Indications of summoning the founder of the Zionist movement, Theodore Herzl, in the twentieth edition of the Herzliya Conference

Last Tuesday, corresponding to May 23, 2023, the Herzliya Conference in its twentieth edition, organized annually by the Herzliya Institute for Policy and Strategy (IPS) of the private Reichsmann University in Herzliya, ended.

Despite the multiplicity of institutes specialized in national security issues in Israel, the Herzliya Institute is considered the most influential on the decision-maker in Israel, as its recommendations are usually adopted by the government and the security establishment, as one of its most important recommendations was after the 2006 war on Lebanon and the issuance of a report The Winograd Commission in 2007, which was tasked with investigating the results of the war, added the pillar of national defense to the three pillars of the Israeli national security system (deterrence, early warning, and rapid settlement) that had been set by the first prime minister of Israel, Ben-Gurion, in the early fifties of the last century. This pillar, and since 2008, the army has begun to employ the American Iron Dome system and develop other Israeli defense systems against missiles and drones.

While the Institute has not yet issued a final report on the recommendations of the conference, this article will attempt to focus light on the implications of calling Theodore Herzl in the 2023 edition of the conference, that is, nearly 130 years after Herzl, the first founder of the Zionist movement, published his book The State of the Jews (The State of the Jews) 1896), which included his vision for the establishment of the State of Israel, and became a plan of action agreed upon by the first founders of the state despite their different visions of the nature and identity of the desired state.

I argue in this article that this summons clearly shows that the Institute's management and staff who are considered experts in everything related to Israeli national security, as well as the Institute's partners in sponsoring this version of the conference, no longer see Israel after seven and a half decades. Not only did the announcement of its establishment deviate greatly from Herzl's vision, but rather, based on their experience in the field of national security, they reached the conclusion that Israel's political leadership, especially its current government headed by Netanyahu, is working in the opposite direction to the direction that achieves the required strategic strength for Israel in the face of the central strategic threats it poses. faced.

It seems here that the insistence of the country's political leadership to move in the opposite direction to achieve Israel's strategic strength has increased the level of anxiety among the Institute's management staff about the future of Israel. Especially since this concern was reproduced in the subtitle of the conference (The Mutual Links between Israeli National Security and National Immunity.

With regard to the threats facing Israel for the year 2023, retired Major General Amos Gilad, who now heads the Herzliya Institute, mentioned in a joint lecture he gave with two other staff members of the Institute at the beginning of this year under the title (Israel in 2023 - a strategic vision), where he considered this The dialogue as one of the reference documents of the conference, that it stands at the top of the list of central strategic threats facing Israel for the current year, both Iran and the conflict with the Palestinians.

The first threat stems from the fact that Iran does not hide that one of its strategic goals is the destruction of the State of Israel, and Gilad added that whoever tries to deny this goal among the Israelis is blind, especially since Iran is preparing and preparing to achieve this goal, whether in the nuclear, missile, drone or technological field. Or with its alliances in the region, which requires Israel to prepare seriously to confront this threat.

The paradox here, as Amos Gilad mentioned, is that Israel is moving in the opposite direction, as instead of being prepared, it is implementing what would weaken the ability to confront this threat, and to clarify, Gilad adds that there is a need to differentiate between military power and strategic power, as while Israel possesses military power, only It has recently begun to lose the strategic power that enables it to employ its military power, and what is meant by strategic power, as Gilad explains, is joint cooperation at the strategic level with the United States of America and Western European countries. Judiciary.

As for the second threat that comes from the Palestinians, Amos Gilad divided it into two overlapping levels. The first is a strategic central threat, represented in the clear shift towards producing a one-state reality. The pace of which has begun to accelerate is the adoption of the right-wing movement that now rules Israel for a declared and clear strategy that seeks to eliminate the obstacles that prevent Annexation of the West Bank, where these obstacles are represented by the Civil Administration and the Border Guard, who are considered an integral part of the army building in the West Bank. The plan to separate them from the army and place them under the responsibility of the extreme right-wing religious current involves a threat to Israel's identity as a Jewish and democratic state.

The second level of this threat is evident in the situation in the West Bank. On the one hand, according to Gilad, it serves Hamas's strategy aimed at weakening the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and prompting its collapse. On the other hand, it serves Iran's strategy, especially if Al-Aqsa Mosque becomes the center of the conflict.

In terms of national immunity, which is considered one of the most important components of the state's national security, Dr. Lior Ackerman, who is in charge of the field of national immunity at the Institute, stated that the national immunity of the people in Israel is eroding due to the absence of vision from successive governments in Israel not long ago, as Israel has become It works as a piecework and cannot claim to work according to a strategic plan in any of the fields, which threatens to further erode the national immunity of society, especially in light of the current government's efforts to implement its vision, which is opposed by the majority of the people in Israel.

In the same context, the speeches of the Chief of Staff of the Army (Herzi Halevi) and the speech of the Director of the Jewish Museum of the Herzliya Institute, Ms. (Erna Nabzlin), endorsed the appreciation of the institute presented by Amos Gilad and his team, as the first focused on the military strength of the Israeli army, and its military readiness to confront threats, but it He began his speech with the need for Israel to return to see the founder of Zionism, Theodore Herzl, and it was remarkable in this regard that, upon assuming his position as Chief of Staff of the Israeli Army No. (23) at the beginning of this year, he distributed Herzl's book (The Jewish State) to the senior officers of the General Staff to inspire and direct them to perform their tasks.

As for Nabzlin, her speech was under a significant title (Israel and the Jews of the world, does solidarity still exist), where she mentioned that Israel is in crisis and in order to get out of its crisis, it needs leadership with a vision, which she called the second edition of Herzl's vision.

According to the aforementioned, this article says that the final conclusion of the Herzliya Conference in its twentieth edition says that Israel is a very strong country militarily, but it is losing its strategic strength, in addition to that it has moved far from the vision of the founder of the Zionist movement, Herzl, and most importantly, that it operates without a vision and without a strategic plan at the time In which you face central strategic threats, whether those represented in the purposes of Iran or those that come from the conflict with the Palestinians.