Trump’s dithering is dangerous, and his specious slamming of Netanyahu is upsetting. But working with him over the next 31 months to more decisively complete the campaign against Iran remains the right and necessary exigency. Trump’s style is irritating, but he continues to show understanding of the need to reshape the regional and global strategic architecture by eviscerating Iran.

Published in The Jerusalem Post, June 5, 2026; and Israel Hayom, June 6, 2026. Print-friendly copy

It is maddening to be handcuffed by the President of the United States when fighting Hezbollah, especially when Israeli soldiers and civilians are falling like flies to the terrorist army’s drones and rockets.

It is exasperating to hear US President Donald Trump talk one day about bombing Iran’s nuclear and energy sites to kingdom come and crushing the regime of the “evil” ayatollahs, and the next to hear him talk about “very nice and responsible” leaders in Iran that he would like to meet and to learn that Trump may shower these leaders with tens of billions of dollars in freed cash and sanctions relief.

It is frustrating to recognize that after all the effort and expense of the past year to strip Iran of its hegemonic ambitions and threatening abilities, Trump may set a ceiling on this war not by the cusp of Iran’s remaining offensive capabilities but by his own imperfect endurance.

It is vexing to accept Trump’s truancy; the peril of his non-ideological approach to foreign and defense affairs, his too-transactional thinking, his non-dogmatic methodology for “solving” conflicts – refreshing in some contexts but dangerously delusional in others.

It is irritating that Trump ridiculously believes the force of his personality can fix everything and lead to swift and “huge” peace deals everywhere. This is true regarding his pie-in-the-sky plans for “grand civilizational peace” in Gaza as well as his blathering about reaching a “tenth” accord of peace globally, with Tehran.

It is infuriating when Trump praises the Israeli prime minister one day as a “great wartime leader and friend” then publicly calls him “[expletive deleted] crazy” and asserts that Netanyahu is in his back pocket (“he will do whatever I want him to do”). Worse still, Trump gallingly asserts that “if there wasn’t me, there would be no Israel” and that Netanyahu “would be in prison if it weren’t for me.”

These avowals about Israel’s destiny and Netanyahu’s durability are not remotely true. They are unacceptable. It is right and righteous to push back against Trump when he crosses the line from outlandish swager and inflated vainglory – which is his style, like it or lump it – to insulting and damaging aspersions that have life-and-death consequences for Israel.

AFTER HAVING SAID all that, we have to get past Trump’s annoying approach to people and politics and consider his rock-solid policymaking record and commitments on the issues most important to Israel.

In particular, the US president must be lauded for the nobility of his resistance to Iran, and I believe, his intention to see the job through to completion.

President Trump understands that stopping the war now amid some short-term economic discomfort would be a victory for the mullahs. Iran cannot be allowed to conclude that shutting down oil flows is its passport to survival, now or in the future. After all, the spike in oil prices due to traffic stoppage in the Strait of Hormuz was not unexpected. As Trump himself has said, the disruption is a “small price to pay” for major security advances.

It also makes no sense to leave so many loose ends in Iran, from missiles and production facilities to nuclear sites at Pickaxe Mountain and the Isfahan tunnels where Iran’s gigantic stockpile of highly enriched uranium for nuclear bombmaking is said to be stored. This is why massive US air, naval, and amphibious forces are still in the region.

And Trump recognizes that the current conflict is essentially a world war against America’s greatest strategic adversaries including China and Russia – who are allied with Iran.

Therefore, Trump is exceedingly unlikely to desert the battlefield without more significantly quelling Iran. He will not just declare a synthetic “victory” and withdraw his troops.

He may wait a while for a range of reasons (from upcoming July 4rth celebrations – America’s 250th, to mid-term elections in November, to a necessary re-stocking of American armaments), but I am betting that he will further pursue the military effort to extinguish the threat of the ayatollahs to Gulf Arab countries, to Israel, and to the Western world.

SO WHY the obfuscation in Trump’s many statements? Why the fetters on Israel’s necessary wars with Iran’s proxy armies that are camped along this country’s borders? Why the dissing of Netanyahu?

Well, the administration’s ambiguity confuses the enemy. If we are left guessing at Trump’s next moves, so are the ayatollahs.

But Trump himself? I do not think that he is at all confused regarding Iran. From his 2018 dumping of Obama’s rotten nuclear deal with Iran, to his 2020 assassination of IRGC chief Qassem Soleimani, to Operation Midnight Hammer last June, to Operation Epic Fury this year – Trump has proven neither fickle nor flighty.

On the contrary, Trump has broadcast unwavering willpower and purpose. He ain’t a paragon of virtue in so many other ways, but Trump has shown profound understanding of his responsibility to reshape the regional and global strategic architecture by eviscerating Iran.

He also has evinced domestic political courage in this regard, taking on hard Left Marxist and pro-Islamist critics and hard Right isolationist and Christian nationalist critics. He has taken risks with his own MAGA base by slapping-down the loudest and most influential foul-mouth faultfinders like Tucker Carlson.

Remember: Despite the rise of an enemy potentially as lethal as Nazi Germany, many Western leaders nevertheless have preferred accommodation with Iran. It always is easier to delay and deflect than to fight a fiercely committed and skilled enemy.

And yet, Trump has taken on the Iranian challenge. In defiance of conventional wisdom that the “responsible” approach is to swallow Iran’s piecemeal provocations to avoid war, and that Iran’s hegemonic ambitions are anyway near-unstoppable, Trump preferred to draw blood and a red line. He defied the ayatollahs instead of dancing with them.

And so, Trump ought to be recognized and appreciated for his moral and strategic clarity. This war is an act of rectitude, of justice and sanity in global security affairs.

So, if you want to worry that Trump could yet cut a bad deal with Tehran, an agreement that does not push Iran far enough away from the nuclear bomb and from Israel’s borders, or that he may stop short of regime change, go ahead and stew. But for the moment, Trump should still be acclaimed for his continued resistance to Iran, including his long blockade of Hormuz.

Yes, Trump’s dithering is dangerous, and his specious slamming of Netanyahu is upsetting. Israel’s existence is not a favor bestowed by Washington, and Israel’s leaders cannot accept every security policy dictate from DC.

But working with Trump over the next 31 months to more decisively complete the campaign against Iran – uncomfortably bobbing and weaving as necessary – remains the right and necessary exigency.

The post Bobbing and weaving with Trump on Iran appeared first on David M. Weinberg.

Flimsy Abraham Accord promises are no consolation. A thaw in Indonesian ties with Israel or a Paki and Saudi smile at Israel cannot compensate for a bad deal with Iran. Strike now to enervate Iran; save the sweet glaze for later.

Published in The Jerusalem Post and Israel Hayom, May 29, 2026. Print-friendly copy

Suddenly, US President Donald Trump is talking up Abraham Accord peace treaties between Israel and Arab and Islamic countries.

On Wednesday he suggested that he might not sign a war-ending agreement with Iran if America’s Arab partners in the region do not agree to recognize Israel. Trump listed Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kuwait as among the countries that should join the Abraham Accords (– accords that in 2020 established diplomatic relations between Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain, and that were subsequently joined by Morocco and Kazakhstan).

“I think they owe that to us, to be honest,” Trump said. “I’m not sure we should make the deal [with Iran] if they don’t sign.”

I am all for more Abraham Accord partners, but Trump is mistaken if he thinks that such advances can sugarcoat a bad deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran; a deal that might leave Iran with much of its enriched uranium and its nuclear and missile production facilities, and that would give Iran tens of billions of dollars of sanctions relief and leave it in de facto control of the Strait of Hormuz.

No, a thaw in Indonesian ties with Israel or a Paki and Saudi smile at Israel cannot compensate for a bad deal with Iran. Such US-brokered delicacies would not be any consolation. Not even a booby prize.

Neither Israeli nor Arab leaders in the region are so gullible. Nobody will be mollified by nice handshakes on the White House lawn. Nobody will consider them a sufficient or substantive conclusion to the US military campaign to cripple Iran.

Trump must more decisively crush Iran, period. Only on top of that could additional Abraham Accord treaties be viewed as very fine refinements to the Mideast situation.

THREE central strategic considerations undergird my assessment.

