By: Mickey Gitzin, Acting CEO of the New Israel Fund
Just over eight months ago, I was sitting in a shelter in Israel after the first 12-day Israel-Iran-US war. I listened to U.S. President Donald Trump say that the Iranian nuclear program had been “obliterated,” followed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declaring a historic victory that would “stand for generations.” We were told that existential threats had been removed. Today, my parents, both in their late 70s are once again sitting in shelters hearing these same promises. Just this morning Trump said that Iran is “begging” for a deal. So yalla. When will it end? And why are we at war in the first place?
Some claim the goal is regime change. But, as Gil Murciano of NIF grantee the Mitvim Institute has argued plainly, there is little left to gain on that front. The early days of fighting already targeted the regime’s top leadership. And the Iranian system, deeply embedded in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the country’s economic infrastructure, is not something that will collapse overnight. Others argue that continued war will further degrade Iran’s nuclear or missile capabilities. But even leading analysts, including Ali Vaez of the International Crisis Group, have said there is no sustainable military solution there either. Without a diplomatic agreement—or an unthinkable ground invasion—these capabilities cannot be meaningfully dismantled.
There is no quick fix. As in another conflict that readers of this newsletter will be familiar with, there are no military shortcuts to political transformations.
Military action alone will not change the reality in the Middle East. Yet we know that the current leaders are unwilling or unable to solve this diplomatically. This puts us all in a bind because when leaders abandon responsibility in wartime, the consequences are measured in human lives.
This is precisely why the New Israel Fund invests in organizations like Mitvim, The Berl Katznelson Foundation, and the Forum for Regional Thinking. Their role is not only to critique and explain, but to help Israelis understand the geopolitical reality we are living in, and to articulate credible alternatives grounded in expertise. We know that it is civil society’s job not only to say ‘no’ to war, but to actually propose a plan that will lead us into a different future. Because without taking questions of peace and security seriously, we cannot imagine, propose, and eventually act out real, fundamental change.
Of course, well before the war with Iran, something deeper was already breaking; both Trump and Netanyahu were operating not for the good of their people, but for their own.
Israel’s government is not hiding its priorities. Within a week of the war’s outbreak, new settlements were approved by the army. Wildcat outposts reemerged in places that had been evacuated in 2005 when Israel disengaged from Gaza and dismantled a handful of far-flung settlements in the West Bank.
With all of this new, unchecked settlement growth, it is not surprising that we are now seeing settlers run amok, committing pogrom after pogrom after pogrom against Palestinian communities. We know how this system works—that the government, the military, and the settlers are all working together to push the Palestinian population into tighter and tighter urban enclaves, thereby ridding the countryside of Palestinians and their villages.
According to NIF grantee Yesh Din, there were 170 distinct incidents of settler violence in 85 different Palestinian communities during just the first 17 days of this war. That’s 10 incidents a day. This is not a “fringe” phenomenon. This is state-backed violence.
Those incidents include setting fire to Palestinian homes and cars, beating residents, and, more frequently than I have ever seen, sexually abusing and even murdering them. Michael Sfard, Israel’s preeminent human rights lawyer called this “Ku Klux Klan style” violence on French television this week.
And yet, even in this darkness, there are those working—patiently, persistently—to build something different. We have boots on the ground offering a different Jewish-Israeli face to Palestinians in the form of ‘protective presence’. And we work with many organizations in Israel—from Yesh Din to Mehazkim to Breaking the Silence—to make sure that the subject stays on Israelis’ radar. And, of course, there are our think tanks where scholars are helping the Israeli public understand the deeper forces shaping this conflict—reminding us that geopolitics is not destiny, but something that can be analyzed, debated, and ultimately changed.
These efforts matter. Not because they offer easy answers, but because they insist on an idea that our leaders have abandoned: that there must be a future beyond war.
The truth is uncomfortable, but it is simple. Under the shadow of this war, Palestinians face Jewish terrorism at unprecedented levels. Without political horizons for Israel and Iran and for Israel and the Palestinians, nothing can be built but deeper instability.
With Passover less than a week away, I find myself reflecting on the ways the holiday invites us not only to remember our past but also to envision the future we wish to see.
“Next year in Jerusalem,” we say—it is a prophetic call for a future that seeks peace and believes in life. If this moment teaches us anything, it is that without a strategy rooted in a just, realistic, and life-affirming vision for the future, there can be no victory.