What if Israel is winning the military battles but losing the war that ultimately determines its survival?
Since October 7, 2023, Israel has demonstrated extraordinary military capabilities. Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran have suffered significant blows.
Yet the fundamental question remains: Has military superiority brought Israel closer to enduring security? This may be one of the most important questions for Israelis in the upcoming elections.
Or, perhaps the question should be: Are we fighting the wrong war? It is fascinating that this question is not a significant part of the political debates leading up to the decision regarding who will lead the country.
The early Zionist movement understood something that modern Israel may have forgotten.
Nation-building was a generational undertaking. Theodor Herzl, Chaim Weizmann, and David Ben-Gurion invested decades in diplomacy, institution-building, immigration, and international legitimacy.
They understood that establishing a Jewish state required more than winning individual confrontations.
Today, Israel often approaches existential threats through military operations measured in days, weeks, or months.
Our ideological adversaries are operating on an entirely different clock.
Consider the historical memory of the Crusades. European armies conquered Jerusalem, but ultimately lost their foothold in the region.
The lesson for movements committed to a generational struggle is straightforward: survive today, regroup tomorrow, and eventually your enemy will lose his will to fight and leave.
Iran’s revolutionary leadership has demonstrated comparable strategic patience, investing decades in regional proxies, ideological networks, and the pursuit of influence.
Israel cannot assume that its adversaries define victory, defeat, or acceptable sacrifice as we do.
That brings us to the first strategic trap: deterrence.
Traditional deterrence assumes that sufficiently painful consequences will discourage aggression.
But what happens when an adversary embraces martyrdom, accepts devastating casualties, or considers organizational survival itself a victory?
Yahya Sinwar understood that October 7 would provoke an overwhelming Israeli response. Yet the resulting devastation did not necessarily negate the broader political and ideological objectives of his attack.
Israel must then employ increasingly substantial military force to defeat an adversary willing to absorb extraordinary losses.
Now introduce the second trap.
When terrorist organizations embed military operations within civilian environments, Israel faces difficult operational choices. Protecting civilians, as international law requires, by definition extends military campaigns.
Civilian casualties and destruction, whatever the military circumstances, produce images that travel around the world within seconds.
A Hamas command center may be the military objective. A destroyed building becomes the television image.
CNN, Al Jazeera, TikTok, Telegram, and countless smartphones transmit those images into millions of homes.
Military time and political time are no longer synchronized.
The longer Israel fights, the more international pressure can accumulate. The more force required, the greater the potential reputational consequences. And the more international legitimacy erodes, the less strategic freedom Israel retains.
Israel can win the battlefield while losing the conditions necessary to achieve and sustain victory.
But there is another battlefield, one extending thousands of miles beyond Israel’s borders.
The Jewish Diaspora
Jewish communities in New York, London, Paris, and elsewhere are increasingly drawn into conflicts they neither initiated nor controlled.
As the war continues, images of Palestinian suffering circulate globally, accompanied by accusations against Israel that can spill over into hostility toward Jews generally.
And what is their response?
Too often, they follow Israel’s traditional hasbara (public diplomacy) playbook.
More facts. More explanations. More historical context. More attempts to correct the latest accusation.
Necessary? Absolutely.
Sufficient? Clearly not.
Because while we are explaining yesterday’s military operation, our opponents are organizing tomorrow’s political campaign.
An October 10 Fox News investigation by Asra Nomani exposed the organizational machinery behind a coordinated international anti-Israel mobilization starting this past October 8 to the 15.
The investigation identified 179 participating organizations and 322 scheduled events across three days. Organizers had prepared graphics in seven languages, common slogans, media guidance, and political demands.
The campaign extended beyond street demonstrations into universities, workplaces, corporations, and government institutions, calling for sanctions and arms embargoes.
This was not simply spontaneous outrage. It was evidence of a prepared, interoperable international network capable of transforming individual demonstrations into coordinated political pressure, just as it did on October 8, before Israel even responded to the attacks of October 7.
Our enemies have spent years building what we now know is an extremely effective ecosystem.
Not every participant shares the same ideology. But organizations with different political identities can cooperate around common objectives without surrendering their independence.
That is the power of an ecosystem. And it exposes another weakness in our approach.
We are fighting not merely an information war, but a competition for meaning.
Psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Dr. Viktor Frankl described the existential vacuum: the emptiness people feel when they struggle to find meaning and purpose.
He suggested that our modern society, with all its technological advances, was driving this feeling of emptiness among millions.
Ideological movements can fill that vacuum by offering something more compelling than information: identity, belonging, community, moral purpose, and agency.
Their message effectively becomes: Here is who you are. Here is what is wrong. Here is who is responsible. Here are your people. And here is what you can do.
This is why a “Free Palestine” chant at a huge Ed Sheeran concert so quickly engaged tens of thousands both at the concert and via their social media platforms.
Traditional hasbara too often responds: Here are the facts you should know.
You cannot defeat a meaning system merely by correcting its facts. This is where Israel’s strategic doctrine requires fundamental reconsideration.
Military superiority remains indispensable. But Israel and global Jewry also need a permanent, decentralized, interoperable global ecosystem supporting Jewish safety, Israel’s legitimacy, and long-term societal resilience.
Further strengthened by those who realize that the anti-Israel ecosystem is focusing on Israel first, with the West next in line.
Not another government-controlled public relations campaign.
Not another emergency fundraising appeal following an antisemitic incident.
And certainly not an organization demanding that everyone agree with their view of the world.
Instead, an international network of independent Jewish and non-Jewish institutions, educators, influencers, researchers, philanthropists, cultural leaders, public-private initiatives, and civil society organizations connected by a shared agreement on fundamental principles.
The Jewish people’s historical continuity matters. Jewish safety matters. Israel’s legitimate existence matters. Human dignity and coexistence matter.
Participants can disagree on politics while sharing those foundations.
Such an ecosystem must operate continuously, building relationships, credibility, community, and meaningful participation before the next crisis erupts.
It must strengthen the Diaspora rather than leave Jewish communities perpetually defending military decisions made thousands of miles away.
And it must become an additional dimension of deterrence.
An adversary contemplating aggression should encounter not merely a formidable Israeli military, but a society and international network capable of enduring political pressure, resisting isolation, and sustaining legitimate security interests.
The Zionist movement understood the importance of building the future before the decisive moment arrived.
We must rediscover that strategic patience.
Israel cannot fight a generational ideological conflict exclusively through military campaigns measured in months.
Our military protects our ability to survive in the short term. Our ecosystem must help protect our ability to endure for the long term.
The writer is a global strategist and a strategic adviser at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs. Follow him on X: @jeffkahn2020