Israel is in a 'Forever War' --- but Trump and Netanyahu can end it

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For too long, the violence engulfing Israel has been misdiagnosed. We call them "wars"—the 1948-49 War of Independence, the Sinai War/Suez Crisis, the Six-Day War, the War of Attrition, the Yom Kippur War, Lebanon I and II, Intifada I and II, a whole slew of wars ("operations") with Gaza, the latest being the current Oct. 7 war (dubbed Swords of Iron) and the Iran-Israel 12-day war within a war.

But this framing obscures the truth. These are not discrete conflicts. They are skirmishes and battles in a single, uninterrupted, century-long war to eradicate Jewish life and sovereignty from the Land of Israel.

This “Forever War” did not begin in 1948. It began decades earlier—with pogroms against Jews in Hebron, Safed and Jaffa; with riots incited by the mufti of Jerusalem; with a violent rejection of Jewish peoplehood, presence and return to our ancient homeland. The Forever War has never been a conflict over borders or policy. It was, is, has always been an openly declared genocide: the annihilation of any Jewish state—any Jews anywhere in the Land of Israel.

The horrors of Oct. 7, 2023, and the battles against Hamas that have followed are not a new conflict. They are merely the latest front in the existential war that the grandparents of today's IDF soldiers fought when the Arab world mobilized against the newborn State of Israel. There was no 12-day "war" with Iran; there was a spectacular, hopefully consequential, 12-day skirmish within the context of Iran's decades-long genocidal war of multi-front proxy assaults.

This Forever War is not fought only with rockets and bullets. Like all ideological wars, it is also waged through narratives. And, because Israel has always prevailed in the shootouts, the most potent ideological weapon against the Jewish state's continued existence is the construct of “Palestinianism.”

Palestinianism is not a nationality but an ideology.

"Palestinian" as an adjective does not describe a people; it is a political program—a genocidal, antisemitic death cult. "Palestinian," as an identity for anyone but the Jews, was largely invented after the early military efforts to destroy Israel failed. Its goal is not self-determination but the destruction of Jewish determination. In short, "Palestinian" is to Arab what "Nazi" was to German—except it lacks even the Nazis' pretense of building something lasting. It exists only to destroy.

The notion of a "Palestinian Arab" is the most successful weapon in the anti-Jewish arsenal: a permanent grievance industry, a propaganda tool for terrorism, a rallying cry for pan-Arab and Islamist rejectionism, and a seductive falsehood for the West. It is a zero-sum game assault on Jewish existence, misappropriating a name from the Jews' history and homeland, and rebranding genocidal intent as noble resistance. And unless Palestinianism is discredited and dismantled, the Forever War on Israel will never end, because its fuel will never run out.

What, then, is the solution? How can Israel end the Forever War—not make it tolerable, not temporarily pause it, not "manage" it —but end it. We can begin by confronting reality.

The Middle East generally and Israel and its neighbors specifically are still shaped by colonialist borders imposed by European powers a century ago—lines that ignored history, ethnicity, faith and viability. They were designed to entrench instability, empower pliable strongmen, and divide indigenous populations. The result: Lebanon, a Hezbollah-run husk; Syria, a slaughterhouse of proxies; Egypt and Jordan, brittle autocracies propped up by Western aid.

In Israel's case, the borders are not permanent, barely cognizable, utterly indefensible and incoherent. Comprising, over time, less than 30% of the Jews' actual historically governed homeland (between 2% and 5.5% of the biblically promised land, depending on interpretation), they are flexible transactional expediencies, expanding and contracting in response to attack and threat and politics and diplomacy.

This is absurd for a 4,000-year-old indigenous people; unacceptable for a modern nation-state. Unsurprisingly, such borders are viewed as contingent and temporary fictions by the people of the region, and tragically, so is the state itself. Israel's neighbors know very well that the Jews have always belonged there; they remain unpersuaded that the Zionist state does.

