המרכבה נוסעת, והכיסא ריק

Ha-merkavah nosa’at, veha-kise rik.

The chariot keeps moving, but the throne is empty.

State Without a Horizon

Israel is not only fighting a war. It is revealing what happens when a state of immense force continues to move, strike, and destroy, but no longer carries judgment at its center.

That is the deeper crisis now. Not only Iran. Not only Hezbollah. Not only the widening fronts, the attrition in the north, the strain on reserves, the economic burden, or the growing dependence on Washington. The deeper crisis is that Israel’s leadership increasingly behaves as though force itself were direction, as though movement alone were strategy, as though the chariot could keep advancing even after the seat of judgment had gone empty.

No serious observer denies the reality of the threat. Iran is real. Hezbollah is real. Israel has had to fight, and at times it has fought effectively. The problem is not force as such. The problem begins when force becomes the only language leadership still knows.

A serious state must be able to answer a question more difficult than any operational briefing: what political form is being defended, and what kind of life is meant to exist the day after? On that question, the present leadership offers almost nothing beyond the ritual of toughness.

Benjamin Netanyahu has spent years converting perpetual alert into a method of rule.........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)