Israel, Interrupted

The air-raid sirens, which have become a regular feature of Israeli life over the past few years, are not just warnings. They are also interruptions, admonishing Israelis to stop what they’re doing and to quickly do something else, like run to a saferoom. Along with killing over a dozen Israelis, injuring many more, and doing untold damage to the homefront, the incoming Iranian missiles have also disturbed the sleep of millions of people, interrupted their work meetings, synagogue prayers, and even the simple pleasure of taking a shower. For some time now, Israelis have been leading interrupted lives.

Israel’s age of interruption began before the current war with Iran and Hezbollah, or even the previous one with Hamas, and it entails more than the sirens’ disruption of circadian rhythms and workflows. It began, as it did everywhere, with COVID, but the interruptions never stopped. In 2022, Netanyahu formed the current government, and with little warning began to advance sweeping and fundamental changes to the Israeli judiciary. In response, hundreds of thousands of Israelis gathered in protest as they choked traffic and disrupted the public domain. Of course, the largest set of disturbances began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas surprise-attacked Israel’s south, leading to a ferocious military response against Gaza and the opening of further fronts with Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The Israel-Gaza War ended up lasting far longer than most observers predicted, and still Hamas remains partially in control of Gaza. Now, not long after ceasefires were inked with Hamas and Hezbollah, the interruptions have returned even faster than many feared they would, with the country again fighting Iran and battering Hezbollah—supposedly, this time for good (but didn’t they tell us that last time?).

These interruptions disrupt family life, personal psychology, and the careers of young Israelis who now find themselves working mostly as IDF reservists despite training for other professions. More fundamentally, they also make good thinking close to impossible. To solve problems, or simply see them clearly, sustained attention is necessary. Yet our attention spans are constantly diverted by interminable war and outrageous politics: mass-exemption of Haredim from military service during wartime, official disinterest in the crime wave rolling through Arab Israeli towns, not to speak of the increasingly lethal settler attacks on West Bank Palestinians.

Having grown up in America in the 1980s and ’90s, perhaps the most peaceful period in the history of the world, it’s hard to comprehend my children’s childhoods, which are speckled with the disruptions of six years and counting.

These ceaseless interruptions have created a paradoxical sense of inevitability. For years now, IDF spokesmen have soberly informed the public that “2023 will be a year of war,” then “2024 will be a year of war,” later, it was 2025, and now it’s 2026. We tell ourselves that this is the way things are and going to be for the foreseeable future, and we had better adapt to the state of emergency. Perhaps more than anything, this explains the blinkered response many Israelis have had in the wake of October 7: The only thing that will secure national safety is the complete eradication of any and all potential military threats. If this hasn’t been achieved yet, it certainly will be when we hit harder, faster, more comprehensively, and, at last, achieve total victory. As for political solutions, these are widely seen as unwanted disruptions imposed by outside forces—including supposedly friendly ones like the Trump administration—which interrupt the IDFs efforts to decisively eliminate the capabilities of hostile actors.

Ironically, giving in to the recurring disruptions fails to recognize the fundamental interruption that is the State of Israel. For two millennia, Jews wandered the Diaspora as a stateless, vulnerable people. The utopians who dreamed up the Jewish State were the ultimate disrupters, waiting for neither God nor the nations of the world to bend the trajectory of Jewish history. Israel is supposed to be the final interruption of an otherwise interrupted people

The early Zionists are often remembered for their physical willpower, which drove them to drain the swamps, plow the fields, defend their territory, and establish the first modern Hebrew towns in the Land of Israel. But it was also their intellect that led them to revive Hebrew as a spoken language, practice realpolitik, and think their way into a new world.

Their example should inspire us not to surrender to the eternal recurrence of interrupted existence, but to think towards a better politics.