The cost of victory: Israel overpowered its foes but deepened its isolation

Boston Globe

06-07-2025

The exercise of raw power has allowed Israel — for the first time since its creation in 1948 — a future mostly free from immediate threats. The risk of a nuclear Iran is diminished or perhaps gone. Israel has stable, if uneasy, relations with Persian Gulf Arab states. And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has cemented his partnership with President Trump.
The new reality in Israel, said Yaakov Amidror, a retired Israeli general and former top aide to Netanyahu, is that places once under constant threat from Lebanon, Syria, or Gaza 'will be more secure than Manhattan.'
But at what cost?
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Netanyahu's relentless and unapologetic military response to the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack that killed 1,200 people and took 250 people hostage has cemented the view of Israel as a pariah, its leadership accused of genocide and war crimes and disdained by some world leaders. In opinion polls globally, most people have a negative view of Israel.
In Gaza, the war against Hamas has taken a devastating toll, killing tens of thousands of people and leaving more than 1 million homeless and hungry. Much of the enclave has been reduced to rubble. Poverty and hopelessness are rampant.
Hundreds of Israeli soldiers have also been killed, and officials believe about 20 living hostages are still imprisoned in Hamas tunnels after more than 630 days.
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Israel's actions have shattered a rock-solid, bipartisan consensus in the United States for defending Israel. Now support for the country has become a fiercely contentious issue in Congress, the subject of angry debates and protests on college campuses, and fuel for a surge in antisemitic incidents in the United States and around the world.
The political climate has become deeply polarized. Many supporters of Israel denounce any criticism as antisemitic hate, while those opposed to Israeli policies vow not to be silenced by a label they call unfair.
Inside Israel, the decision to prioritize military victories over the return of the hostages has deeply wounded many people. And the violence has strained the goodwill of the country's allies and neighbors.
Yet many Israelis welcome the prospect of a future in which they are no longer surrounded by well-armed enemies determined to do them harm, even if it means being viewed negatively by the rest of the world.
In 1981, Menachem Begin, the prime minister of Israel, urged Israelis to 'never pause to wonder what the world will think or say.' He told a group of American Jews that 'the world may not necessarily like the fighting Jew, but the world will have to take account of him.'
But 20 months of fighting in all directions has had consequences. Another generation of Palestinians living under occupation will see some radicalized to fight against Israel. Israel has created a new wave of global opinion critical of its goals and methods. And many Israelis now feel threatened while abroad, even as they are more secure at home.
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Surging protests
One recent Saturday, thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters gathered in Russell Square in the heart of London. Their message: 'End the Genocide. Stop Arming Israel. Stop Starving Gaza.'
The rally was organized by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, which was founded in 1982. Ben Jamal, the director of the group, said Israel's actions have supercharged its efforts to isolate Israel from the world's democracies and force a change in its behavior with boycotts and calls for disinvestment.
Before the Oct. 7 attacks, the British group had 65,000 members; now it claims more than 300,000. Two years ago, there were 65 active branches in cities and towns around Britain. Today, there are more than 100.
'People see the scale of the slaughter,' said Jamal, who is Palestinian. 'And then they're hearing the genocidal rhetoric. They're hearing Israel's ministers saying, 'We're going to devastate everything. We're dealing with human animals. Nothing will be left.' And they're seeing the result of that.'
Israeli officials strongly deny the accusations of genocide and say they are fighting to eliminate the threat from Hamas and that the military takes precautions to mitigate civilian casualties.
The activist movement to isolate and censure Israel — known as BDS, for boycott, divestment, and sanctions — has been around for years. There has not been a widespread move by companies to cut ties with Israel, but the wars have given the movement new momentum.
The company that runs the British Co-op chain of groceries, one of the country's largest, announced last month that it would stop sourcing items from Israel, adding it to a list of rogue countries, including Afghanistan, Russia, Iran, and Libya.
In a Pew Research survey of 24 countries around the world published last month, negative opinions about Israel have surged. In 20 countries, more than half of the people said they had an unfavorable view of Israel. In eight countries — Australia, Greece, Indonesia, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and Turkey — more than 75 percent held that view.
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Only two countries, Nigeria and Kenya, reported majorities with favorable views of Israel.
For Israel, the ripple effects have been felt in the Persian Gulf, where before Oct. 7, countries like Saudi Arabia appeared willing to establish diplomatic and economic ties with Israel.
Now most analysts believe that hopes for normal relations have been drastically set back as the war in Gaza has dragged on, in part because the Persian Gulf nations have tied the idea of diplomatic ties to a resolution of the Palestinian issue — a resolution that seems more distant than ever.
In the occupied West Bank, Netanyahu's government has emboldened Israeli settlers encroaching on land seen as integral to a future Palestinian state, and there has been a surge in violence by extremist settlers against Palestinian civilians. The Israeli military has launched the most intense crackdown on West Bank militancy in a generation, carrying out destructive raids, killing hundreds of people, and arresting thousands.
But Israel's diplomatic outlook in the region is not all grim. It is negotiating with Syria's new government about a potential truce. And once the Israel-Hamas war ends, normalization with Saudi Arabia could be back on the table.
Jamal said Netanyahu will have to live with the consequence of his military actions.
'On one level, he's been absolutely successful,' he said. 'But has he got the outcome he wanted? I'm not sure.'