First, nothing is more important than ending Iran’s hegemonic march to control the Mideast, to intimidate the West and Western allies in the region, and to annihilate Israel. Operations Epic Fury and Roaring Lion, as well as the 12-day war against Iran in 2025, have gone a long way in doing so.

But the job is incomplete. America (and Israel) have the ability to knock Iran back much father, and collapse of the radical Islamic clerical regime in Tehran is within reach too. The military and economic siege on Iran is truly effective, and additional strikes on that country’s energy and internal security nodes could drive the mullahs over the cliff.

Trump ought not retreat now. He certainly should not try to sell us a JCPOA Mark II accord (a reheated, slightly varnished version of then-President Obama’s rotten 2015 nuclear deal with Iran) with a puny Abraham Accords cherry on top.

The second strategic consideration is the seriousness of the Abraham Accords. The Accords truly were and remain the bedrock for a transformed Middle East; the most exciting and promising foundations for Arab-Israeli peace and regional stability, and for ideological rehabilitation from within of the Arab world towards modernity, moderation, and tolerance.

In other words, the Accords are too meaningful and meaty, too brave and consequential, to be treated as chickenfeed; as watery icing meant to smooth over defeat in the Arabian Gulf. You cannot whitewash the survival and strengthening of the ayatollahs with diplomatic pronouncements that merely promise featherlike melting of hostilities toward Israel.

Again, give us real victory over Iran, and then give us substantial Abraham Accord partnerships. Fudging either would be a grave mistake.

THE THIRD strategic consideration is that the Trump administration, for all its brave and forceful confrontation of Iran, has blinders on regarding the double-dealing and back-stabbing of Saudi Arabia and Turkey (and Pakistan too). Both countries have undermined the American and Israeli war effort, and neither is anywhere close to, or deserving of, upgraded ties with Israel.

Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS) of Saudi Arabia denied basing rights for assault on Iran to the US Air Force and failed to contribute his own large US-supplied air force to the war effort – unlike his courageous counterpart Mohammed Bin Zayed of the UAE. MBS also has not really backed American efforts to force-out Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Recip Tayyip Erdogan, the dictator of Turkey, has supported Iran, not the US, throughout the war in multiple ways, while continuing to back Hamas and to undermine US attempts to draw Syria out of the radical Islamist camp.

Peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia? Yes, that has been the holy grail of regional peacemaking since the dawn of the Abraham Accords, but now it seems not only distant but unworthy. At this point, the Saudis need Israel more than Israel needs the Saudis, and the ungrateful Gulf kingdom does not deserve Israeli felicitations.

Israel should not pay any ridiculous price for rapprochement with Riyadh. It certainly should not bend to the outrageous Saudi demand for Palestinian statehood as the cost of an embassy staffed in Tel Aviv by a representative of MBS; certainly not after October 7 and Saudi lassitude in confronting Hamas and Iran.

In sum, Trump should not be treating the Abraham Accords as candy to cover-up capitulation to Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, the IRGC, and whoever might be in charge in Tehran today.

Strike now to enervate Iran; save the sweet glaze for later.

The post Trump can’t sugarcoat a bad deal with Iran appeared first on David M. Weinberg.

Defend, expand, and rule the city wisely. Celebrate it too.

Published in The Jerusalem Post, Yom Yerushalayim, 28 Iyyar 5786, May 15, 2026; and Israel Hayom, May 17, 2026. Print-friendly copy

Every year on Yom Ichud Yerushalayim (Jerusalem Unification Day), which is the proper full name of the holiday that all Jews should be celebrating today, I reconnect to the high Jewish/Zionist rhetoric about the city.

Jerusalem: The city that is the beating home of the Jewish heart, the capital that is ultimate expression of Jewish national renaissance, a place of birthright where you feel brushed by the wings of Divinity.

As Jews have sung and prayed for 3,000 years, “If I forget Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill. May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not consider Jerusalem my highest joy” (Psalms 137:5-6).

As Jews affirm at every wedding ceremony and at the climatic moments of Passover and Yom Kippur, “Next year in fully rebuilt Jerusalem!”

These aspirational sentiments genuinely drive to the core of my identity, and they reflect absolutist attitudes: I am not willing to compromise on the spiritual or political future of the united city.

My commitment to elevating and improving Jerusalem and turning it into the touchstone for global faith and peace is an ultimate and unequivocal one. And no one other than Jerusalem’s indigenous people, the Jewish People, and their sovereign government, the State of Israel, can do so.

INDEED, over the past almost 60 years, Israel has sagaciously transformed the city from a backwater town to a truly radiant international capital city sparkling with energy and creativity. Israel has developed Jerusalem as an attractive city because it cares; because Jerusalem is the historic centerpiece of Jewish peoplehood and the modern State of Israel.

To be blunt: Arabs have never really cared about Jerusalem. In fact, the Palestinians of today would consider it a triumph if Jerusalem were so wracked by conflict and poverty that it was ruined for 1,000 years – just as long as it would be lost to the Jews.

Therefore, Israel must declare clearly and proudly: A united Jerusalem under exclusive Israeli sovereignty is the key, not an obstacle, to peace and security in the city. The violent bisection of Jerusalem would be exceedingly unfair to Jewish history, an undue insult to Israel’s fine stewardship of the city, and patently unwise.

The belligerent cleaving of Jerusalem into Arab and Jewish sovereignties would plunge the city into battle. Jerusalem would become the bullseye of radical Islamic fantasies; a city that would make Belfast at its worst look like paradise; the locus of a next October 7-like slaughter.

So don’t talk nonsense to me about carving up the city. A partitioned Jerusalem will die, and lead to violence that would suck the lifeblood from the city in every way – culturally, religiously, economically, and more.

BUT OF COURSE, ruling a united Jerusalem carries with it great responsibility, and Israel must do an even better job than it has thus far. It must defend, expand, and administer the city generously for all residents.

On the security side, this means rebuffing radical Islamic and Turkish subversion in Jerusalem alongside the nefarious activities of hostile foreign NGOs, enforcing security perimeters around the city (– the security fence is a dangerous, sad joke), halting wildcat building in the Arab sector, ending Moslem violence and incitement to violence on the Temple Mount, and protecting Christian and other religious minority leaders from harassment.

(I applaud the decision announced this week to turn the compound near Ammunition Hill from which the rotten UNRWA was finally evicted last year into a national site housing an IDF museum and new recruitment center.)

On the civilian side, this means expanding the borders of Jerusalem to build at least 6,000 new apartments every year for young families. It means investing in the welfare of Jerusalemite Arabs in the eastern precincts of the city through upgraded roads and water/sewage infrastructure, authorized/controlled home building, many new classrooms (in Arab schools that teach Hebrew and the Israeli high school curriculum), employment initiatives, local police stations to handle civilian matters, etc. I also think that the 400,000 Jerusalemite Arabs should be offered Israeli citizenship.

On the religious side, this means fair sharing of the holy sites, especially Har HaBayit, the Temple Mount. There is plenty of room, loads of undeveloped and even desolate sections of land on the vast Temple Mount Plaza where a Jewish house of prayer could be built without interfering in any way with Moslem shrines and prayer practices.

Nobody needs to feel threatened by the presence of Jewish petitioners tucked-away in a corner of the holy mount. Unless of course your opposition to Jewish prayer and visitation stems from wholesale denial of indigenous Jewish rights in Jerusalem and the Land of Israel – which alas has become almost-mainstream Palestinian discourse.

It is time to negotiate space- and time-sharing arrangements on the holy mount (like those in place at Maarat HaMachpela, the Tomb of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs in Hebron), based on principles of peace, tolerance, and religious freedom – for Jews and non-Jews alike.

In short, Israel ought to increase investment in all aspects and sectors of Israel’s capital for the greater good of both Jewish and Arab residents. More rigorous security control, good governance on the local level, and equitable management of the holy sites, are the core of sovereign political action that will keep Jerusalem whole. Taken together, these moves will ensure forward Zionist momentum to secure the national goal of a livable, prosperous, and luminous Jerusalem.

ON YOM YERUSHALAYIM 5748 (1988), the late, great scholar and religious leader Rabbi Dr. Aharon Lichtenstein told his yeshiva students that “It is important that we know how to appreciate the privilege of walking in the streets of Jerusalem. The dream held dear by generations has come true; the dream of hundreds and thousands of years….”

