Every country has its watershed years, years that have far-reaching consequences and shape the nation’s trajectory.
Israel has had several. The year of its founding, 1948, was obviously one. The year of the Six Day War, 1967, was another, as the lightning victory in that war and the capture of Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, the Golan Heights, and the Sinai Peninsula profoundly altered the nation.
So did the year 1973, with the Yom Kippur War; 1979, with the signing of the Camp David Accords; 1993, with the signing of the Oslo Accords; and 2000, the year of the start of the Second Intifada.
Each of those years included events that marked significant turning points in the country’s history, moments that redirected the nation’s course and direction: some for the better, some for the worse.
The outgoing year, 2023, will similarly be remembered as one that changed the course of Israeli history. Historians will likely speak of a pre-2023 Israel and a post-2023 Israel.
Pre-2023 Israel was a different country
The pre-2023 Israel was confident and felt secure. It was confident in its economic condition and its technological prowess, and it felt secure in the neighborhood. True, terrorism was always a scourge, but it wasn’t deemed an existential threat.
In pre-2023 Israel, the overriding feeling was that the country’s enemies were deterred by Israel’s overwhelming power and would not try anything “crazy,” knowing that if they did so, Israel would respond in kind.
Pre-2023 Israel believed – naively, as it turns out – that those enemies cared if Israel responded with devastating force: the country could not conceive that its enemies might want precisely that type of response to trigger a wider religious war in the region, if not the world.
And if pre-2023 Israel society appeared divided – and it was – there was a certain solace in recognizing that divisions had been a long-standing feature of Israeli society, as if they were wired into our DNA.
Despite these inherent divisions complicating matters, they did not – up until this year – threaten the country, and national solidarity remained strong. Political and social differences? Nothing new there.
Then 2023 hit, and everything was turned on its head: the country’s sense of solidarity, its economic stability, its confidence in the efficacy of its technological power, and its sense of security.
Especially its sense of security.
2023 will be remembered as an annus horribilis
For Israel, 2023 will be remembered as a miserable year – an annus horribilis, in Queen Elizabeth’s famous words – and one that significantly altered the nation’s path, setting it on a new course. It is not clear exactly what that new course will look like, just that the trauma of 2023 will ensure that across many different spheres – security, political, social – what was is not what will be.
If, prior to 2023, the prevailing sense was that after 75 years, Israel had reached safe shores, that its battle for survival was a thing of the past, 2023 came and wiped that sense of security away.
The outgoing year, 2023, was when Israelis discovered that the country is vulnerable – dangerously vulnerable. And a nation that does not feel secure will vote, prioritize its agenda, calculate risks, and act militarily in ways different from a nation that feels invulnerable and secure.
IF THE events of 2023 were to be made into a movie, one fitting title would be “Back to the Past.” Once again, Israel is at war, once again shipping is being threatened in the Red Sea, just as in 1967, and once again, it is fighting on multiple fronts.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant enumerated six fronts this week – Gaza, Judea and Samaria, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Iraq – hinting that a seventh front, the most significant of all, Iran, was still to come. All that bore echoes of 1948, when Israel fought for its existence and faced armies from multiple Arab countries.
There will be those who will take issue with the notion that this war against Hamas – a terrorist organization and not even the strongest Israel has to contend with, an “honor” that goes to Hezbollah – is a war for Israel’s survival.
But this is looking at the war through a very narrow lens. True, Hamas, though it can cause Israel painful damage, is not going to destroy Israel – after all, the most advanced weapons in its arsenal are RPGs and unguided rockets and missiles.
But if Israel does not degrade Hamas’s capabilities to the extent that the message resonates around the region that it is not worth it to challenge Israel or tweak its nose, then Hamas-style “tweaking” by others in the region will go on forever, and although it will start with the nose, it will end up at more critical parts of the body.
The current war is against Hamas, but the message from the war’s outcome will reverberate far and wide. If Israel does not end up destroying the lion’s share of Hamas’s infrastructure and bringing about its ouster from power, it will appear weak, and two things will happen.
