The Price of Mistakes in This War

The price of a mistake in this war is enormous.

If the ayatollahs’ regime survives, there will be another war.
That is not an extreme scenario. It is the nature of this regime.
We have already seen the first statement by their new leader.
There is not even a hint of a change in direction there, no attempt to save the lives of his own citizens, and no real desire to escape this disaster.
There is only revenge, fanaticism, and a readiness to keep going.

So ending this war without a result does not prevent the next war.
It brings it closer.

And the next war will be worse.
Because a regime that survives the current war will not learn restraint from it.
It will learn preparation.
It will come back better prepared, angrier, more determined, and even more convinced that Israel must be destroyed at any cost.

But the price of a mistake is not only the next war.
It is also what will happen inside Israel itself.

We already live in a country torn apart from within:
between secular and ultra-Orthodox Jews,
between right and left,
between Netanyahu’s supporters and his opponents,
between Jews and Arabs.

None of these tensions has disappeared.
What still holds us together, for now, is faith in the state, trust in the army, and the ability of Israeli society to unite in the face of an enemy.

If that faith is undermined, and if the government once again tries to sell failure as victory, the price could be devastating, for both the state and society.

And there is an economic price too.
Israel does not rest on natural resources. It rests on people, on business, on technology, and on trust.
If the threat of another war with Iran remains with us as the new normal, it will mean less investment, greater caution, and a larger outflow of those who can afford to leave.
And in situations like that, it is not the weakest who leave.
It is the people on whom the economy largely rests.

So the mistake here is not only failing to finish the job against the enemy.
The mistake is leaving Israel with a future war that will be much harder and much more dangerous, against an enemy that will arrive much better prepared.