“But we must appreciate Jerusalem not just as a capital which is flourishing economically, esthetically, socially, and politically, but also as (an expression of) the Divine Presence appearing and disappearing ‘on the mountains of spices/separation’ (– see the Song of Songs 2:17). We should see not only the glory that exists, but also long for the glory that was prophesized. A formidable challenge awaits us. We must realize that longing and seek to set matters right.”

Indeed, Yom Ichud Yerushalayim should be appreciated and celebrated in all its manifestations – as a historic achievement, a political challenge, and a spiritual opportunity. It should become a true national holiday, a highlight of the Jewish year, no less than Yom Haatzmaut (Israel Independence Day). It should also be an election campaign issue: Who is best going to dynamically develop Jerusalem?

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The post Don’t take united Jerusalem for granted appeared first on David M. Weinberg.

Israeli society enjoys a sense of righteousness and grit, and the Israeli state possesses military and economic might, which make Israel a model for the world. It is an exemplar for how to deal with challenges to national health and existential danger. This is a theme that ought to dominate Israeli public diplomacy (“hasbara”) in the coming years.

Published in The Jerusalem Post, May 8, 2026; and Israel Hayom, May 10, 2026. Print-friendly copy

Key to discussions about rebuilding Israel’s reputation around the world is the question of purpose. What does Israel have to offer the world? Is there something more than high-tech ingenuity that makes Israel admirable?

The answer is resilience. Israeli society enjoys a sense of righteousness and grit, and the Israeli state possesses military and economic might, which make Israel a model for the world.

This is a theme that ought to dominate Israeli public diplomacy (“hasbara”) in the coming years.

Resilience is the ultimate essential commodity for facing bleak global realities. The world-at-large is threatened by very bad state actors like Russia, China, and Iran – with hard military conflicts ahead; by hegemonic transnational movements such as radical Islam that seek to undermine Western societies from within and pose a growing terrorist peril; by corrosive ideologies that contradict that values of Judeo-Christian civilization and classic democratic creed; and by distorted historical narratives that delegitimize the foundations of national sovereignty.

The stability of modern life also is threatened by the epidemics of drug use and depression, and family and community dissolution; by technologies that destroy privacy and promote distrust; and by global economic interdependence that crushes entire classes and countries and which fuels hatred and violence.

Israel is an exemplar for how to deal with all these challenges to national health and existential danger. It is country that throughout its nearly 80 years has successfully confronted extreme security threats and ideological delegitimization — by carrying grand historical-ideological awareness and a stirring national identity, developing deep patriotism that embraces the pride and privilege of fighting for the country, inculcating love of the land and of neighbor, and maintaining religious faith.

Israel also has made the hard choices and sacrifices that are necessary for sustaining heavy-duty national defense and a robust economy, and the results are amazing.

In all, Israel is resilient. It thrives while its haters flounder. It is a paradigm of how to stand strong and uphold a noble cause with clarity, something that the rest of the embattled world needs to rediscover.

CONSIDER the identity statistics. According to every poll conducted over the past decade, Israeli youth believe deeply and optimistically in the future of this country. Ninety percent plan to stay here, no matter what. Over 85% think that the IDF is the most moral army in the world. At least 65% say it would be worthy to die for country, if necessary.

More than 75% categorically prefer to buy “Blue & White” (Israeli-made products), and 84% prefer to buy from Israeli or international companies that contribute to the war/national effort.

More than 60% say that social solidarity, volunteerism, and family values are what make Israel great. This, even though over 80% of high schoolers think the chances for peace with the Palestinians are minimal to nil. In short, our youth know that Israel is more than the sum total of conflict with the Palestinians or with Iran, and believe that Israel will manage and even prosper.

The determined sentiments of Israeli youth are of a piece with the resilience demonstrated by broad segments of the Israeli public. This ranges from muscular mothers holding down the home front to the hundreds of thousands of Israelis (and Diaspora Jews) who are volunteering in myriad ways during wartime to make up labor shortfalls in fields, factories, and hospitals, and to heal and rehabilitate the war widows, the many wounded, and the displaced.

This overall buoyancy stems from the grand historical-ideological awareness and other markers of devotion I described above. Indeed, Israeli society is undergirded by a “civil religion” of sorts – a latent faith that buttresses public and political life. It is what the late, great Lord Rabbi Dr. Jonathan Sacks (the most prolific Jewish philosopher of our day) calls public theology; a sense of national purpose and identity that is shared by almost all Israelis.

This is not empty convention. Regardless of how or whether they adhere to religious ritual, Israelis understand themselves as holding a moral bond, and as being chosen – yes, chosen! – for a task. They feel a responsibility for advancing Jewish civilization, which the Bible roots in building an exceptional polity in Zion. And thus, Israelis will fight unflaggingly for their freedom.

Moreover, the Jewish People aspires to be an instrument for broadcasting essential values to the world. Among other, this explains why Israelis are among the first to fly across the world to provide aid in times of natural disaster; why they are so proud of their global medical and scientific contributions; and why scholarly international academic collaborations are essential to their soul. Yes, even now, when parts of Western academia want to boycott Israelis and Jews.

No one can claim that life in Israel has been carefree or lighthearted since the Hamas invasion of October 2023 and the ensuing wars on seven fronts. But as longevity and happiness studies show (in which Israel ranks among the highest in the world), there are motivators in life that can overcome duress and turn challenges into blessings.

Israelis are not superheroes. But they are people who love their land, believe in their country and their historical mission, adore their children, and are intent on seeing their families, neighbors and brethren protected, defended, and supported.

Israel is big, powerful, and wealthy enough to fiercely defend its way; and at the same time, big, powerful, and wealthy enough to be educated, generous and tolerant. Secure in its heritage, Israel is confident about its abilities and capable of contributing to the world.

CONSIDER the economic statistics. Despite a three-year-long war footing, the International Monetary Fund still expects Israel’s economy to grow by 3.5% in 2026 (compared to 2.3% for the U.S. and 1.3% for the EU). Israel’s GDP is forecast to outperform all G7 countries too. The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange is booming (outpacing major international indices such as the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite).

Foreign investment continues to play a decisive role in Israel’s economic strength, staying high despite the recent wars, as has high-tech merger and acquisition activity (almost $100 billion in 2025). Egypt and Israel have signed the biggest natural gas deal in Mideast history, worth $35 billion. The UAE and Morocco have reached multi-billion-dollar defense deals with Israel.

Israel itself is expected to invest $120 billion over the coming decade to develop an arms industry not dependent on foreign suppliers; atop $50 billion a year in direct military spending.

IN SHORT, possessing a sense of purpose has always been central to community and nation building, in any society. It provides direction and spirit, and generates the hardiness necessary for confronting enemies.

Traditional American political discourse knew this, and sought to place redemption, liberty, morality, and Divine covenant – themes explicitly drawn from the Exodus story – at the center of public life.

The Founding Fathers of America also possessed an abiding belief in the essential goodness and uniqueness of America; what is known as conviction in American “exceptionalism.” They all shared the sense that something great, even miraculous, was at work in America; and this informed an “evangelical” (eager) American responsibility to lead the world.

Alas, the 44th president of the USA, Barack H. Obama, was not comfortable with American leadership in world affairs. He explicitly viewed America’s past to be arrogant and high-handed. He set out to “fundamentally transform” America’s place in the world; to strip the United States of its superior position; to drag America down from its “imperious” perch.

He thought that he would be leaving the world a better place by cutting unexceptional America (and unremarkable Israel) down to size. Alas, he was quite successful in doing so.

His intellectual molder is what, among other, cobbles the West’s ability to today confront, say, modern Islamofascism or Russian/Chinese imperialism. It is what prevents the renewal of Western resolve to defend itself; a tenacity that can only come from profound intellectual, moral, and societal rearmament, as well as concrete military rearmament. It also is what prevents certain Western elites from identifying with Israel and its heroic, successful struggles.

Time to reverse this. It is time to flaunt the resilience of Zion. There are enough smart and searching citizens of the world, and hopefully Western leaders, who will take heart and take example from Israel’s brave path. Israel the resilient – this is critical branding for the country’s advocacy going forward.

The post Resilience is the answer appeared first on David M. Weinberg.

