Israel must wake up to US and the world before national security is permanently harmed - comment

ByYONAH JEREMY BOBNOVEMBER 4, 2026 21:56Updated: NOVEMBER 4, 2026 21:57

Wake up! Israel needs to wake up fast.

Hamas perpetrated a historic, monstrous mass slaughter on October 7, 2023, of 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilians. But a lot happened after that, and we have not leveled with the rest of the world about our region-wide counterattack or used our new cards fast enough to get credit, mitigate criticism, and secure long-term diplomatic gains.

The US midterm election results - in which Israel has become a punching bag, and pressure on weapons sales to Jerusalem will escalate - following recent European sanctions against Judea and Samaria, following European recognition of a Palestinian state in fall 2025, with no consolation prize for Israel, signal the ticking of a clock for one of the Jewish state’s last best chances to avoid permanent harm to its national security.

Permanent harm means: No one will sell Israel F-35 aircraft, F-15 aircraft, nuclear submarines, helicopters, cooperate on any AI or quantum technology that might have military purposes, and the list goes on.

But wait, you ask? Haven’t all Israeli officials talked about how we are now achieving weapons independence?

Sorry, they only meant the quantity of bombs - not aircraft, submarines, and the rest.

Our time is running out

I actually pressured many top defense officials in early 2024 to start becoming independent for real, including aircraft, and they told me it would take 10 years, would fail (it failed in the 1980s), and implied it would be foolish to keep asking about it.

So, our time could run out in around two years. In fact, Israel probably has about one year to change the conversation before US Democrat and Republican candidates - Vice President JD Vance’s statement about Israel on Wednesday did not sound much better than many critical Democrats - for the next US presidential election start framing their foreign-policy platforms.

But this is not fair, Israelis will say. Some will say, “The world is out to get us,” so what’s the point?

No, it is not fair, and antisemitism is worse now than it has been in decades.

And yes, Hamas stole Act I of this war with its mass slaughter and rape.

Post-October 7 war destroyed much of Israel's enemies

But then we killed about 25,000 Hamas terrorists and probably another 40,000-50,000 Gazan civilians whom Hamas systematically used as human shields and who got caught in the crossfire.

We also destroyed Hamas’s 15,000-rocket arsenal and seized large swaths of Gazan territory.

Then we killed around 10,000 Hezbollah fighters and smashed more than 90% of its 150,000-rocket arsenal, and twice seized large volumes of southern Lebanon.

Next, we also destroyed 85%-100% of Syria’s threats against Israel from long-range missiles and drones, including its air defenses, and took over a huge security zone in southern Syria.

Furthermore, we destroyed more than 90% of Iran’s nuclear program, over half of its ballistic missiles, and reduced its current missile total to under 2,000 from an expected 6,000 if we had not attacked.

Israel also assassinated all of the leaders of its top enemies, including Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah, Hamas’s Yahya Sinwar, and large numbers of their replacements and deputies, including all of the October 7 massacre planners.

Regarding Hamas, Israel has killed more than 4,000 of the 5,600-plus invaders from October 7 out of the estimated 25,000 killed.

For two years, we could say that we could not slow down too much in order to get the Israeli hostages back. But then we got back all of the hostages - two-thirds alive, one-third deceased - as part of a ceasefire with Hamas in October 2025.

Since then, surprise: Hamas has not disarmed, Hezbollah has not disarmed, the new ruler of Syria, Ahmed al-Sharaa, has perpetrated or allowed mass killings of Syrian minorities he does not like, including Israel’s Druze allies, and shockingly, Iran’s regime has not given up its nuclear-weapons dreams or been toppled.

So, we are unhappy and want the world to understand why we need to hold all of our security zones forever, and why we need to keep periodically bombing everyone on all fronts.

We need to get over this last part. Whether we like it or not, the world is deep into a post-post October 7 era, and if we do not catch up, our national security will suffer.

Can we keep some kind of security zones in Gaza and Lebanon for some period of years beyond the years we have already kept them? Very likely. As large as we currently have? No way.

