In the past few months, we have witnessed some seismic changes in the Middle East: The concept of Syria collapsed, and with it comes a new threat to the countries created in the last 100 years. At the same time, Iranian influence in the Middle East is significantly weakened, while Turkey is rising as a significant regional power.
In the coming months, we should expect some more big changes in the global arena as US President-elect Donald Trump takes office. He already announced his intentions to acquire Greenland and possibly the Panama Canal, and he even raised the idea of ending Canada’s independence and turning it into a US state.
When seismic changes occur, legacy frameworks of the old circumstances become obsolete.
One can remember the debates in the Israeli media among pundits and around the negotiator tables: Should Assad control the water of the Sea of Galilee, or should his forces be stationed a few meters from the water in exchange for peace?
Today, Assad is out of Syria, the Golan Heights are recognized as part of Israel, and, as the popular Israeli song “My Daughter, Are You Crying or Laughing?” goes, “there are still guns on the [Hermon] mountain, my daughter, but they are threatening Damascus.” Indeed, if anybody engages in a debate today about whether Assad should be on the water on the Sea of Galilee or just near it, he would be mocked.
One can also remember the debates in the early 21st century about the two-state solution and “land swaps” – the idea that in exchange for Israel keeping “settlement blocs” in Judea and Samaria, Israel will give the Palestinians areas adjacent to Gaza, effectively extending the Gaza Strip.
One can only imagine what Oct. 7 would have looked like if that had been the case.
Indeed, in the new world realities, not only should the idea of expanding Gaza be ridiculed, but so should the idea of the two-state solution – an obsolete framework, irrelevant in today’s circumstances.
Seismic changes occur not only to geopolitical circumstances but also when it comes to ideological threats.
For much of the 2,000 years of exile, the threat to Judaism came from religious-based European hatred. When a new form of opposition to Judaism emerged in the late 19th century, called antisemitism, many dismissed it as merely a political view. In fact, antisemites did not level theological or religious accusations against the Jews, nor did they accuse Jews of using the blood of Christian children to perform religious rituals – they merely suggested that Jews were “occupying Europe” and corrupting humanity. (Later, the term “antisemitism” was retrofitted to include all forms of Jew-hatred – contemporary and historical.)
European attitudes toward Jews were going through a dramatic shift at the turn of the 20th century, yet Jews and their allies were not sufficiently alarmed, since they were captured in their old conceptions – those that were relevant in prior centuries of European opposition.
Similar dynamic today
A similar dynamic exists today. As discussed in this column, we are in the midst of a fast-moving multi-arena attempt to negate the idea of the Jewish state, and through it, to negate the idea of Judaism. In the last week alone, attempts have been made in a number of European countries to arrest Jews (again) and charge them with war crimes – part of an effort to demoralize and humiliate the Jewish nation (the more it changes, the more it stays the same).
And yet, this imminent threat to the survival of Judaism is not getting sufficient attention. Much of the focus remains on countering traditional antisemitism.
Whether it is geopolitical or ideological, seismic changes require us to dump old frameworks and adopt new strategies. However, it is hard for the collective human consciousnesses, and big systems, to internalize big changes as they occur. There is a natural tendency to operate within the confines of old, obsolete frameworks and conceptions.
This is the case today, this was the case at the turn of the 20th century, and this has been the case since the beginning of time. ■
The writer is the author of a new book, The Assault on Judaism: The Existential Threat Is Coming from the West. He is chairman of the Judaism 3.0 Think Tank and author of Judaism 3.0: Judaism’s Transformation to Zionism (Judaism-Zionism.com). His geopolitical articles are featured on EuropeAndJerusalem.com.