Should Israeli public diplomacy narrow-cast to dramatically differing audiences? Perhaps, but total polarization regarding Israel is not inevitable, and legacy Jewish organizations should not be dismantled. There might still be a moderate middle to work with.

Published in The Jerusalem Post, May 1, 2026; and Israel Hayom, May 2, 2026. Print-friendly copy

With the recent appointment of new “public diplomacy” chiefs in the Prime Minister’s Office and Foreign Ministry, it is time to rethink approaches in Israeli “hasbara.”

This is especially true following the war with Iran which has alienated large segments of global opinion from Israel; after a devastating vote in Congress (where most Democratic Senators voted to block the sale of munitions and military material to Israel); in the wake of renewed initiatives to boycott Israel in Europe; and given the spiraling, blended antisemitic and anti-Israel violence everywhere.

Sixteen months ago, I detailed a plan for Israel (that largely has been adopted over the past year by Israeli foreign minister Gideon Saar and deputy foreign minister Sharren Haskel) to focus on bringing many missions of “influencers” to Israel. Nothing, but nothing, more effectively develops friends for Israel than a well-planned visit to this country. Such visits are always overwhelmingly transformative.

Getting relevant influencers to visit Israel is hard work, especially since the violent anti-Israel hordes abroad are attempting to make Israel into a contaminated product, and they have succeeded is raising the social cost of sympathy and support for Israel. Indeed, in the current moment, there are certain publics that just will not visit Israel.

But there are important target sectors with residual basic goodwill towards Israel whose thought leaders and community activists can and must be invited to visit here to discover Israel in all its richness; its aspirations, beauty, battles, warts, and all. The Foreign Ministry has facilitated the visit of more than 200 such missions over the past year.

Early in 2025, I additionally outlined a necessary revolution in Israel’s messaging – also adopted by Saar – involving an embrace of Israeli strength and a restoration Jewish faith to Israel’s diplomatic arsenal, to match Israel’s necessarily aggressive strategic and defense posture.

After all, 25 years of Oslo-era hasbara epistles have not worked. It is simply insufficient to explain Israel’s security dilemmas or emphasize Israel’s past and potentially future diplomatic generosity towards the Palestinians.

Needed is forthright talk about Israeli ferociousness – the justified use of power to fight Iran, Islamic jihadism, and annihilationist-against-Israel Palestinianism; and a narrative that proclaims incontrovertible, indigenous Jewish rights in Israel, and which speaks of Israel as a grand reunion of faith, people, and land. People are forced to respect these messages, even if they may not impute to Israel spectacular charity.

Since then, this newspaper has hosted a range of proposals for diversifying and deepening Israel’s public diplomacy (and also strengthening Israel-Diaspora relations).

This includes the wise writings of Jerusalem Post editor-in-chief Zvika Klein for outreach to an “extra nine million” (foreign leaders and peoples who hold some religious or ethnic connection to Judaism) and to civilizational leaders (like Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India) who can and must be long-term strategic allies.

Others have laid out serious civil rights strategies focused on robust legal protections for Jews and vigorous defense of Israel in the courts. And some thinkers have called for a wholesale shift in funding away from Jewish defense organizations towards investment in educational institutions that can revitalize Jewish life and re-stoke Jewish resilience in the Diaspora.

THE FRESHEST and most disruptive thinking I have seen about Israel advocacy appears in a long essay just published by Uriel Zehavi on his “Israel Brief” website.

He contends that since bipartisan consensus on every issue in Western democracies has broken down, pro-Israel advocacy must change too. It must splinter into separate tracks and institutions.

Zehavi explains that today politically salient issues are absorbed into partisan identity. They get “sorted” in a way that codes issues in zero-sum terms, feeding into a deep liberal-conservative divide that is not easily reversed.

As a result, liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats (not to mention conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats) no longer coexist in overlapping coalitions. They travel in completely different ideological ecosystems, fed by different medias and elites, and espousing values and “truths” that are incompatible with the values and truths of the other side.

This goes for the “Israel issue” too. Progressive activists today code Israel as aligned with nationalism and militarism, and not with their preferred values of minority rights, democratic norms, and humanitarian law.

On the other hand, Conservative audiences positively code Israel as aligned with faith, family values, Biblical ties, freedom, and military resilience, while affirmations about Israel’s human rights and democratic affinities sound mushy or needlessly defensive, and are even alienating.

As such, the architecture built over decades that promotes Israel as a bipartisan issue – say, by organizations like AIPAC – no longer works well, according to Zehavi. The vocabulary they built about Israel – security alliance, shared democratic values, and strategic cooperation – no longer resonates effortlessly in the same way on both sides of the harsh political divide.

Therefore, he argues, Israel advocates need entirely different arguments, vocabularies, and messengers for democratic/liberal and republican/conservative audiences. They must narrow-cast one or another narrative, instead of broadcasting the single-pipeline messaging that once worked in an era of consensus politics.

ZEHAVI OFFERS the following example. A moderate Democrat processing a news item about an IDF strike in Gaza routes the item through his camp’s reigning moral psychology, the prism of harm/care and fairness/reciprocity – how many civilians were hit, what was the proportionality, what does humanitarian law say, was there a reasonable alternative, etc.

A moderate Republican will process the same news item through his default values of loyalty, authority, and sanctity – highlighting the facts that Israel is an ally, the ally is defending itself, allies deserve support, Israel authorized the operation inside its own sovereign decision-making framework and the challenge to that authority is itself suspect, the defense of Israel carries Biblical covenantal significance while third-party concerns are secondary, etc.

In short, the same event enters two completely different moral processors belonging to two brutally sorted political camps with bifurcated vocabularies. In this reality, single-message architecture fails; it does not land equally and simultaneously well on the moderate Democratic core’s individualizing foundations or the moderate Republican core’s nationalist foundations.

Instead, Zehavi would have Israel deploy multiple public diplomacy directorates that would share intelligence and research but operate with different messages and framings.

One would employ Republican-track messaging through recognizable republican/conservative messengers, via evangelical broadcasting, national-security conservative platforms, and think-tank partners like Heritage, Hudson, and AEI.

The other directorate would drive democratic/liberal messaging through Democratic-recognizable messengers with humanitarian-law and shared-democratic-values framing calibrated to Obama-alumni foreign policy networks and liberal media outlets, and via think-tank partners like Brookings, Carnegie, and CNAS.

This is intrepid thinking that must be considered seriously, especially since the Diaspora Jewish world is badly divided along partisan lines too. Zehavi: “The Jewish community itself has sorted into two partisan containers. An American Jewish community that includes 74% Donald Trump Orthodox voters and 84% Kamala Harris Reform voters cannot be lobbied as a single constituency or speak in one voice.” So why not embrace the differences and work both sides of the divide distinctively.

I THINK THAT Zehavi’s analysis is stronger than his prescription. His strategy for divergent messaging issuing formally from Jerusalem and from contrary advocacy organizations would surely lead to a credibility deficit. And on the other hand, two-track hasbara architecture already exists to some extent. For example, missions to Israel are programmed very differently for liberal and conservative groups.

Furthermore, consensus organizations like AIPAC are still effective with some important audiences – even if their reach and salience is diminishing, as Zehavi maintains.

In a retort to Zehavi, George Mason University law professor David E. Bernstein asserts that despite the terrible “sort” into rigid, rival political camps, mainstream Americans including most Democrats are overwhelmingly repulsed by terrorism and overt antisemitism.

Therefore, the more that radical anti-Israel movements fuse themselves with excuses for terrorism, harassment of Jewish students, or conspiracy-laden rhetoric about Jews and power, the more they will repel most Americans (and Canadians and others) who still have the moral clarity to distinguish between criticizing Israeli policy and celebrating mass murder.

Consequently, total polarization regarding Israel is not inevitable, and legacy Jewish organizations should not be dismantled. There might still be a moderate middle to work with.

The post How to do hasbara in a partisan world appeared first on David M. Weinberg.

There is much that US and Israel and others can do to support the emergence of a muscular Iranian opposition movement. This includes running an aggressive propaganda campaign against the regime (through, for example, a dedicated anti-regime media outlet), training of opposition factions inside Iran and supplying them with weapons, more overt and covert strikes on key IRGC and Basij commanders, and further degradation of Iran’s proxy armies in Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza, and Yemen.

