It is no coincidence, it cannot be, that the spectacular and highly effective war escalation desired by Israel and its Prime Minister Netanyahu in recent weeks has hit the arch-enemy Hezbollah, eliminating its leaders starting with Hassan Nasrallah, just on the eve of October 7th . One year after the incredible action that started from Gaza, which led to the death of 1,200 and the kidnapping of around 250 Israeli civilians, one year after the most incredible and sensational strategic and image defeat ever suffered by Israel at home, and for hand of the not exactly well-trained and well-equipped Hamas troops, Netanyahu wanted to present himself at the anniversary meeting with a heavy scalp, capable of obscuring the memory of that sensational failure, of overshadowing the protests of family members and friends of the kidnapped , to even declassify as a topic of adversary propaganda the memory – already timid in Israeli society – of the tens of thousands of civilians killed in Gaza by the Israeli army, in all probability responsible – together with its political leaders – for crimes of war which as such will never become final, in terms of memory. Netanyahu is presenting himself on October 7th in a country characterized by an incredible, absurd, unimaginable euphoria: that of those who feel they can say, once again, that they have the best secret services in the world, the best army in the world, and that they can bury his most fearsome enemies without even them realizing it.

A circle that closes

This closing of the circle, this demonstration of strength to overwrite the future on a past of weakness, is not a new fact, but instead, rather a founding element of the Israeli identity, and of the new Judaism which has inextricably configured itself starting from the realization history of Zionism. Suffice it to remember that, in the first years of the state of Israel, founded in 1948, the memory of the Shoah was always celebrated in a very modest way. The six million Jewish deaths, killed in the extermination camps across half of Europe, were in fact remembered almost exclusively at Masada, an archaeological site in the south of the country, which had been the scene of the strenuous and heroic Jewish resistance against the Roman invader and besieger. The tragedy and destruction of the contemporary Jewish people were remembered by celebrating the heroism of the resisters of the Warsaw Ghetto, in the place where, defending their homeland, the Jews of two thousand years earlier had heroically resisted. Not as – the implication was harsh, but it remains true – the European Jews had done, incapable of understanding what was happening around them, much less thinking of fighting. By celebrating the Holocaust in this way we wanted to celebrate the birth of the new Jew, aware of the fact that without defending oneself one cannot survive. The memory of the Holocaust became massive and official in all corners of the country and in institutions only several years later, starting from the 1960s. A decade that began, for Israel, with the capture, trial and execution of the capital punishment of Adolf Eichmann, the person responsible for organizing the Nazi extermination machine. Even that time, the intelligence work and the ability to act alone and without trusting any international law served Israel to change the sign of memory, and to make it a place of national pride in the future, and not of celebration of the weakness of its own past. After capturing and executing Eichmann, Israel truly began to publicly remember the Jewish Holocaust.

The defense of Israel without permits or approval

The stories of yesterday, and those of the last century, lead us to look to tomorrow. Trying to read the future. After spending the first months after “October 7” in the trenches of absolute silence, breaking it only to declare that Israel would defend itself in the ways it deemed best without needing any permission or approval; after having withstood the impact of the internal square, which asked to bring the hostages home, and to give absolute priority to that objective; after having let the streets all over the world vent, and having ignored the institutional criticisms coming from Washington and Brussels; after all, Netanyahu, who many thought was a goner and finished after October 7, finds himself in the center of his small country holding the head of the most unifying enemy there was, that is, Nasrallah. Unlike the Palestinian issue, on which, although increasingly feeble, there has never been a lack of critical internal voices, on the northern front, on the threat of Hizbullah and Iran, Israeli public opinion has been substantially united for decades. To justify the ideological hatred of Iran and a revolution which has one of its pillars in the destruction of the Zionist enemy, in fact, there is no occupation, there is no denial of the right to exist, there is nothing. And the continuous claim of the desire to erase Israel from the face of the earth, regardless of who governs it and the policies implemented, are there to prove the constancy of the obsession. No one would want an enemy like that on their doorstep. Whoever eliminated him, profoundly affecting his ability to attack, is unlikely to be successfully criticized by anyone. And in short, those who seemed politically dead just under a year ago seem alive and well today.

A world that many dream of

Netanyahu’s longevity is an exception, it will be said, which occurs only in a context that is exceptional technically, and aberrant, ethically, whichever way you look at it. Already. Yet, what happens in the state of Israel, once a totally separate “world apart”, today seems to resemble, not a little, what many, at many latitudes, dream of. The absolute separation from the rest of the world, the sense of radical enmity, and of absolute otherness, compared to something else, to others, even close ones. English Labour’s brief, unseasonable spring already seems to be over. In Germany, in Austria, in Italy, in the United States, voices are growing that represent the nation as threatened by external forces, ever more intrusive, ever stronger, ever more subtle. There is not even a need for war and external threat to cultivate the dream of perfect isolation that is outside, and above, and elsewhere, compared to any system of supranational rules. The last barrier, after all, remains the original idea of ​​Europe: a community of ideals and principles of peace, after centuries of wars. A political entity born for the noblest reasons, and which today seems to be able to exist only to suffocate in procedures, while in the heart of the countries that founded it, movements and parties are consolidated that consider it the problem, and not the solution. Who think of the union between neighbors as a weakness and an effort, not as an opportunity. Looking at what happens so close to us, after all, can serve to remind us that we have inherited a fortune, and we might even decide not to squander it.

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