And if you ask many Israeli generals who are not running for office, they do not think we need all of those zones. We need the military high ground, and in Lebanon, it could be useful to keep Hezbollah out of anti-tank missile range. But we have a lot more than that, including lots of flat sand near Rafah.

Is there a reason that we could not have started right after the October 2025 ceasefire to build a new city for tens of thousands of Palestinians who might leave Hamas-controlled territory? Not really.

Sure, there were slogans that we will not allow rebuilding until Hamas completely disarms. But that is a cover story for just keeping the war going on forever, and never allowing any rebuilding, because Hamas is not going to give up all of its weapons to Israel in one fell swoop.

Hamas remains in Gaza

How can we leave Hamas in place in Gaza after October 7?

First of all, we did not just leave them in place (see the above list of us clobbering them and Gaza).

Second, we failed to get rid of them. We tried force, and more force, and more force. Almost all of Gaza is destroyed. I have seen it firsthand.

We did not really try political alternatives. We signed a deal with the Trump administration to try a political alternative. So, let’s try it.

It probably will not work. But we need to finally get a little bit of credit in the US, Europe, and elsewhere for trying.

After October 7, we forgot about trying bad Western ideas to get credit for trying. Now, it’s time to remember.

In the meantime, if we try a few ideas from the US and Europe that do not work, we have a better chance that they will keep selling us aircraft, submarines, helicopters, and doing joint research on AI and quantum technologies.

Oh, and the new city will not be under Hamas’s control.

If Hamas then wants some partial rebuilding in its area, it will have to partially disarm.

In fact, there were signs that it would do so twice in 2026, but both times Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted on complete disarmament.

Let’s make Hamas into the bad guy again in the eyes of the US and Europe, as three years of war have actually left even some fair-minded people mixed up.

We can be ready to let partial rebuilding start for partial disarmament, including the entrance of international peacekeepers who Israel has approved and who could have probably gotten into Gaza several months ago.

We can let Palestinian technocrats take over some political governance issues from Hamas.

Might that leave Hamas in control like a puppet master behind the scenes, just as Hezbollah does in Lebanon? Probably.

But in the meantime, we will still get our aircraft, submarines, and so on.

Hezbollah remains, LAF unlikely to succeed

Lebanon is even easier to do a partial withdrawal for a partial job by the Lebanese army against Hezbollah.

Hezbollah did not do to us what Hamas did, and we have no claims on Lebanese territory.

Will the Lebanese army do its job well? It probably has an even lower chance of success than in Gaza, because Hezbollah is stronger than Hamas.

But again, it can get the world off our back for some amount of time, and we can still hold some of the security zones.

What about Syria? This is the weirdest case of all.

Sharaa has literally done nothing against us for almost two years. Maybe he is just biding his time until he has control of his country and we withdraw. Or maybe he realizes what we could do to him and also knows that even if he hates us, he hates Hezbollah and Iran more.

So, again, Israel could do a partial withdrawal for a partial demilitarization on the Syrian side and guarantees about Damascus not rebuilding certain weapons and not allowing Turkish military assets into southern Syria near Israel.

Can we trust a jihadist like Sharaa? Of course not. But again, we can keep some of the security zones, including the Syrian side of the Hermon, and keep our international military sales going.

Doesn’t this post-October 7 world sound a lot like October 6? Yes, it does.

But with the long list of above-mentioned differences - including keeping security zones on all sides, and all of our enemies being much weaker - maybe this time we will be smart enough to keep enough soldiers guarding the borders.

Maybe Israel will even start building its own aircraft and submarines. But even then, we would need to buy time, say 10 years, until we can truly act independently militarily.

This is not a vision of peace with all of our neighbors anytime soon, and it is not expecting a move toward a two-state solution at any foreseeable point in the future.

But it is a way to keep security zones on all sides, including under future US Democratic leadership, and a strategy for maintaining our critical weapons suppliers.

If we ignore the tidal wave of this post-post-October 7 era, we are liable to be forced to do larger withdrawals in two years and maybe lose weapons sales at the same time.

If we offer compromises, we can maybe salvage the least bad way forward in our dangerous neighborhood.

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