For some time, I have argued that the cognitive war being waged against Israel must be recognized for what it has become: A national-security threat.
I have written about it, as well as invited Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman Boaz Bismuth to discuss its importance on TV with me. If the campaign to delegitimize Israel, isolate it from allies, influence American politics, radicalize university campuses, and endanger Jews worldwide constitutes what many now call an “eighth front,” then cognitive warfare cannot remain a secondary priority.
It is a national security issue.
But accepting this proposition has consequences. Actions capable of materially damaging Israel on the cognitive battlefield must be judged as national-security events, even when the person taking them believes passionately that he is defending Israel.
That is why what troubles me most about MK Zvi Sukkot’s recent sledgehammer episode is no longer Sukkot himself.
It is the Israeli government’s response.
How Israel fails to take cognitive warfare seriously
Sukkot entered Kafr Madama near Nablus under IDF protection and participated in demolishing a Palestinian monument that appeared to honor terrorists.
The IDF said soldiers had been diverted from operational duties for what they understood to be an authorized tour and that Sukkot then acted outside the approved framework and “without authority.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the incident. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich reportedly reprimanded Sukkot and told him not to do it again.
Not to do it again?
If cognitive warfare really is national security, is that remotely sufficient?
Consider an admittedly uncomfortable comparison: Peace activist Mordechai Vanunu.
Vanunu believed Israel’s nuclear policy was morally wrong. He decided that his own judgment entitled him to disclose extraordinarily sensitive information about Israel’s nuclear program.
Israel concluded that no individual had the right to make such a national-security decision for the country. He was convicted of grave offenses and sentenced to 18 years in prison, 11 of them in solitary confinement.
Obviously, Sukkot did not reveal nuclear secrets. He did not commit espionage, and I am not suggesting his statutory offenses are equivalent to Vanunu’s.
But the distinction may be more one of degree than kind than we are comfortable acknowledging.
Imagine an IDF soldier selling several M4 rifles to an enemy. Another person sells Iran plans for upgrades to an Israeli missile defense system. The consequences are radically different, and therefore the punishments should be radically different.
But the underlying violation belongs to the same family: an individual has taken something entrusted to him within Israel’s national-security establishment and assigned to himself the right to decide how it will be used.
That principle must apply to cognitive security as well.
Sukkot effectively decided this, given that he believed the monument glorified terrorism. This argument may have merit; he believed he was entitled to decide when, where, and how Israeli power would be exercised to destroy it.
He was not.
That decision belongs to the State of Israel.
No Israeli civilian gets to walk into an air force command center and select tomorrow’s targets in Iran, Lebanon, or Gaza because he believes a particular target must be destroyed.
Why, then, should any Israeli citizen, particularly an elected official, believe he has the authority to select targets on the cognitive battlefield when his actions can affect Israel’s relationship with Washington, its diplomatic standing, Jewish communities abroad, and its global legitimization?
And this is not confined to one political camp.
In May 2025, Yair Golan, the head of the Democrats Party, declared that Israel was on the way to becoming a pariah state and said that “a sane country does not fight against civilians, does not kill children as a hobby.”
Whatever his intention, language of that kind from a senior Israeli political figure and former general in the IDF is immediately weaponized by those seeking to portray Israel as criminal and immoral.
Yet Golan is still being rewarded by the Israeli public with support and remains a major political actor with a potential 11 seats in the upcoming elections.
IN APRIL, an Israeli soldier was photographed striking a statue of Jesus with a sledgehammer in a Christian village in southern Lebanon. The image generated international outrage. The IDF investigated. Two soldiers were removed from combat duty and sentenced to 30 days in military detention.
Why?
Because one soldier’s hammer did not merely strike a statue.
It struck Israel’s strategic interests, but others who have struck Israel’s strategic interests go unpunished and even rewarded. This means the system is failing.
The same principle applies when senior politicians create unnecessary friction with Israel’s most important ally.
US Vice President JD Vance publicly rebuked Israeli ministers after they clashed over American diplomatic policy, asking in frustration: “What is your exact proposal? You’re a country of 9 million people. You can’t just kill your way out of solving every single national security problem that you have.”
A potential future president of the United States felt compelled to publicly admonish senior Israeli leaders. If the management of that relationship is not a national-security issue, what is?
The question is simple: Who has the right to jeopardize a strategic relationship, at a strategically sensitive moment, in pursuit of his own political objective?
That question is urgent now.
Israel is approaching elections. America is approaching midterm elections. Iran remains a critical strategic challenge, and Turkey is fast approaching as our next serious challenge. The relationship with Washington remains indispensable. Global antisemitism has increased dramatically. At the same time, Israel is investing unprecedented resources in public diplomacy and communications.
Yet Israelis continue to behave as though cognitive damage can be created by politicians today and repaired by hasbara (public diplomacy) professionals tomorrow.
It cannot.
A photograph travels around the world before an Israeli spokesperson has finished writing the first sentence of an explanation.
Sukkot swinging a sledgehammer beside Israeli soldiers is instantly internalized. Explaining that the monument apparently glorified terrorists, that Palestinian incitement is real, that Sukkot had previously requested its removal, and that the IDF did not authorize what happened takes several paragraphs.
Our enemies get the photograph.
We get the explanation.
That is the asymmetry of cognitive warfare.
Which brings me back to what I find more disturbing than Sukkot’s behavior: The absence of consequences commensurate with the national-security principle supposedly at stake.
A condemnation is not deterrence.
A reprimand is not doctrine.
“Don’t do it again” tells the next politician that the potential reward – headlines, social-media engagement, and support from a political base – may exceed the cost.
That is an extraordinarily dangerous message for a country fighting a cognitive war.
This government understandably sees an election only weeks away. Coalition politics matter. Political constituencies matter. But national-security leadership requires looking beyond the next election.
The government’s responsibility is not merely to survive October 27. It is to establish rules of behavior that protect Israel on October 28 and for years afterward.
If Israel wants the world, the IDF and its own citizens to take cognitive warfare seriously, then deliberately creating unauthorized strategic liabilities must carry meaningful consequences.
This principle cannot depend on whether the unauthorized national-security decision came from the Left or the Right, from a nuclear technician or an MK, or from someone leaking secrets, wielding a sledgehammer, or a former IDF general making a statement that hands Israel’s enemies a propaganda victory.
No individual gets to privatize Israel’s national security.
The elected government determines Israel’s military strategy. It determines which risks to take with Iran. It manages our relationship with the US. And it must ultimately determine how Israel conducts itself on the cognitive battlefield.
Once we call that battlefield a national-security front, we must have the courage to treat breaches of it accordingly.
And the next person who decides that personal conviction entitles him to risk Israel’s strategic interests may inflict damage that no amount of hasbara money can undo.