree in Political Science. Shhadeh is also the Al-Midan podcast host at Arab48.

Follow Abde on Instagram: @abed_a88

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Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.