A stable, peaceful Middle East requires zero-basing and redrawing the map in ways that accord first and foremost with Jewish indigenous rights and security needs. It requires border adjustments, population transfers and moral clarity. It requires recognizing that some political movements—like Palestinianism—are not designed to coexist, but to destroy, and must, therefore, themselves be destroyed.

No, this is not a call for "ethnic cleansing." That already happened. Jews were driven out of Arab lands in the last century. Christians, Yazidis, Kurds, Druze, Alawites and other minorities are being exterminated or exiled under Arab-Muslim regimes today. This is a call to end that cleansing, using strategic clarity and courageous policy.

Where people refuse to live together in peace, only separation can bring peace. Where war threatens masses of noncombatants, the population is relocated.  That formula is applied everywhere, except in the Jews' national home. Where governance exists to glorify martyrdom and export terrorism, regimes must be changed or sovereignty must be revoked. Where ideology makes coexistence impossible, that ideology must be defeated.

This approach benefits Israel and any Arab states that truly seek normalization. But above all, it benefits Arabs forever trapped under Palestinianism. The generations of Arab families held hostage by this ideology—raised in slums, fed on hatred, denied dignity by UNRWA, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas—deserve better. They have been used as cannon fodder by terror warlords and messianic regimes like Iran. They are not victims of Israel, but of a system that exploits them for international leverage against Israel.

Dismantling Palestinianism would liberate them. If they choose to persist in grievance, that is their burden. But Israel has no obligation to endure it, let alone to host or enable it.

And now is the time to act. No two figures are better suited to chart a new course than United States President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Trump, who is unconstrained by diplomatic clichés and the tooth-gnashing jeremiads of "experts," recognized Jerusalem, moved the embassy, secured the Golan Heights, brokered the Abraham Accords and treats Israel not as a problem but as an ally. Trump, who came into office asserting maximalist U.S. interests from Greenland to the Gulf of America/Mexico to the Panama Canal, would applaud a Jewish state demanding ownership of the Jewish patrimony.

And Netanyahu, who has made Israel a regional and global military and economic power, capable of shaping its destiny, but whose legacy nonetheless is clouded by Oct. 7. Together, the two leaders made historic peace and waged historic war.

Together, they can offer a paradigm shift, not built on delusional appeasement or futile negotiations, but on truth, morality, permanence and peace. Trump would indeed be a colossus; a modern reincarnation of Cyrus for the Jews, a global humanitarian, pursuing not conquest and empire, but stability and peace. Netanyahu would equal or eclipse Theodor Herzl and David Ben-Gurion in the annals of modern Israel and be ranked alongside David and Solomon.

For Israelis, the urgency is existential. The "Palestinian" strategy of intransigence has never been more successful in generating hate and condemnation of Israel. The grandfathers of the soldiers fighting and dying today fought and died decades ago in this same Forever War. The grandchildren of today's soldiers should not have to. For Americans, the stakes are strategic and civilizational. Israel is the frontline of Western values, the bulwark against global jihad and totalitarianism, and the catalyst for transforming the region into one of hope and order.

Israel's Forever War can and must be brought to a close. Not with ceasefires that never last. Not through negotiations that empower mass murderers and encourage violence. Not by corrupt international bodies. But through sovereignty, strength and truth. Through declarations, demands and demonstrations of permanence in word and deed. 

Let Israel's Jewish conviction and existential confidence finally match its military prowess.  Let the Jewish people, strong and sovereign, now draw our own permanent borders based on the entirety of our indigenous homeland, based on justice, morality, history, right and defensibility.

Let the Arabs and Muslims see that Israel is not a European transplant, timid and provisional. Let the violently volatile region be reordered for stability and dignity. Let the monstrous lie of Palestinianism be exposed for what it is: an eternal barrier to peace, a machine of hate and death.

Let the Forever War finally end and the Jewish state finally begin.

(COMMENT, BELOW)

Jeff Ballabon is an American media executive, lobbyist, political advisor and consultant.

Previously:
• The 'Palestinian' Jesus and the new deicide