Most important of all is maintenance of the current oil and economic blockade on Iran, with no sanctions relief for the regime and no withdrawal of significant US military forces from the region.

Learn to act from the late Uri Lubrani.

Published in The Jerusalem Post and Israel Hayom, April 24, 2026. Print-friendly copy

With large-scale US military action against Iran apparently winding down, it is time for stage two of the campaign against the radical Islamic Republic: Knocking the Ayatollahs and the Revolutionary Guards out of power. Time for regime change.

With the right backing from abroad, this ought to be possible. Millions of Iranians surely want it. And while neither US President Trump nor Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu defined regime change as a formal goal of their current military assault on Iran, both leaders have encouraged Iranian protestors to take their country back; to recapture Iran from the clutches of the genocidal, bloodthirsty thugs who continue to oppress Iranians and who want to crush the West and destroy Israel.

After all, only regime change can truly neutralize Iran’s nuclear threat for the long term, and only the Iranian people themselves can overturn the regime.

There is much that US and Israel and others can do to support the emergence of a muscular Iranian opposition movement. This includes running an aggressive propaganda campaign against the regime (through, for example, a dedicated anti-regime media outlet), training of opposition factions inside Iran and supplying them with weapons, more overt and covert strikes on key IRGC and Basij commanders, and further degradation of Iran’s proxy armies in Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza, and Yemen.

Most important of all is maintenance of the current oil and economic blockade on Iran, with no sanctions relief for the regime and no withdrawal of significant US military forces from the region.

The US, Israel and others should have been working on this over the past 40 years, but almost nobody did so. Alas, anybody who advocated for assiduous efforts at regime change in Iran was considered a quirky and pesky purveyor of unrealistic policies.

One such Don Quixote was the late, great Israeli intelligence official Uri Lubrani, who died in 2018 (and I eulogized him them as an unrequited prophet). His foremost desire was to see the Islamic revolutionary regime in Iran overthrown, and he passionately believed that Israel and Western powers could and should do much more to bring this about.

Lubrani was a fixture in the Israeli foreign affairs and defense establishment for 60 years, and I was fortunate to know him. He smuggled Jewish immigrants into British-Mandate Palestine while serving in the Haganah and fought in the War of Independence. He was bureau chief to foreign minister Moshe Sharett, and Arab affairs advisor and bureau director to prime minister and defense minister David Ben-Gurion. He served under every administration all the way through to Netanyahu.

While serving as ambassador to Ethiopia, he orchestrated Operation “Operation Solomon,” which brought 20,000 Ethiopian Jews to Israel. In the 1980s he was coordinator of operations in Lebanon and made ultimately unsuccessful efforts to repatriate captured Israeli airman Ron Arad.

Most notably, he served as Israel’s head of mission in Tehran from 1973-1978, the final years of the Jewish state’s strong ties to Iran before the fall of the Shah. His claim to fame was that he foresaw the fall of the Shah six months before it happened; but nobody believed him, including CIA analysts.

Lubrani embarked on a one-man, 40-year-long campaign to foment regime change in Iran. He authored articles and policy papers arguing that this was possible and should be a priority program, and he presented his arguments to anyone in Washington and Jerusalem who would listen to him; but not too many officials would.

He believed that Iran would get a nuclear weapon one way or another, and he fervently felt that alongside Iran’s radical Islamic revolutionary ambitions this would threaten the entire world. Therefore, he passionately argued, the only way to preclude the threat was by supporting change from within Iran.

In 2010 he said: “The real issue is not the (nuclear) weapon itself, but who has their finger on the trigger. Therefore, the current regime must be replaced by a rational one.”

Lubrani was convinced that regime change in Iran was feasible and even inevitable. “I believe that Tehran can be taken over by a relatively small force, determined, ruthless, cruel,” he told the BBC in 1982. He sought to stitch together a network of Iranian dissidents who one day might act, and he sought Western psychological warfare and financial assistance for these opposition figures.

When the Green Revolution rocked the streets of Teheran and other major cities following the corrupt Iranian elections of 2009, Lubrani was joined by some experts who felt that an opportunity was at hand to reinforce the protestors and bring about an end to the regime of the Ayatollahs.

But Barack Obama, who was president of the US at that time, was deaf to the pleas of the Iranian protestors, and to free-Iran advocates like Lubrani. Instead, Obama already was secretly promising goodies to the Ayatollahs in exchange for a nuclear deal.

Lubrani was out of commission when a round of social-political protests rocked Iran in December 2012, but you could hear echoes of Lubrani in the ensuing public policy debates. Could this lead to regime change in Iran; should America and other important actors weigh-in with moral and material support for the protestors; or would such Western “interference” only delegitimize the protestors and backfire?

Sure enough, the usual suspects (mainly former Obama administration officials) argued that Washington should stand back and do no more than pray for the protestors. They noted that the Islamic Republic’s apparatuses were vast and sturdy, that the Iranian machine of oppression was well-oiled and brutal, and that Tehran’s regional and international alliances were impressive and empowering – so the likelihood of overthrowing the regime was slim; it was wishful thinking, at best. And anyway, there was Obama’s signature “achievement” – the JCPOA nuclear agreement – to protect and defend.

Other analysts, however, noted a qualitative difference in the 2012 protests, and saw opportunities to weaken the regime. As opposed to economic and corruption protests of the past, this new round had a nationalist edge to it, meaning that the demonstrators were calling for a return to Iran of before the Islamic revolution.

“Stop investing in Syria, start investing in us” (halt the imperial overstretch), “Clerics, go home, free the country,” and “Death to Khamenei, we want (Shah) Pahlavi” – were the protest slogans.

These are exactly the slogans that drove the mass protests in the streets of Iran this year, in 2026, too, with hundreds of thousand of Iranians seeking to bring down the regime – until Ayatollah Khamenei (who is now in purgatory) slaughtered tens of thousands of his own citizens, and Trump told the protestors to hold off until he completes decapitation of regime leaders.

Sure, the rhetoric of Western support for Iranian protestors this year has been far more pronounced than ever before. Even some European leaders have said that all freedom-loving peoples must stand with Iranian protestors, that Tehran is a dictatorship on borrowed time, that the immunity of the regime is a myth, and so on. But rhetoric is cheap.

Prime Minister Netanyahu: “We stand with those in Iran who stand for freedom. I believe that a day will come when this horrible tyranny will disappear… And at that point, the historic friendship between the people of Israel and the people of Persia will be reestablished.”

Mossad chief David Barnea (speaking on Holocaust Remembrance Day last week): “Our commitment will only be complete once the extremist regime in Iran is replaced. This regime that seeks our destruction must pass from this world. This is our mission. We will not stand by, watching, in the face of another existential threat.”

US President Trump: “To the great, proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand… When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”

Fine words and fine sentiment. But what is concretely being done beyond attenuated airstrikes to advance a real Iranian counter-revolution? Not clear…

The post Drive regime change in Iran now appeared first on David M. Weinberg.

The war against Iran had a coherent cause and was strategically successful. It is dishonest to deny this.

Published in The Jerusalem Post and Israel Hayom, April 17, 2026. Print-friendly copy

Operations Epic Fury and Roaring Lion have achieved their core strategic objectives: halting Iran’s advance toward nuclear weapons capability and significantly degrading its ballistic missile program – both of which posed a significant threat to Israel, Arab states, and Western interests.

It is dishonest to deny this. It is politically jaundiced to allege that the war was nothing more than reckless adventurism and to call it a slam-dunk failure.

Consider the clear and present danger posed by Iran prior to the war. It had nearly one thousand pounds (440 kg.) of enriched uranium, close enough to weapons grade that the IAEA said the Iranians could have fuel for up to nine nuclear bombs within a week. This, in violation of every nuclear restriction accord Iran had signed with the West.

Iran also was producing over 100 ballistic missiles a month, moving towards a situation where Iranian missile and drone stocks could overwhelm the defense of Israel and every American base in the region. Iran also was moving its nuclear and missile manufacturing facilities into bunkers buried too deeply underground for effective strikes against them.

