Netanyahu and the Next Enemy

In my view, Benjamin Netanyahu cannot be regarded as merely an Israeli prime minister who has fought a number of wars during his political career. His political history reveals, in my assessment, a comprehensive method of reading the world, based on the continuous search for the next danger, presenting it as an existential threat to Israel, and then turning that threat into a justification for military and political action before it grows stronger.

This observation does not concern only the Gaza war or the war with Iran. It concerns a trajectory spanning decades.

Netanyahu’s Doctrine: “We Will Neither Forget nor Forgive” and the Making of the Next Enemy

“We will neither forget nor forgive” is not merely a slogan. In my reading, it is the essence of the method Netanyahu embodies: transforming the historical memory of persecution into an enduring political memory in which the enemy remains present even after its name, location, and time have changed.

Netanyahu himself used this phrase in the context of the events of 7 October and the killing and captivity associated with them, including his statement: “לא נשכח ולא נסלח” (We will neither forget nor forgive).

Rome ← European persecution ← the Holocaust ← Iraq ← Iran ← Gaza ← the next enemy. That is, the past is never closed; it is continually invoked to identify the next danger.

The danger lies not in remembering history, but in “We will neither forget nor forgive” turning from a memory that prevents the recurrence of tragedy into a political method that leaves conflict open-ended.

From the Cold War to the New Middle East

Netanyahu came of age politically during the Cold War, in a world in which Israel saw itself as surrounded by Arab powers supported to varying degrees by the Soviet Union. With the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the concept of danger did not disappear from Netanyahu’s discourse. Rather, the enemy changed.

The focus shifted to terrorism, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, and Hamas. Herein lies the importance of examining the entire trajectory rather than a single war: the enemy changes, but the logic of threat remains constant.

Iraq

In 2002, Netanyahu appeared before the United States Congress at a moment when the United States was preparing to invade Iraq. His position was not that of a distant observer; he strongly supported overthrowing Saddam Hussein’s regime and presented Iraq to the Americans as a danger that had to be addressed.

Years later, it became clear that the war said to make the region more secure had not produced the stability the world had been promised. Instead, it had opened wide the doors to chaos, sectarianism, the rise of armed groups, and the reconfiguration of the regional balance.

The question then becomes: Was the lesson of Iraq sufficient to halt the policy of preemptive war? Subsequent history says: no.

Iran

After Iraq, Iran became central to Netanyahu’s outlook. Iran was not a danger that suddenly emerged in recent years; warnings about it had been part of his discourse for decades. Over time, warnings about a nuclear program developed into a comprehensive conception of Iran as Israel’s greatest strategic enemy.

The matter then moved from political pressure to military action. Thus, what had been presented for years as a future danger became an actual war. More dangerously still, the war was no longer exclusively Israeli; the United States became a direct party to it. At this point, the issue shifts from Israel’s security to the security of the world.

Gaza

Then came Gaza. The war there was no longer merely a limited military operation against an armed group; it became a large-scale war with immense humanitarian, political, and regional consequences, bound up with the future of the Strip, security control, displacement, and the future of the Palestinian cause.

At this stage, what I might call the logic of war without a political endpoint became clearly apparent: whenever one enemy was finished, a new danger emerged, and whenever a security problem arose, it became part of a larger battle. In this way, the region becomes an unbroken succession of wars.

Ancient History Is Present in the Political Mind

To understand this methodology, it is not enough to examine day-to-day politics; we must examine how Jewish history is invoked in political discourse. The destruction of the Second Temple by Rome, European persecution, and the Holocaust are all powerfully present in Jewish and Israeli political memory.

But the problem begins when history changes from a memory that warns against injustice into a permanent lens through which to read the present. The world then becomes a succession of empires and enemies: Rome yesterday, then Europe and persecution in later periods, then terrorism, then Iraq, then Iran, then Hamas, then Hezbollah, then Syria, then Iran once again.

This is not necessarily a list of identical enemies, but in political discourse it becomes a single chain of threats surrounding Israel.

From the Historical Victim to the Power That Will Not Wait

Here I see the most dangerous transformation. If historical memory says: Jews waited for danger in the past, the world did not protect them, and the result was catastrophe, then the political conclusion becomes: We will not wait for the next danger. From this emerges the doctrine of the preemptive strike.

But when a state permanently adopts this logic, defining “the next danger” becomes an exceedingly grave matter. The enemy is not only whoever attacks you today; it may also become whoever might attack you tomorrow, then whoever might possess the capacity to attack you years from now, then whoever might ally with someone who hates you. Thus, the concept of danger expands without limit.

The Problem Is Not the Existence of Enemies

The problem, as I see it, is not that Israel has enemies; every state in the world has enemies and faces dangers. The problem is turning the existence of danger into a permanent method of conducting foreign policy. When security comes to rest on striking an adversary before it grows strong, that adversary begins to think in the same way.