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'Paying the price'
Lior Soharin, 25, grew up fearing missiles in Nahariya, Israel, just south of the border with Lebanon. Hezbollah, once a powerful Iran-backed proxy group, routinely launched crude but dangerous rockets over the border. Israel frequently responded with devastating strikes of its own.
Soharin is now a student at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, studying law and economics. His 280-day service in the Israeli military reserves ended last month, and he said he is pleased that Hezbollah's military capabilities have been so diminished. But he does not feel safer yet.
'Hamas and Hezbollah and Iran — maybe they are not an existential threat right now,' he said. 'But after Oct. 7, our feeling of self-confidence, the feeling of security in Israel, was shaken very strongly, and it is very hard to build it back.'
Opinion surveys reveal the deep divisions that remain within the Israeli public even as the country's military strikes in Iran have boosted Netanyahu's popularity. In one poll, two-thirds of Israelis said they wanted to end the war in Gaza with a settlement that could bring the hostages home.
Within Israel, the war has exacerbated tensions between the government and members of Israel's Arab minority, some of whom have been arrested for social media posts about the war.
Nira Sharabi is the widow of Yossi Sharabi, who was kidnapped from their home in Kibbutz Be'eri on Oct. 7 and was killed after 100 days in captivity in Gaza in an Israeli airstrike. While she blames Hamas for her husband's death, she said she is frustrated by the failure to free the remaining hostages, calling it a cost of Netanyahu's actions in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran.
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'As it looks now, they are paying the price,' she said of the hostages. 'Yes, the government is not dealing with them, but with other things. However we look at it, they are paying the price.'
Soharin said he, too, wants the Israel-Hamas war to end so the hostages can come home. He called the damage done to Hamas 'very, very good,' but he said the consequences for Israelis around the world have been serious.
'Israelis like to travel a lot to Europe and to other places, and I think to speak Hebrew in Europe now is pretty dangerous,' he said. 'You might get hurt.'
He is also angry about the accusations of brutality leveled by some against Israel and its citizens.
'We're not even close to doing the things we're being accused of. It's nonsense,' Soharin said. 'Of course, there is civilian death, and I think nobody should be happy. But that's war. It's a very, very bad situation. And we didn't start this war.'
Anger, activism, and violence
Just 46 percent of Americans in the latest Gallup survey expressed support for Israel, the lowest number since the company began asking the question a quarter-century ago. A third of the respondents in the United States said they sympathize with the plight of the Palestinians, up from just 13 percent in 2003.
Around the world, outrage at Israel's actions in Gaza has been expressed largely as peaceful protests demanding an end to the war, but also by praise for the Hamas attacks and even by some targeted attacks on Jews, killed in the name of opposition to Israel.
In Washington, D.C., two employees of the Israeli Embassy were fatally shot in May in an attack officials called a hate crime and terrorism. Authorities said the gunman told them, 'I did it for Palestine. I did it for Gaza.'
In Boulder, Colo., a man firebombed marchers who were calling for the release of Israeli hostages. One woman later died of her wounds.
There have also been Islamophobic attacks. Days after the Oct. 7 attack, a man in Chicago fatally stabbed a 6-year-old Palestinian American boy who lived at his property, an attack prosecutors said was motivated by hatred of Muslims.
Peaceful demonstrations have sometimes turned ugly, triggering clashes with police on some of America's most prestigious campuses. More than 100 people were arrested at Columbia University in 2024 after police were called into break up what organizers had called the 'Gaza Solidarity Encampment.'
At Britain's Glastonbury music festival last weekend, punk rap duo Bob Vylan chanted, 'Death to the IDF,' a reference to the Israeli military, prompting US officials to deny the band's visas for a tour set to begin in October.
On Oct. 7, 2024, a year after the attacks by Hamas inside Israel, the pro-Palestine group that had organized student encampments at Columbia University issued a statement calling for 'liberation by any means necessary, including armed resistance.'
The statements were meant to shock and provoke. They were at the extreme end of the spectrum and do not represent the views of most students, experts say.
But they underscore an undeniable shift in opinion about Israel. Many surveys have found that non-Jewish students sympathize with Palestinians, while Jews on many campuses say they feel ostracized and socially isolated.
The Trump administration has seized on the campus divisions to accuse universities of failing to respond to antisemitism. In May, the Department of Health and Human Services concluded that Columbia University had acted 'with deliberate indifference towards student-on-student harassment of Jewish students.'
Democratic lawmakers say Trump is exaggerating the situation for political gain. In April, five Jewish senators wrote in a letter to the president that his stated goal of fighting antisemitism was 'simply a means to an end to attack our nation's universities.'
Diplomatic scolding
Long before Oct. 7, Israel had been the target of official international condemnation. Over decades, the United Nations has passed dozens of resolutions criticizing Israel.
But the denunciation has intensified as international organizations and world leaders have repeatedly called on Israel to restrain its military and end the war in Gaza.
In 2024, Spain, Norway, and Ireland formally recognized a Palestinian state, a sharp but largely symbolic gesture designed to pressure Israel to cease the fighting. President Emmanuel Macron of France has made it clear he intends to do the same soon.
Macron's position and the actions of the other European leaders have enraged members of Netanyahu's government, who accused the French president of leading 'a crusade against the Jewish state.'
But many Israelis, like Amidror, the retired general, shrug off the criticism.
'The ability of Israel to defend itself and to get rid' of its enemies, he said, 'is much, much, much, much more important than the international community's view about Israel.'
This article originally appeared in
.