In a historic joint military effort involving over 15,000 air strikes over the past six weeks, the US and Israeli air forces eviscerated Iranian air defenses, wrecked the Iranian navy and air force, destroyed Iranian missile launchers, stockpiles, and manufacturing sites, smashed Iranian plants and energy facilities that fed the nuclear and ballistic missile industries, assassinated senior scientists critical to the nuclear and missile industries, eliminated army commanders and leaders of internal repression forces by the thousands, and decapitated the radical clerical leadership which provided genocidal validation for Iran’s hegemonic advances.

Even without capture of Iran’s highly enriched uranium (which reportedly has been buried in the ruins of Isfahan ever since Operation Midnight Hammer last year), Iran likely has no ability to produce a nuclear bomb at this stage since the entire manufacturing chain in which Iran advanced toward a bomb was hit.

The war also deepened the economic pit in which Iran is mired. The US and Israel targeted significant dual-use infrastructure, including petrochemical processing facilities and steel production plants which collectively account for 15 percent of Iran’s total GDP and over 60 percent of its non-oil industrial output.

The current US blockade of Hormuz threatens Iran’s last remaining financial lifeline: oil revenue, which accounts for 50 percent of the state budget.

OVERALL, Iran lost strategic, military, infrastructural, and economic assets. It wrecked its relations with Arab Gulf states too, since it hit them with over 6,000 missiles and drones – ending up in splendid regional isolation.

Notably, Iran struggled to mount a meaningful military response against American and Israeli forces, whether through its own capabilities or via proxies. Iran’s defense arrays and supposedly formidable intelligence services were exposed as porous. Iranians witnessed the regime’s humiliation.

This importantly reveals the gap between reality and radical Islamic propaganda which had portrayed Iran as a power on the march, shaping the region around itself. The war also shattered the regime’s internal legitimacy. A state that commands genuine consent does not need to kill on a grand scale to clear the streets.

Indeed, Iran’s conduct during the war underscored the inevitability of the war. The Islamic Republic launched ferocious missile and drone attacks against its Arab neighbors, used cluster munitions against Israeli civilians, blockaded the Strait of Hormuz, and targeted points well beyond the region with heretofore hidden ballistic missile capacity.

Iran’s behavior clearly demonstrated that it cannot be trusted, that it poses a grave threat to regional and global security, and that it must be denied the ability to develop and deliver the ultimate weapon.

In sum, the six-week war was launched with coherent cause and purpose. It was a moral and necessary endeavor, it was a successful skirmish, and it changed the strategic picture for the better.

Imminent Iranian threats were neutralized, Iran’s strategic capabilities suffered a severe (although reversible) blow, and the regime’s stability was shaken – even if it totters on for a while.

HAVING triumphed in war, American and Israel must now win the narrative over the war, upholding the morality of the campaign and asserting the justice of the harsh restrictions on Iran going forward that are essential.

Preserving war gains requires prevention of Iran’s recovery – unless and until the country forgoes its threatening military programs and aggressive regional posture. The only way for Iran to recover is by accepting deescalation on American terms.

To this end, the US must continue to choke Iran (no significant sanctions relief); isolate Iran (prevent soft European or Gulf Arab overtures to Iran); maintain military pressure on Iran (no near-term withdrawal of American forces from the region); ride herd on the enriched uranium (and strike again any reactivated nuclear development site); and support the emergence of a muscular Iranian opposition movement (supply them with weapons).

As for Israel: Well, Israelis learned an important lesson which is to maintain a proactive defense posture including strategic ascendancy against the biggest and farthest enemies. Through outstanding military planning and execution, and with a staunch Great Power ally, Israel defeated Iran and can do it again.

Israel defeated Iran even though that country is 10 times larger than Israel, is over 1,000 kilometers away from Israel, and was fueling four proxy armies on Israel’s borders comprising tens of thousands of fighters with hundreds of thousands of rockets.

Equally important is the forbearance of Israelis, who showed that they can heroically weather full-scale war with Iran – in fact, two wars within one year.

Even during the war’s most intense days, the economy stayed open. Roads damaged by enemy warheads were repaved and reopened to traffic within hours. Discipline regarding homeland defense guidelines was impressive. Those who nevertheless lost their homes to Iranian bombs or were wounded are being well cared for. Families celebrated the Purim and Passover holidays quietly and cautiously, at home. Israelis are resilient.

The hardship was worth it. After all, the alternative to this successful war – a surging Iran armed with nuclear weapons and thousands of ballistic missiles – would have been enormously worse than anything Israelis have endured.

The post Justice and triumph in war appeared first on David M. Weinberg.

Don’t listen to the defeatists that gloomily dominate American and Israeli airwaves this weekend driving a double sourpuss narrative – that the war against Iran was politically vain and/or militarily futile. Both accusations are nasty; neither is accurate. The six-week war was the most moral and necessary campaign, and it has dramatically changed the strategic picture for the better.

Rest assured: Israel will hunt down its enemies, not be hounded by them. An utter rout of the ayatollahs is coming.

Published in The Jerusalem Post and Israel Hayom, April 10, 2026. Print-friendly copy

Do not listen to the defeatists that gloomily dominate American and Israeli airwaves this weekend driving a double sourpuss narrative – that the war against Iran was politically vain and/or militarily futile. Both accusations are nasty; neither is accurate.

The six-week war was the most moral and necessary campaign, and it has dramatically changed the strategic picture for the better.

Iran is cadaverously deadened and the US and Israel are hegemonically strengthened. When the fight continues – not this month or even this year, but down the road – the “allies” will even more decisively defeat the “axis” so much easier.

Of course, the need to ferociously fight on is not what most Israelis want to hear now – as they blessedly send their kids back to school, rebuild their shattered homes, and overall try to restore some semblance of normalcy to life.

But nobody in Israel is under the illusion that the struggle against evil is over, and nobody should dare question the morality of Israel’s need for ongoing and crushing victories over its adversaries.

Israel will not return to the “containment” policies of recent decades that prioritized restraint and diplomacy over enemy degradation and military triumph. Israel’s changed security paradigm involves proactively asserting dominance along its borders and strategic ascendancy against threats farther away. Operation Roaring Lion was an excellent demonstration of this, as is the current Israeli offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Expect Israel to continue to make fierce and overwhelming moves against enemy strongholds from Sidon to Khan Yunis and Isfahan. It will attack, not defend. It will initiate, not respond. It will hunt down its enemies, not be hounded by them.

Israel needs to be feared, not loved. And it is a resilient country, not a wet rag that meekly accepts international restrictions and absorbs Western denunciations.

Therefore, regional and world leaders should get used to a revamped Mideast strategic situation anchored by a hard-hitting Israel.

Jerusalem knows that its neighbours will seek true reconciliation only when Israel is strong. Additional Abraham Accord-style peace treaties are possible and desirable, even with Saudi Arabia and perhaps this year, but these will be based on muscular defense partnerships, not mushy notions of goodwill.

IF THERE IS one major reason for disappointment with the current pause/end in operations Epic Fury and Roaring Lion it is the fact that regime change in Iran seems far off.

While this was not one of the formal goals of the war (as opposed to stripping Iran of its ballistic missile and nuclear weapon capabilities), everybody knows that without a counterrevolution in the radical Islamic republic, the war’s attainments can be considered only temporary. And there was a moment when overthrow of the ayatollahs seemed at hand.

Was the opportunity missed? Not necessarily. In fact, a rout of the ayatollahs (– those ayatollahs who escaped Israel’s successful, broad decapitation crusade against 50 top genocidal clerics) may still be coming soon.

My guru on this matter is Mehdi Parpanchi, executive editor at Iran International TV and former Iran Service Director at Radio Farda. He was the most incisive analyst throughout the war.

Parpanchi explains that battlefield metrics are a poor measure of political reality. Political systems do not always collapse during war. Often, they collapse in the aftermath, when military failure gives way to elite fracture and a society no longer willing to live as before.

Consider the aftermath: Iran’s economy is in dire condition. It was so before the war, and the destruction wrought to Iran’s industrial and export base by the 30,000 coalition bombs is gargantuan, almost unsurmountable. Let us hope that US President Trump keeps Iran under a heavy regime of economic sanctions.

On the strategic level, the assaults on Iran on June 2025 and March 2026 exposed the gap between radical Islamic propaganda and reality. For years, Ali Khamenei and his IRGC commanders boasted about indigenous air-defense systems. They told Iranians that even the most sophisticated US and Israeli aircraft could not operate over Iran. Billions were spent developing these systems and building an image of invulnerability. That myth collapsed on first contact with reality.

