The Developmental Blind Spot

This essay was originally posted on 18.04.26 at nancyharteveltkobrin.substack where an AI translation for Hebrew and Portuguese can be found

Recent policy proposals on “the day after Hamas” are beginning to recognize something important: reconstruction is not only about infrastructure. It is also about transformation.

One widely discussed framework argues that rebuilding Gaza requires more than roads, housing, and institutions. It insists that education, religion, and media must be addressed—that “material aid alone cannot dismantle a jihadi worldview.” This is correct. But it does not go far enough.

What is being proposed as political reconstruction is, in effect, an attempt to reorganize the psychic infrastructure of a society.

That distinction matters.

Policy language tends to assume that ideology can be replaced through institutional reform: new textbooks, new leadership, new administrative structures. But ideology, especially in its more extreme forms, does not function merely as a set of beliefs. It operates as a stabilizing system—one that organizes anxiety, humiliation, grievance, and belonging.

It is not simply taught. It is inhabited.

This becomes clearer........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)