Failure on Four Fronts
Yossi Alpher — June 1, 2026
Views and positions expressed here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily represent NJN's views and policy positions.
Q. What is worse: low-tech attack drones hitting the north with impunity, no Haredi conscription on the home front, the UN placing Israel on a sexual violence blacklist – or the prospect of renewed Iranian missile attacks?
A. The very fact that we can pose this question says something profound about Israel’s declining fortunes on all fronts. First, the ‘forever war’ continues – currently on the Lebanon front, perhaps soon (again) with Iran and/or Hamas. Second, internal decay is getting worse, spearheaded by the spreading influence of Haredi cults and right-wing messianists. And third, the international community has had enough of Israel’s behavior.
In a normal country, this would be understood as a national emergency. But not in Israel, where at the heart of a national calamity is a government that refuses to examine its mistakes of October 7, 2023 in order to formulate new strategies for the country. Instead, it falls back on three failed strategies that express the public’s understandable humiliation and fury but offer little hope: 1) grab more enemy territory, 2) destroy more enemy dwellings, and 3) assassinate more enemy leaders, whether Iranian, Hezbollah, or Hamas. Look where that has gotten us.
Turning to the Iran front, US President Trump is apparently about to do a deal with Tehran that essentially fulfills none of Israel’s vaunted war aims regarding both Iran and Lebanon: no dismantling of Iran’s military nuclear program, no cessation of Iran’s support for proxies like Hezbollah, and of course no collapse of the ayatollahs’ regime.
There is a difference between the Iran threat, an existential security concern for Israel, and the issues mentioned in our introductory question above, which reflect a lower level of threat. The drones, the Haredim, and the UN blacklist do not affect the everyday lives of most Israelis most of the time. In contrast, Iranian and Hezbollah (and earlier, Hamas) missiles continue to this day to instill fear throughout much of the country, even as people do their best to lead ‘ordinary’ lives.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Netanyahu has ceded to Trump veto power over Israel’s military initiatives. Accordingly, add to the list Israel’s loss of even tactical independence vis-à-vis its Islamist enemies. And the man in the White House making tactical decisions for Israel (cross the Litani River in Lebanon? Punish Hamas for not disarming? Kill another Iranian leader?) happens to be the most incoherent decision-maker in US presidential history. Netanyahu’s buddy…
Q. Let’s break down those pressing but less existentially threatening issues. Start with Hezbollah. It is attacking Israelis with drones guided by fiber-optic systems that Israel has no answer for other than fishing nets. The Israel-Lebanon ceasefire, now over 45 days long, seems meaningless because no one has ceased fire. Israel’s north is in a state of genuine crisis and the government seems powerless…
A. This is Israel’s only current ‘hot’ war, and it is making northern Israel unlivable, recalling the devastation of the Gaza Periphery less than three years ago. There are so many uncontrollable moving parts in the Lebanon-Israel-Hezbollah-Iran complex that even a temporary solution is elusive:
Israel and Lebanon are negotiating under US auspices in Washington. But Hezbollah is not at the table, opposes the negotiations, and will not comply with whatever is agreed.
The US, besides hosting these talks, is pressing Israel not to escalate its response to Hezbollah attacks, which accordingly is limited.
US-Iran negotiations, facilitated mainly by Pakistan and Qatar (with Islamist friends like these…), ostensibly comprise discussion of conditions for an Israel-Lebanon-Hezbollah ceasefire that will leave Hezbollah fully armed and threatening as a proxy of Iran.
Israel currently has no viable strategy for eliminating Hezbollah, an Islamist army cum political party. Hezbollah openly threatens Israel’s existence. And it endangers Lebanon as a quasi-democratic-confessional polity that is basically too weak to function.
Israel as yet has no tactical answer even to Hezbollah’s fiber-optic-guided attack drones.
Q. Okay, following this exercise in frustration, what about the Haredi draft dodgers?
A. Note that this, like the Hezbollah threat, is a constant issue in the annals of recent decades that has only become acute during wartime. Israel’s ultra-Orthodox or Haredi community, now well over ten percent of the population, has always cited Torah study as an excuse for avoiding military service. The rest of Israel has always preferred not to pick a fight with the Haredim over this issue. Some secular and traditional Jews even profess to recognize the ‘strategic’ importance of Torah study for Israel’s long-term well-being. Yet many draft-exempt Haredi youth avoid both military service and Torah study.