Furthermore, for years the Islamic Republic spoke of control over four Arab capitals, of a powerful Shia crescent across the Mideast. It presented itself as a power on the march – expanding, advancing, and shaping the region around itself. When Assad fell, when Syria was lost, and when the proxies took crippling blows, that image began to collapse. What had been presented as strategic depth looks increasingly like an expensive illusion.

Internally, the 12-day war shattered the regime’s image of competence, control, and strength. Much of the population that opposed the regime saw it humiliated and were openly pleased to see it struck so hard.

The events of Jan. 8-9, 2026, marked a decisive shift in Iran’s political landscape, according to Parpanchi. In Tehran, an estimated 1.5 million people took to the streets, with similar scenes repeated in 400 cities, with total participation reaching five million people. The state responded with lethal force that killed an estimated 36,000 people in 48 hours. According to Parpanchi, the scale of the violence shattered the narrative that the Islamic Republic still ruled with some measure of public consent. A state that still commands genuine consent does not need to kill on such a scale to clear the streets.

THEREFORE, the Islamic Republic may have somewhat survived this war, but it is unlikely to survive the peace. It is a regime in collapse phase, Parpanchi asserts.

The US and Israel must now push the regime over the edge. They can do so by choking Iran economically (no sanctions relief); by maintaining military pressure on Iran (no withdrawal of American forces from the region); by diplomatically further isolating Iran (no soft European or Gulf Arab overtures to Iran); by strategically humiliating the ayatollahs (take away their enriched uranium); and by finally getting serious about supporting the emergence of a muscular Iranian opposition movement (supply them with weapons).

All this will encourage the chances of widespread defections among military and other Iranian elites.

In sum, nobody should join the hypocrisy of the “West’s weepers” for the Islamic Republic or help the mullahs evade the utter rout that is their inevitable lot. (“Nauseating weepers” is what Brendan O’Neill calls all those outraged about America’s strikes on Iran, but who were silent when the ayatollahs slaughtered thousands of their countrymen in the streets).

Nobody should bow before the agents of depression in America, Europe, or Israel who peddle a jaundiced, politically malign account of this just, successful war.

And nobody should doubt the ability of Israel to withstand and win its wars, again and again, as necessary.

The post Israel will fight on ferociously appeared first on David M. Weinberg.

Israel is asserting a forward defensive security zone on all fronts, amounting to long-term military control of critical territories alongside diminution of hostile civilian populations. From Israel’s perspective there are no more “sacrosanct” borders in its immediate vicinity…

Western leaders should not waste their breath on protestations of Lebanese, Syrian, or Gazan “inviolable sovereignty & territorial integrity” or the “internationally mandated territorial contiguity” of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. These are hackneyed concepts, extinguished by reality in the region.

Published in The Jerusalem Post and Israel Hayom, April 3, 2026. Print-friendly copy

After the October 7, 2023 assault on Israel by Hamas, Israel cannot brook illusions about the dawn of regional peace, nor can it return to the “containment” policies of recent decades that prioritized diplomacy over decisive military triumphs.

Israel can no longer accept policies that emphasize “quiet for quiet” and prioritize “restraint,” because this allowed enemies to develop attack capabilities under the cover of diplomatic breathing time; what some Western officials mistakenly call periods of “stability.”

That approach failed. It blew-up in Israel’s face, with terror and invasion from the West Bank and Gaza and from Syria and Lebanon, and with the march of Iran’s nuclear bomb program to near completion.

Therefore, Israel is gearing for extended conflict at varying degrees of intensity, basing itself on a more aggressive mix between diplomacy and the use of force to scuttle enemy threats. Israel intends to act like a superpower, proactively asserting dominance along its borders and strategic ascendancy against threats farther away. Operation Roaring Lion is a demonstration of this.

In this regard, even after President Trump pauses American strikes on Iran, expect Israel to continue to make fierce, overwhelming, and surprise moves against enemy strongholds from Khan Yunis to Isfahan. It needs to keep its enemies off base with beeper blasts, targeted assassinations, computer viruses, and occasional bunker-busting airstrikes.

Israel wants to be feared, militarily dominant, and even “hegemonic” – not loved. Jerusalem knows that its neighbours will seek true reconciliation only when Israel is strong. More Abraham Accord-style peace treaties (even with Saudi Arabia) are possible and desirable, but these will be based on strength and explicit defense partnerships.

So, get used to a revamped Mideast strategic situation anchored by a very strong Israel.

ISRAEL’S UPDATED security posture and strategic doctrine also means that the “borders” between it and its failed and/or hostile neighbors must change. What was between Israel and Gaza, Israel and Syria, and Israel and Lebanon, and Israel and the Palestinian Authority will be no more.

Israel is asserting a forward defensive security zone on all four fronts, amounting to long-term military control of critical territories alongside diminution of hostile civilian populations.

This already is the case in Gaza where the IDF has taken control of 53% of the land that previously was under the thumb of Iran’s proxy terrorist army Hamas, and it continues to destroy every town in this area that Hamas had turned into a military garrison above and below ground.

These is, and will not be for the long-term future, any Palestinian life in this area. No rehabilitation and reconstruction here. Nothing that would once again place Palestinian terrorist armies smack right up against and adjacent to Israel’s magnificent farming towns and peaceful cities in the Gaza periphery.

The same goes for Syria, where Israel now holds the “Crown” of the Hermon mountain ridge, formerly known as the Syrian Hermon, along with several strategic border outposts in what used to be considered “Syrian territory.”

Do not expect this to change any time over the coming decades, certainly not while a former ISIS terrorist named Ahmed al-Sharaa (a.k.a. Mohammed al-Jolani), under the tutelage of the Islamic dictator Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, parades around as the new president of Syria.

To some extent, Israel also will continue intervene on behalf of the non-jihadist Druze community in Syria, which holds a zone of strategic importance in the southeast of that country along Israel’s northern border. There are no UN or EU “peacekeepers” with the guts to use real bullets to protect the Druze and secure the border area.

The same is now true for Lebanon, the classic Middle East failed state, where for the past decades an Iranian-backed army called Hezbollah has ruled the roost and rained down hell and brimstone on Israel with tens of thousands of rockets and missiles.

The IDF is now clearing Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon, bunker by bunker, building by building, one enemy missile firing emplacement after another. When Israel is done, nothing will remain, alas, of the villages of southern Lebanon, and no Lebanese villagers likely will be able or allowed to return to this area – just like the current situation in eastern Gaza.

The IDF must and will continue to control this area through long term military garrisons, ranging from the former “border” up to the Litani River area.

In this regard, international statements of support this week for Lebanon’s “inviolable sovereignty & territorial integrity” are misplaced if not laughable. Lebanon has not exercised real sovereignty or enjoyed territorial integrity for more than a generation. Large parts of Lebanon were first decimated and controlled by the PLO, and in recent decades by Hezbollah. They used Lebanon as a launching pad for non-stop assaults on Israel.

Yet nobody in the “international community” huffed and puffed and protested about the decrement to Lebanon’s “inviolable sovereignty & territorial integrity” all those years. Nobody was moved to express “deep solidarity” with the people of Lebanon when Arafat, and then ayatollahs Khomeini and Khamenei, occupied and raped Lebanon.

All they did was put up a dummy international “peacekeeping” force called UNIFIL – which did nothing at best and even ignored Hezbollah’s fortifications and provocations.

Only now when Israel has decided to put an end to the charade of Lebanese sovereignty in southern Lebanon and essentially reset the border for solid security reasons – do the denizens of Berlin, Canberra, London, Ottawa, and Paris begin to protest, and to patter about “sacrosanct” international borders.

SO, HERE is the place to say it plainly: From Israel’s perspective there are no more “sacrosanct” borders in its immediate vicinity. Security lines and defensive zones will necessarily be drawn and redrawn according to frontier needs.

This, without reference to stale lines that go back to the colonial era (such as the Sykes-Picot boundaries), without regard for useless UN resolutions (such as resolution 1701 that followed the conflict in 2006 and which promised the defanging of Hezbollah and demilitarization of southern Lebanon), and without reliance on the expired, hollow Oslo Accords.

