The end of Israeli exceptionalism

Israel can’t bomb its way out of decline - The West’s proxy state is burning out

President Reagan’s national security advisor, General Haig for once telling the truth about why Zionist Israel is America’s Mideast proxy regime.

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19 Jun, 2025 16:37 Russia Today

By Timofey Bordachev, Program Director of the Valdai Club

Israel has now been at war with its neighbours for nearly two years. The latest round began with the Hamas-led terrorist attack on 7 October 2023. In response, West Jerusalem launched an aggressive military campaign that has since expanded to touch nearly every country in the region. The escalation has placed the Jewish state at the centre of Middle Eastern geopolitics once again – this time, dragging in Iran, a state that had long avoided direct confrontation through strategic caution. Now, even Tehran finds itself under fire, with US backing making the stakes far higher. Iran is left facing a grim choice between the bad and the very bad.

But this isn’t about Iran. It’s about Israel, a country that has for decades functioned as the West’s forward operating base in the Middle East. Since the mid-20th century, Israel has enjoyed a privileged position – a bridgehead of Western power in a volatile region, while also deeply enmeshed in its politics and rivalries. Its success has rested on two pillars: the unshakable support of the United States, and its own internal capacity for innovation, military strength, and a unique social model.

That second pillar, however, has weakened. The clearest sign is in demographics: Israel is facing rising negative migration. In 2024, some 82,700 people are expected to leave the country – a 50% increase from the year before. It is not the unskilled or disengaged who are leaving, but the young and educated. The people who are needed to sustain a modern state are choosing to go.

Of course, Israel’s troubles are not unique. Like many developed nations, it is struggling under the weight of a decaying neoliberal economic system. The pandemic made things worse, exposing the fragility of the model and encouraging a shift toward a “mobilisation” mode of governance – rule through emergency and constant readiness for conflict. In the West more broadly, war and geopolitical confrontation have become a way to delay or disguise necessary systemic reform.

In this regard, Israel has become a laboratory for the West’s emerging logic: permanent war as a method of governance. In the autumn of 2023, the Israeli establishment embraced this fully. Conflict became not just a tactic, but a way of life. Its leaders no longer see peace as the goal, but war as the mechanism for national unity and political survival. In this, Israel mirrors the broader Western embrace of conflict with Russia and China – proxy wars chosen when actual reform is off the table.

At the global level, nuclear deterrence limits how far such wars can go. But in the Middle East, where Israel wages war directly, those constraints don’t apply. This allows war to serve as a pressure valve – politically useful, even as it becomes self-destructive.

But even war has limits. It cannot indefinitely mask economic decay or social unrest. And while conflict tends to cement elite power – even among incompetent leadership – it also drains national strength. Israel is now consuming more and more of its own resources to sustain this permanent state of war. Its social cohesion is fraying. Its once-vaunted model of technological and civic progress is no longer functioning as it did.

Some in West Jerusalem may dream of “reformatting” the Middle East – reshaping the region through force and fear. If successful, it could buy Israel a few decades of security and breathing room. But such outcomes are far from guaranteed. Crushing a neighbour doesn’t eliminate the threat; it merely brings distant enemies closer. Most importantly, Israel’s deepest problems aren’t external – they are internal, rooted in its political and social structures.

War can define a state, yes. But such states – Sparta, North Korea – tend to be “peculiar,” to put it mildly. And even for them, war cannot substitute for real diplomacy, policy, or growth.

So has Israel, always at war, truly developed? Or has it simply been sustained – politically, militarily, and financially – as a subdivision of American foreign policy? If it continues down this path of permanent conflict and right-wing nationalism, it risks losing even that status. It may cease to be the West’s bridge in the Middle East – and become something else entirely: a militarised garrison state, isolated, brittle, and increasingly alone.

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Israel losing most steadfast EU supporter – Bloomberg

Germany is reportedly considering curbs on trade and arms sales amid outcry over Gaza

Israel losing most steadfast EU supporter – Bloomberg — RT World News

3 Jun, 2025 14:10

Russia Today

Israel losing most steadfast EU supporter – Bloomberg

Germany is rethinking its military and trade ties with Israel, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday. The “surprising” pivot from one of the Jewish state’s staunchest supporters comes amid a worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza and growing frustration in Berlin over Israel’s actions.

“German anger” rose in mid-May as Israel intensified its campaign against Hamas while continuing to block humanitarian aid, according to information obtained by Bloomberg.

Germany has adhered to a long-standing policy that protecting Israel is a post-Holocaust obligation. It has also been Israel’s largest European arms supplier and one of its top trade partners.

In Germany’s first such public comments since the war began 20 months ago, Chancellor Friedrich Merz said last week that the humanitarian situation could “no longer be justified by a fight against Hamas terrorism.”

During a phone call with Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday, Merz urged the Israeli prime minister to allow “sufficient humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip immediately.”

“This is a real marker of how things have moved,” Julien Barnes-Dacey of the European Council on Foreign Relations told Bloomberg. “It’s simply become impossible for most European governments to continue supporting Israel’s war despite strong ongoing commitments to Israel’s security.”

Israel has long faced accusations of war crimes for obstructing humanitarian aid to Gaza, including a total blockade imposed after October 7, 2023, and repeated restrictions on food, fuel, and medicine entering the besieged enclave. While the Israeli government argues such measures are necessary to prevent supplies from reaching Hamas, critics say the impact on civilians is catastrophic.

Berlin’s shift mirrors wider discontent across Europe. The UK, France, and the Netherlands are also weighing trade and arms restrictions on Israel. EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said in May there is “a strong majority” in favor of reviewing the EU-Israel trade agreement. The EU is Israel’s largest trading partner, with $47 billion in goods exchanged last year, according to IMF data.

Last week, Israel launched a new aid distribution system through the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a US- and Israeli-backed initiative. However, the effort has already drawn criticism, as multiple incidents have occurred where Palestinians seeking aid were killed. On Tuesday, at least 27 people died near a distribution site in Rafah, according to Palestinian health officials and witnesses. The Israeli military said troops fired on individuals who had strayed from designated routes and posed a potential threat.

Israel maintains that its military strategy is necessary to defeat Hamas and secure the release of the remaining hostages who had been taken during the October 7 attack, which killed 1,200 people. The Hamas-run health ministry reports over 54,000 Palestinians have been killed since the war began.