Since October 7, the IDF, fighting on multiple fronts over an extended period of time, has been running out of manpower. Reservists serving hundreds of days a year at the expense of family and fortune have run out of patience. The IDF’s ‘missing’ Haredi divisions have become a critical issue in Israeli life. All the while, Haredi political parties – many boasting the characteristics of a cult – parlay their political support for Netanyahu’s coalition in exchange for generous budgetary allotments provided without corresponding demands for military service or even the teaching of basic secular skills like math and English.
The Haredim will behave the same way even with a ‘liberal’ coalition if Netanyahu loses the coming elections, but the victorious liberal bloc needs them for a Knesset majority. This will remain a glaring issue of societal rot – yet another ‘front’ of weakness for a beleaguered Israel.
Q. The UN’s sexual violence blacklist?
A. And the allegations of genocide and mass killings in Gaza? There were war crime allegations in previous wars, too – I remember as far back as 1967 when the allegations were simply swept under the rug – but nothing like what we have seen since October 7, 2023. Wars breed war crimes.
I am unable to address the accuracy of these latest allegations. I have little doubt that they reflect both real events and invented events. October 7 unleashed extreme emotions of an unprecedented nature among Israelis – and among their enemies.
We have never faced a wave of allegations like these, and it is that fact, rather than their alleged accuracy, that must focus our attention. In an orderly world, one we can only aspire to sometime in the future when there is peace on our borders and a civilized, rational government in Jerusalem, Israel must make room not only to investigate what went wrong on October 7, but also what this did to Israel and Israelis, and especially the security forces.
Q. Are renewed Iranian missile attacks worse than all this? Worse than Hezbollah in the north, the Haredi stain on society, and the latest war-crimes allegation?
A. Maybe not worse, but certainly more acute in terms of urgency and existential threat. And far more bizarre in their threat to Israeli national integrity, because as we follow Trump’s indirect talks with the Iranians we are aware that, at least for the moment, our fate vis-à-vis Iran is not in our hands. By partnering with the irrational and thoroughly unpredictable Trump, Netanyahu has placed our fate in Washington’s hands.
That’s why the leaked descriptions of the Mossad’s all-too-imaginative scheme to topple and replace the Islamic Republic regime in coordination with the US-Israel air attack two months ago seem so comical. Not only do we kill Ahmadinejad’s guards and crown him Iran’s new leader under a Kurdish occupation force, but we do it in partnership with an American leader who cannot distinguish between Caracas and Tehran. You cannot invent these things; reality is too bizarre.
Q. Is there a bottom line in this tragic narrative?
A. I would cite two. First, Nachum Barnea in Yediot Aharonot: “In the absence of an alternative plan, we are sinking into a never-ending war on three and maybe four fronts: occupying territory that is not ours, with soldiers we no longer have, in bloody fighting against enemies we do not know how to deter, and without providing genuine security to our citizens. Israel is under the total authority of a capricious, hollow, desperate American president.
“Trump understands who is working for him: ‘Bibi’s a good guy,’ he recently promised. ‘He’ll do what I tell him.’”
That brings to mind one of Moshe Dayan’s immortal characterizations (of whom? no one can recall) many years ago, even before the era of Netanyahu and Trump: “A good guy in the bad sense of the word.”
Q. But where does this lead?
A. Yeshayahu Leibovitz, Israel’s only modern-day prophet, said shortly after June 1967: “The national pride and the euphoria following the Six-Day War are temporary. They will transport us from proud and rising nationalism to extreme messianic nationalism. The third stage will be bestiality, and the final stage, the end of Zionism.”
If you choose to believe this prophecy, then which stage are we in? And can we stop this dynamic?
Yossi Alpher is an independent security analyst. He is the former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, a former senior official with the Mossad, and a former IDF intelligence officer.
Photo by U.S. Embassy Tel Aviv, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