Consider Judea and Samaria. Nobody is under the illusion that any Palestinian “authority” can or will counteract the build-up of Iranian backed Islamic terrorist armies in these areas, which directly threatens Jerusalem and central Israel. Only the IDF can and will.

Thus, brigade-level Israeli military operations in places like Jenin, Tulkarm, and Nablus will continue to resolutely rout out terrorist threats. Thus, Israel increasingly will reassert military and civilian-settlement control over the open and strategic highlands of Judea and Samaria. This is likely to be permanent Israeli policy going forward for decades if not forever.

Israel has no confidence whatsoever in the ability of the “international community,” not even through President Trump’s 2020 “Peace Through Prosperity” plan (a.k.a the “Deal of the Century”) or through his newfangled “Board of Peace,” to make the Palestinian Authority into a “democratic, transparent, efficient, and sustainable governance system” – never mind a real partner for peace.

Thirty years and billions of dollars and euros later, the return on Western investment in Palestinian independence is abysmal. There is no democracy, no rule of law, no transparency, no sustainability, no investment in economic stability, and no peace education in the PA.

There is only nepotism and corruption, “pay-for-slay” handouts (meaning the incentivizing and rewarding of terrorism against Israel), violent propagandizing against Israel (including support for Hamas’s October 7 invasion and massacres), and diplomatic assault on Israel in every possible international forum.

And today, Israel also has real reason to fear and ward off Hamas-style organized military assault by PA forces on its Gush Dan population center.

So don’t lecture Israel about “sacrosanct” borders. Do not waste breath on protestations of Lebanese, Syrian, or Gazan “inviolable sovereignty & territorial integrity” or on the “internationally mandated territorial contiguity” of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. These are hackneyed concepts, extinguished by reality in the region.

The post Inviolable borders? appeared first on David M. Weinberg.

Published in The Jerusalem Post, March 27, 2026. Print-friendly copy

Even in the midst of war, even as the enemy inflicts pain on the homefront, even amidst uncertainty over the endgame – it is necessary to appreciate our gargantuan gains in the current struggle against Iran. It is right to celebrate the bravery of our people and the many acts of endless kindness with which we have blessed this month.

The Pesach (Passover) “seder” ritual is the perfect moment to do so. It commemorates Jewish redemption by Divine hand in every generation going back to ancient Egypt and looks forward to a double portion of liberation in a messianic era, coming soon.

I say that the double portion of exalted wins over our enemies we have beheld this year should be celebrated with a double portion of Pesach wine. Therefore, I propose expansion of the traditional four cups of wine drunk at the seder to ceremonial drinking of eight cups of wine. Each goblet can be matched to an expression of deliverance and triumph.

This wine-winning chiddush (innovation) is meant to underscore for ourselves that Operation Roaring Lion is an overwhelming success, a feat with global ramifications. Don’t be confused by agents of depression and defeatism (“dichonistim”) that gloomily dominate the airwaves! The reality is that Iran has been weakened and destabilized like never before. This stands true even if the campaign against Iran is cut short this weekend (although I doubt it will be).

We know that ‘leaving Egypt’ is a long road which the Jew has been traveling for 3,500 years without yet fully arriving at his destination; and that the Jewish People is not deterred by long journeys.

Consequently, we are obliged to catalogue and count our victories and express thanks to the Heavens for keeping us strong and resilient; and do so this year with twice as much Pesach passion. So, here is my wine drinking menu for this Pesach, with eight relevant articulations of appreciation for astounding and sustained victories.

Start with the four traditional expressions of redemption, detailed by the Talmud Yerushalmi based on Exodus 6:6-7: “I am Hashem, and (1) I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. (2) I will free you from being slaves to them, and (3) I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment. (4) I will take you as My own people, and I will be your God.”

We can call this: articulations of Rescue, Freedom, Redemption, and Embrace. To which, let us add this year: exclamations of Prowess, Bravery, Renewal, and Partnership.

1. Rescue from the yoke of bondage, which today translates into salvation of Israel from the shadow of annihilation by the Ayatollahs, by destruction of Iran’s nuclear enrichment and bombmaking facilities in Bushehr, Fordow, Isfahan, Natanz, Parchin, and more.

For this we pour the first cup of wine (“Kadesh” in the seder ritual), and I suggest Yatir Creek White 2022, an intense, creamy blend of Grenache Blanc, Clairette Blanche, Roussanne and Viognier. This will fill you all the way through the “Maggid” section of the seder.

2. Freedom to build our nation anew in the Jewish People’s indigenous homeland, liberated from the hegemonic threats of the radical Shiite republic based in Tehran and Iran’s proxy armies decamped on our borders.

After the long tale of the Exodus, we bless God for freeing “us and our forefathers” and drink the second cup of wine. Here I recommend Flam “Camillia,” a gently oaked, crisp and fruity Chardonnay that will nicely prepare your palate for all the coming mandatory matza.

3. Redemption indeed involves “mighty acts of judgement” such as elimination of Iran’s fifty or so top political and military leaders, demolition of Revolutionary Guards missile facilities, flattening of Basij bases, and other strikes intended to undermine the regime.

After the matza and before the meal, we can drink freely. Go with Ramat Naftaly Barbera 2021, the country’s best Barbera varietal, intensely floral and fruity.

4. Embrace means the message of Divine protection for Israel, of Providential support for the Jewish People, conveyed to nations of the world who inexorably (perhaps reluctantly) are bowled over by Israel’s grit and resilience in the face of so many threats and enemies.

A fantastic meal-opener is Domaine Netofa’s Tel Qasser Red 2018, a medium-bodied Mediterranean-style blend of Grenache and Syrah.

5. Prowess is the parade of awesome Israeli power; truly miraculous, nearly flawless IDF military performance. We must own and even flaunt our muscle, not be embarrassed or apologetic about it.

For a fish or chicken first course, pour Razi’el 2023 (a precise, light Syrah-Carignan blend), which is a Domaine du Castel spinoff line of Mediterranean-style wines.

6. Bravery in wartime abounds in Israel – from the fearless Israeli air force pilots who fly dangerous sortie after sortie into Iran, to the valiant homefront command rescuers who dig through bomb sites, to the resolute wives of reserve soldiers away from home for months at a time, to families rich with children that endure weeks without school and constant flight into protected spaces day and night.

Deep into the meat main course of the seder night, pour Naveh Red 2019, which is a heavy, filling Cabernet Sauvignon. (This is a kosher cuvee from Chateau Golan.)

7. Renewal is the rekindling of unity in Israel, a recalibration of national priorities, an awakening from the security misconceptions and diplomatic mistakes of the past 32 years, and a return to tradition.

For a concluding meal masterpiece, drink Shiloh Mosaic 2022, a full-bodied, multilayered, and heavily oaked red wine with rich aromas of black fruit and roasted coffee, and a long and elegant finish. (Drink this during the meal and as the ritual third cup of wine, marking “Grace after the Meal”).

8. Partnership is the hope for a more integrated Middle East after this war, for Arab-Israeli reconciliation and cooperation; something that should be a slam dunk given stark demonstration of the real sources of evil in this region.

Here we drink the last glass of all, after “Hallel” (thanksgiving songs and prayers). Pour Dalton’s Traditional Method Champagne, a festive sparkling delight. For a real treat, give all seder guests also a taste of the incredible Dalton “Anna” dessert wine made from Muscat Alexandria grapes and aged in the unique Solera method for eight years. This is liquid honey gold!

For those seeking religious sanction for my proposal to double down on drinking wine at this year’s seder, consider the following. Scripture abounds with language of blessing and redemptive multiplicities: “Comfort my people, comfort them, says your God” (Isaiah 40:1); “I will rejoice, greatly rejoice in the Lord” (Isaiah 61:10); “He will impart the secrets of wisdom, manifold wisdom” (Job 11:6); “Wine cheers both God and man” (Judges 9), and many other expressions of double good.

From a halachic perspective, it is best to imbibe my additional glasses of wine and discuss their meanings between the mandatory second and third Pesach cups of wine – meaning during the meal, as detailed above; and not interrupt the flow of the traditional Haggadah texts and standard blessings.

“Next year in fully rebuilt and greatly magnified Jerusalem,” serving as magnet for all nations in awe and amity!

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