The Kingdom of Judah vs. the State of Israel

Originally Posted By Strategic Cultures on March 17, 2025

Israel is deeply divided. The schism has become bitter and heated, as both sides see themselves in an existential war over Israel's future. The language used has become so venomous (especially on restricted Hebrew channels) that calls for a coup and civil war are far from uncommon.

Israel is on the brink of collapse, and seemingly irreconcilable differences could soon erupt into civil unrest – as Uri Misgav wrote this week, the “Israeli Spring” is on its way.

The point here is that President Trump’s utilitarian and decidedly transactional style may work effectively in the secular Western hemisphere, but with Israel (or Iran), Trump may find little or no traction among those with an alternative weltanschauung [worldview] that expresses a fundamentally different concept of morality, philosophy, and epistemology, in relation to the classic Western paradigm of material deterrence of “carrots and sticks.”

In fact, the very attempt to impose deterrence – and to threaten that “all hell will break loose” if his injunctions are not followed – may produce the opposite of what he seeks: that is, it may trigger new conflicts and wars.

An enraged pluralism in Israel (led by Netanyahu, for now) has seized the reins of power after a long march through the institutions of Israeli society and now has its sights set on dismantling the "Deep State" within Israel. Equally, there is a furious reaction to this perceived power grab.

What exacerbates this social fracture are two things: first, it is ethnocultural; and second, it is ideological. The third component is the most explosive – Eschatology.

In the last national election in Israel, the "underclass" finally broke the glass ceiling to win the election and take power. The Mizrahim (Jews from the Middle East and North Africa) have long been treated as the poorest and lowest order in society.

Ashkenazim (European Jews, largely liberal and secular) make up a large part of the urban professional class (and, until recently, the security class). These are the elites that the National Religious and Settler Movement coalition displaced in the last election.

This current phase of a long power struggle can perhaps be placed in 2015. As Gadi Taub recorded: “It was then that the judges of the Israeli Supreme Court removed sovereignty itself – that is, the power of final decision over the entire realm of law and policy – ​​from the elected branches of government and transferred it to themselves. An unelected branch of government officially holds the power, against which there are no checks or balances by any opposing force.”

From the Right's perspective, the self-granted power of Judicial Review gave the Court the power, writes Taub, “to prescribe the rules of the political game – and not just its concrete outcomes.” “Law enforcement then became the enormous investigative arm of the press. As was true in the case of the 'Russiagate' hoax, the Israeli Police and the State Prosecutor were not so much collecting evidence for a criminal trial, but producing political dirt for leaks to the press.”

The “Deep State” in Israel is a consuming point of contention for Netanyahu and his cabinet: In a speech to the Knesset this month – as one example – Netanyahu attacked the media, accusing news outlets of “full cooperation with the deep state” and of creating “scandals.” “Cooperation between the deep state bureaucracy and the media didn’t work in the United States, and it won’t work here,” he said.

Just to clarify, at the time of the last general election, the Supreme Court was composed of 15 justices, all Ashkenazim except for one Mizrahi.

However, it would be wrong to view the war between the rival blocs as an arcane dispute over the usurpation of executive power – and a lost “separation of powers of the state.”

The struggle is actually rooted in a deep ideological dispute about the future and character of the State of Israel. Will it be a messianic state, of Halacha, obedient to Revelation? Or, in essence, will it be a democratic, liberal, and largely secular state? Israel is tearing itself apart on the blade of this debate.

The cultural component is that the Mizrahim (broadly defined) and the Right see the European liberal sphere as truly Jewish evil. Hence their determination that the Land of Israel must be fully immersed in Jewishness.

It was the events of October 7th that absolutely crystallized this ideological struggle, which is the second key factor that broadly reflects the general schism.

Israel's classic security vision (dating back to the Ben-Gurion era) was designed to provide an answer to the perennial Israeli dilemma: Israel cannot impose an end to conflict with its enemies, but at the same time, it cannot maintain a large army in the long term.