Iran will say it is defending itself. Israel will say it is defending itself. America will say it is defending its allies. Each party will find a reason for fear in the other’s history. War thus becomes a closed circle.

Netanyahu and the United States

What is more dangerous in Netanyahu’s case is that Israel is not an isolated state; it has an exceptional strategic relationship with the United States. When Israel succeeds in transferring its conception of threat into American policy, the effects of the decision do not remain confined to the Middle East.

The war on Iraq is a historical example, and the war with Iran is a more dangerous one. When the United States enters a war with Iran, the issue does not concern the borders of two states; it concerns the Gulf, energy, maritime routes, markets, Europe, and the global economy.

Does any regional leader have the right to push the superpower into a series of wars whose effects expand to encompass the world? In my view, this is the fundamental issue.

The Greatest Danger: That There May Be No Final Enemy

What troubles me about Netanyahu’s method is the absence of a clear endpoint. If Iraq was a danger, then Iran, then Hamas, then Hezbollah, then Syria, then Iran once again, what is the ultimate limit? When does the danger end? And when does peace become more important than searching for the next danger?

For the most dangerous thing in international politics is for a state to become convinced that its security can be achieved only when all those around it are weaker than it, subordinate to it, or under its military control. This is not peace; it is a balance of fear.

True peace does not rest on one state prevailing in every confrontation, but on states ceasing to turn every confrontation into a prelude to a larger one.

Netanyahu Is Not Fighting Separate Wars

In my view, the mistake is to study Netanyahu through the Gaza war alone, or Iran alone, or Iraq alone. We must read the trajectory in its entirety. Iraq was not an isolated episode, Iran is not an isolated episode, and Gaza is not an isolated episode. They are links in a single conception of security and politics.

Danger must be detected before it becomes a danger, danger must be confronted before it grows stronger, and whoever fails to act now may pay the price tomorrow.

This idea may seem logical when applied once, but when it becomes a permanent rule, it produces a world in which no one ever stops waging war.

From the Middle East to the World

Here I see the danger posed by Netanyahu as having gone beyond Israel, the Palestinians, and the Middle East. The Middle East is not an isolated region: it contains global energy resources, the most important trade and shipping routes, American military bases, and Russian, Chinese, and European interests. Any large-scale war with Iran could quickly become an international crisis.

The question, therefore, is no longer: What does Israel want from Iran? Rather, it is: Where might this trajectory lead the world?

Conclusion

In my view, Netanyahu’s political history does not give me the image of a man who sought peace and was then compelled to go to war. It gives me the image of a politician who made danger, security, and preemptive war fundamental elements of his political vision. Whenever the enemy changed, the name of the danger changed, but the logic remained the same.

This is the source of my real concern. The danger lies neither in Israel being strong nor in its defending itself; it lies in fear of the next enemy becoming a permanent justification for the current war. More dangerous still is for this vision to have a direct route to Washington, so that the fears of one state become wars fought by the world’s greatest military power.

The Temple was destroyed by Rome, and Europe witnessed long centuries of persecution of Jews until the tragedy culminated in the Holocaust. The lesson of all this could have been: Do not allow human beings to make eternal enemies of other human beings. But when the memory of fear and persecution becomes a political doctrine, the lesson may turn into its opposite: Trust no one, always search for the next enemy, and strike before it strikes you.

Herein lies the danger of the doctrine that I believe drives Netanyahu. It does not treat danger as a passing event, but views the world through an uninterrupted succession of enemies and existential threats. The enemy’s name changes, and its geography changes, but the equation remains the same: danger must be confronted before it grows, and war becomes a permanent means of preventing the next danger.

In my view, this doctrine does not pose a danger to Palestinians alone, nor only to Iran or the states of the region. It carries a danger that extends beyond the Middle East to international peace, global security, and humanity itself. A state that makes historical fear a permanent foundation of its security policy can drag its allies, foremost among them the United States, into successive conflicts whose scope expands each time.

When every war has a pretext, every adversary is designated an “existential threat,” and every threat necessitates a preemptive strike, the most dangerous question is no longer: Who is the enemy? Rather, it is: Who will be the next enemy? Herein lies the great tragedy, for the world cannot live forever under a doctrine that makes war prevention, fear security, and the enemy a permanent project.

The real danger is not that Netanyahu has enemies, but that his vision of security becomes a political doctrine that keeps the world perpetually searching for a new enemy.

In my view, it is this doctrine that makes Netanyahu a danger extending beyond the borders of Israel and the region. It threatens to turn historical memory from a lesson for humanity into fuel for new conflicts, and to turn the security of a single state into an issue for which entire peoples pay the price.

If we do not learn from history to break the cycle of enmity, we will continue to reproduce it: a victim, then fear, then an enemy, then war, then a new victim. At this, the whole world should be concerned.