"[We] aren't losing to the enemy, we are losing to ourselves, to the soul of our people, to our awareness, our children, to the place that perhaps we want to build here."
Israel Could Conquer the Entire Middle East but Still Wouldn't Win This War
Yair Assulin Jan 9, 2025
As time passes – and soon it will be a year and a half since that cursed Black Saturday – the understanding of how much we have lost the war, how much we are losing, strengthens. No military victory, total or otherwise, will erase this defeat. Even if we conquer the entire Middle East, and even if everyone surrenders to us, we won't win this war.
It's hard to write this, it feels painful and foreign, but nonetheless, it's how we feel.
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We lost on October 7, and we are losing with every soldier who is killed, with every hostage who has not returned, with every family that hasn't gone back home, with every soldier whose soul has been destroyed, and with every child who started wetting the bed.
We are also losing with every house we are forced to demolish, with every neighborhood we are forced to plow under, and with the masses of people we are forced to kill – and I'm writing "forced" intentionally.
I don't think Israel is demolishing for no reason, or killing for no reason, but I do think that every such action deepens our defeat, and we are not aware of this defeat – we are making a mistake in thinking that's what victory looks like.
But we aren't losing to the enemy, we are losing to ourselves, to the soul of our people, to our awareness, our children, to the place that perhaps we want to build here.
One of the most important things that this war has taught us is that it's possible to violate sovereignty with force – the way Hamas did to us on that cursed Saturday – but it's impossible to bring back sovereignty with force, and it doesn't matter how much force you use. Sovereignty, similar to trust or identity, needs to be rebuilt, one small step at a time – not outwardly, but inwardly.
Installation of the Nova massacre victims on the 400th day of the war.Credit: Ilan Assayag
Anyone who isn't asking themselves what reality was trying to tell us on that Saturday, and what it has been trying to tell us since, will never begin to find the answer. As long as the noise of the guns deafens us, we – as a society – are bleeding sovereignty. This doesn't mean we don't need to fight – we do. I'm not a pacifist, but we won't have true security in the long term if we don't first recognize that we have lost.
We certainly must do everything possible to bring home the hostages as soon as possible, but not for victory.
The hostages must be brought home so we can learn how to breathe again. The obsessive pursuit of a military victory, which will supposedly erase the defeat, has for us become a dangerous mechanism for repression – and for a few, even denial.
I have written in these pages that the distinction between those who recognize the defeat and those who deny it may be the most precise description of the split in Israeli society today.
Members of the Bedouin community carry the body of Yosef Al Zaydani, who was in Hamas captivity in the Gaza Strip, a day after the Israeli army said his body was recovered in an underground tunnel in southern Gaza, during his funeral in Rahat, southern Israel, on Thursday.Credit: Mahmoud Illean/AP
This awareness is only intensifying. Israel's next leadership must be one that knows how to recognize this defeat, not at the level of blaming this or that official – but on the level of deep soul-searching about what led us to this moment. Recognition of all our responsibility, of the path we followed, of the story we told, of our sins.
So far I haven't heard any leader, political or social, on any side, who has truly conducted such penetrating soul-searching. So far, I haven't heard a single leader say that we have lost, that we are losing – not just in military terms, but that something is deeply flawed in our understanding of reality, of this region and especially of ourselves.
The great power of Judaism, which has enabled it to survive throughout history, is its ability to recognize its defeats, its sins, its destruction.
To establish fast days, and mourn year after year. Today, Friday, is the fast of Asara B'Tevet. For thousands of years, Jews have been fasting on the day that Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, laid siege to Jerusalem in the 6th century B.C.E.
Our only true victory as a society, our ability to be reborn, to create a future, completely depends on our ability to honestly, insightfully and revolutionarily conduct a conversation on the defeat.