Therefore, Israel – from this perspective – had to rely on a reserve army that needed adequate security warning before any war occurred. Advance intelligence warning of an impending war was, therefore, a primary requirement.

And that key assumption crumbled on October 7th.

The shock and sense of collapse resulting from October 7 led many to believe that the Hamas attack had irrevocably broken Israel's concept of security – the policy of deterrence had failed, and the proof of this was that Hamas was not deterred.

But here we approach the heart of the Israeli internal war: What was destroyed on October 7th was not merely the old security paradigm of the Labor Party and the old security elites. That happened; but what emerged from its ashes was an alternative worldview that expresses a fundamentally different concept in philosophy and epistemology compared to the classic deterrence paradigm:

“I was born in Israel; I grew up in Israel… I served in the IDF,” says Alon Mizrahi. “I was exposed to it. I was indoctrinated that way, and for many years of my life I believed it. This represents a serious Jewish problem: It’s not just [a matter of a mode of] Zionism… How can you teach your children – and this is almost universal – that everyone who isn’t Jewish wants to kill you? When you put yourself in that paranoia, you give yourself permission to do anything to everyone… It’s not a good way to raise a society. It’s so dangerous.”

See here in the Times of Israel a report of a presentation at a secondary school (post-October 7th) on the Morality of Annihilating Amalek: A student raises the question: “Why do we condemn Hamas for murdering innocent men, women, and children – if we are commanded to annihilate Amalek?”

“How can we have normality tomorrow,” asks Alon Mizrahi, “if this is what we are today?”

The National Religious Right is leading the charge for a radical shift in Israel's security concept; they no longer believe in Ben-Gurion's classic deterrence paradigm – especially after October 7th. Nor does the Right believe in reaching any agreement with the Palestinians – and absolutely does not want a binational state. In Bezalel Smotrich's concept, Israel's security theory, from now on, must include a continuous war against the Palestinians – until they are expelled or eliminated.

The Old (Liberal) Establishment is outraged – as one of its members, David Agmon (former IDF Brigadier General and former Netanyahu Chief of Staff), articulated this week: “I accuse you, Bezalel Smotrich, of destroying religious Zionism! You are leading us to a state of Halacha and Haredi Zionism, not religious Zionism… Not to mention the fact that you have joined the terrorist Ben Gvir, who diverts delinquent boys, hillbillies, to continue breaking the law, who attacks the government, the judicial system and the police under his responsibility. Netanyahu is not the solution. Netanyahu is the problem, he is the head of the snake. The protest must act against Netanyahu and his coalition. The protest must demand the overthrow of the malicious government.”

Netanyahu is, in one sense, secular; but, in another, he embraces the biblical mission of Greater Israel – with all its enemies annihilated. He is (if you want a label) a neo-Jabotinskyite (his father was Jabotinsky's private secretary) and, in practice, exists in a relationship of mutual dependence with figures like Ben Gvir and Smotrich.

“What do these people want?” asks Max Blumenthal; “What is their ultimate goal?” “It’s the apocalypse,” warns Blumenthal, whose book Goliath traces the rise of Israel’s eschatological Right: “They have an eschatology based on the ideology of the Third Temple – in which the Al-Aqsa Mosque will be destroyed and replaced by a Third Temple, and traditional Jewish rituals will be practiced.”

And for that to happen, they need a "Great War".

Smotrich has always been frank about this: The plan to ultimately remove all Arabs from the “Land of Israel” will require an emergency – a “great war,” he said.

The big question is: Do Trump and his team understand any of this? Because this has profound implications for Trump's transactional negotiation methodology. "Carrots and sticks" and secular rationality will carry little weight among those whose epistemology is quite different; those who take Revelation literally as "truth" and believe it demands complete obedience.

Trump says he wants to end the conflicts in the Middle East and bring about regional "peace".

His secular and transactional approach to politics, however, is utterly inadequate for resolving eschatological conflicts. His bravado-style threats of “all hell breaking loose” if he doesn’t get what he wants won’t work when one or the other party truly wants Armageddon.

"Is hell going to explode?" "Bring it on," may very well be the response Trump receives.