Divide and Conquer Is Destroying Israel
Divide-and-conquer strategies are not sustainable in a sovereign country. They are a leftover from the British Mandate. They raise the costs of keeping the peace inside Israel and reduce the willingness of people to contribute. A society in which groups are constantly set against one another cannot last. Eventually, the system weakens from within. Benjamin Netanyahu’s governments have relied on this approach for years: feeding religious and nationalist extremists while attacking moderates, protecting coalition partners who do not contribute equally, treating Arab citizens primarily as a security or political problem rather than as people to be integrated, and sustaining the political splits that keep the right in power. That strategy has measurable costs.
When Israelis stop treating one another as comrades — people whose information, competence, and safety matter — the country becomes weaker. Warnings are ignored. Crime rises. Trust collapses. Support from Jews abroad drops. The numbers show these costs are real: record killings inside Arab communities, intelligence failures before October 7 (including the dismissal of warnings from female soldiers at posts like Nahal Oz), deep political polarization, and growing alienation among American Jews. These problems have multiple causes, and they did not begin overnight. But policies that treat large groups as permanent outsiders or non-contributors — policies central to Netanyahu’s coalition management — have made them worse rather than better.
This is the core argument. A country that runs on divide-and-conquer cannot hold together. Unity is not a slogan. It is a practical requirement for security, loyalty, and the future of Klal Yisrael.
Early institutions such as the kibbutz absorbed immigrants, defended borders, and built a shared experience. The pure collectivist model later reached economic limits recognized across the political spectrum by the 1980s, but the cohesion function remains relevant. Netanyahu and his allies have attacked those founding structures, mischaracterized the left that built them, and claimed credit for achievements they had little to do with, while protecting Haredi service exemptions that keep large numbers of men out of the workforce and the IDF. Arab citizens (about 20 percent of the population) show high rates of young men who are neither in school nor in work, along with record levels of killing inside their own communities. Abraham Initiatives data show the toll more than doubled in 2023 (from roughly 104–116 to 227–244) and reached 252 in 2025, with clearance rates around 10–12 percent. The high pace continued into 2026. Organized crime networks, illegal weapons, and weak local policing have deep roots; exclusionary approaches have not reversed them. Unnecessary cruelty has been conflated with security, producing reactionary responses rather than integration.
October 7, 2023, was the largest single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Senior security officials later accepted responsibility and left; reports indicate warnings reached the political level. Netanyahu has rejected personal responsibility and blocked a full state inquiry. The security establishment’s own long-standing view that Hamas was deterred was also a severe failure. Multi-front fighting followed, with high costs. At Nahal Oz, female observation soldiers’ repeated warnings about unusual activity were ignored, and their status was treated as secondary. Regarding them as low-status rather than as comrades whose data must be taken seriously directly reduces warning capacity.
Rape-crisis centers recorded over 51,000 approaches in 2024. About 81 percent of sex-offense cases handled by the State Attorney’s Office were closed without indictment. IDF reports of sexual assault and harassment rose to 2,420 in 2025; most were handled through disciplinary channels, with only dozens of indictments. Harassment and the dismissal of female personnel’s judgment both reflect the failure to treat every member of the force as a comrade whose competence and safety matter.
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Headline GDP growth has recovered (the Bank of Israel projects 5–5.6 percent for 2026), but domestic growth excluding overseas high-tech production is lower (about 3.4 percent). War-related losses, defense spending, and debt are elevated. Diaspora surveys show 61 percent are unfavorable toward Netanyahu. JPPI’s 2026 index found 55 percent of Israelis name internal polarization as the top existential threat, ahead of Iran (23 percent) or the Palestinian conflict (18 percent); 60 percent see a real danger of bloodshed or civil war. Netanyahu’s approach of managing coalitions through division — feeding extremists, attacking moderates, and picking fights with American Jewry — has coincided with these trends and reduced the reservoir of support from the very communities whose ancestors helped build the state.
Arab parties persist because many Arab citizens experience state institutions as external rather than as their own. Removing the conditions that create that experience would reduce the demand for ethnic political parties. All citizens deserve the same basic respect one would wish for oneself. Sustained otherness is a security liability: environments with few legitimate pathways raise the relative attractiveness of clan, criminal, or rejectionist alternatives. Fear of the Arab vote is the observable result of incomplete incorporation. The goal of forming coalitions that do not depend on Arab votes has come at the price of leaving large numbers of citizens feeling like outsiders in their own country.
Evidence shows that reciprocity raises voluntary contributions. Caprettini and Voth (2023) found that U.S. counties and individuals who received greater New Deal support later showed higher rates of war-bond purchases, voluntary enlistment, and combat decorations in World War II. Loyalty is partly a return on prior state investment in citizens’ concrete welfare. The biblical account of Avraham illustrates the same point: he raised up hundreds (by some readings, thousands) in his household; when Lot needed rescue from Sodom, those he had treated as belonging to him rose up and formed a fighting force. We are all Klal Yisrael. Treating one another as comrades is the practical condition for the same response.
Benign Dominance Theory is a simple idea: most people who end up in crime or alienation do so because their daily life offers few real ways to stay safe, earn money, learn skills, and feel they belong. When the state creates settings that actually provide those things under clear rules, the pull of crime or rejection drops. Help is given step by step and only if the person meets the conditions. Teachers, program operators, employers, and military educators should ask two questions: Does this help Israel in the long run? Does this make it more likely the person becomes a contributing citizen? The program grows only if it measurably reduces arrests and the number of idle young people.
Schools can give every child the same basic tools: solid Hebrew, knowledge of Israeli history, and the clear expectation that they will contribute to the country.
Four small, voluntary pilot programs could test this idea in practice. They would cover school-age children, older teens in paid work, at-risk adults, and young families. Together they would cost about 2.75 million shekels in the first year. They would use existing organizations, and results would be compared with those of similar people who are not in the programs. The pilots are only a test. They should be expanded only if they actually reduce arrests and the number of idle young people.
A short training course for teachers, army educators, and employers would make the same point simply: helping people integrate makes loyalty practical and useful. Managing people by group, the way the British did, does not.
If the state keeps paying for arrangements that let large groups avoid contribution or leave them with weak paths into work and belonging, crime stays high, voluntary service stays low, and the risk of deeper division stays high. Changing daily conditions in measured, results-based ways is a cheaper way to find out what works. So far, this period under Netanyahu has not brought lower crime rates in Israel, greater personal safety, or stronger unity. Feeding extremists while attacking moderates, protecting non-contributors, and treating people as permanent outsiders has real costs. Treating every citizen and every soldier as someone whose contribution and safety matter is what Klal Yisrael actually requires.