First, its enemies will see that Israel has been weakened and will feel empowered to attack it. Second, Israel’s current and potential partners in the region will reconsider whether their alliances with the Jewish state – a state they once saw as strong and stable – are worth all the trouble at home, where public opinion is not exactly on Israel’s side.
Israel’s alliances in the region – with countries like the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain – were built on the premise that Israel is the strongest and most stable actor in the region. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said it repeatedly: in this region, only the strong survive, and no one wants to be friends with the weak. If Israel does not roundly defeat Hamas, it will be viewed as weak, not the perception it can allow to spread.
In 2023, what "couldn't be" was
THE OUTGOING year is one where things few imagined would ever happen came to pass, where even the most sacred cows turned out to be not so sacred after all. The common Hebrew expression “lo yachol lih’yot” – it cannot be” – was challenged, as what almost everyone didn’t think could ever happen, turned out happening.
The tone of the year was set early, in fact, less than a week after it started. On January 4, Justice Minister Yariv Levin unveiled a sweeping plan to overhaul the judicial system. Levin’s plan was not a minor adjustment but a major overhaul. The idea that the political echelon would never question the authority of the Supreme Court – that there are, as Menachem Begin once said, “judges in Jerusalem” and their position is sacrosanct – turned out not to be true.
And this triggered events few believed they would ever see: weekly demonstrations of tens of thousands of people; protests by Israelis against Netanyahu when he traveled abroad; reserve pilots threatening not to train; reservists saying they would no longer show up for army duty; unprecedented attacks by politicians on generals who were previously viewed as beyond that kind of reproach; former prime ministers baldly bad-mouthing Israel abroad; demonstrations forcing the closure of the airport; “days of rage” organized not by Palestinians, but by Jews to disrupt everyday life; MKs literally jumping on tables in Knesset committee hearings; hi-tech firms taking their business abroad in an effort to weaken the economy; doctors threatening to emigrate en masse; fights in the public square – literally, fisticuffs – over prayer with a mechitza (partition) separating men and women for Kol Nidre; Supreme Court hearings broadcast live dealing with whether the court had jurisdiction to shoot down Knesset laws.
Divisions came to the fore in a manner never seen before, in a way that had serious people talking about the possibility of civil war and warning of blood in the streets.
And all that during the year’s first nine months, 2023’s “good” months.
Then came October 7, and – again – the inconceivable occurred: the country was invaded by an army of 3,000 heavily armed and well-trained terrorists who murdered, raped, mutilated, pillaged, burned, and kidnapped like ravaging Huns.
Israel’s vaunted intelligence was caught blind, its army asleep at the wheel, its politicians too busy fighting among themselves to pay attention to the genuine threats lurking around the corner.
This year will be remembered as one in which long-held conceptions proved dead wrong. Among those: that political quarrels will be contained before they cause real damage to the country; that Israel’s Military Intelligence can be relied on; that the country can have a small, smart army reliant more on hi-tech bells and whistles than boots on the ground; that it is possible to turn a blind eye to what the genocidal neighbors are doing next door; that problems can be kicked down the road forever.
During a speech on Wednesday, opposition head Yair Lapid termed this year “the worst year in the history of the state.” Granted, Lapid is no objective observer, and he played a major role in stirring the divisions that wracked the country for the first nine months of the year. Still, many would agree with his assessment, though 1973 – a year of a surprise similar to what Israel faced in October – is a close contender for this notorious crown.
But what will make 2023, in historical terms, a watershed year? The ability to look at the events, learn the lessons, and change direction: political direction, security direction, the overall direction of the society.
One faint silver lining is that, to a certain extent, that is already happening. As a result of October 7, Israelis returned to themselves, took their hands off their brothers’ throats, and came together in a way not seen for decades. Nearly three months into the war, political divisions are resurfacing. Still, the national solidarity that was slipping away before the war – and which is so vital for Israel to deal with its enormous challenges – has returned.
As 2023 turns into 2024, that is the one change that may be a precursor to other, no less significant changes just beyond the bend. And those changes will make 2023 a watershed year – a year that will certainly come to be known as one that changed the nation’s course.