From its very birth 77 years ago, when five Arab armies brought a welcome wagon hoping to drive their new Jewish neighbors into the sea, Israel has been walking on eggshells, never knowing when one or more of its enemies would strike.
It’s not as if those eggshells got in the way of a full-on embracing of life and the creation of a vibrant culture. Rather, the unpredictability of terror created its own cycle of anxiety that never seemed to go away.
If you’ve ever been in a relationship where you’re forced to walk on eggshells, you know it’s a type of emotional terrorism. An eruption can hit you at any moment.
Israelis have learned to live with this emotional terrorism for the simple reason that they’ve had to deal with the much more lethal terrorism that maims and kills. This focus on physical threats led to a doctrine of defense: Enemies attack, Israel defends. The more they attack, the more Israel defends. That’s why they’re called the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
If the price to pay to fight real terror was the emotional cost of walking on eggshells in anticipation of possible attacks, it felt like a decent trade-off.
The savagery of Oct. 7, 2023, changed that paradigm.
Seeing its homes invaded, with babies and families and grandparents massacred in their living rooms, with peace-loving hippies slaughtered at a music festival and with hundreds taken captive, was so shattering, so unprecedented, it made emotional terrorism catch up to physical terrorism. The mere imagining of the atrocities, in other words, became as terrifying as the atrocities themselves.
I’m seeing Israelis now through that lens— they’re no longer willing to tolerate the emotional burden of walking on eggshells, waiting for “real” terror to erupt. Over time, the anxiety itself can feel like real terror, especially if you’re consumed with the horror of Oct. 7 or possible nuclear annihilation from Iran.
The threat of a nuclear Iran was always the biggest producer of anxiety. For more than 20 years, Israelis have watched Iran brazenly advertise its determination to destroy the Jewish state. Without even completing its nuclear arsenal, Iran had the satisfaction of knowing it could terrorize Israelis through the efficient weapons of fear and threats.
With the daring assault this week on Iran’s nuclear facilities, Israel has targeted both the fear and the threats. Israel is effectively telling the mullahs that their attempts to terrorize Israelis with their genocidal threats will no longer be tolerated. Israel isn’t just fighting against a nuclear bomb—it’s fighting against the human bomb of emotional terror.
After the trauma of Oct. 7, Israelis don’t want to return to Oct. 6. They want better. They want safer. They want to raise the bar both for their lives and their security. Yes, right now they’re braving Iran’s missiles into the heart of Tel Aviv which aim to murder as many civilians as possible and terrorize as many Israeli hearts as possible.
But Israelis are no fools. They know that a nuclear Iran, the biggest source of their anxiety, is being significantly set back. They know that beyond the bluster of its enemies, they’re now dealing with a weaker Iran, a weaker Hezbollah, a weaker Hamas and a weaker Syria. They know that since the nightmare Oct. 7, they’ve been blessed with a dream-like scenario of weakened enemies.
The key lesson of Oct. 7 was to eradicate complacency. Since then, Israel’s enemies have found it more and more difficult to strike emotional terror into Israeli hearts. The mullahs know that despite all the drones and missiles they’re throwing at Israel, they’re losing and Israel is winning.
Israelis are going through high anxiety at the moment, but given Trump’s full backing, they can smell the possibility of longterm victories. They know they’re in a battle on behalf of the civilized world against the forces of theocratic oppression. They’re emboldened by the prospect of having enemies who no longer have the power to terrorize their emotions.
It was always silly to state the obvious that Israel has the right to defend itself against terror. Of course it does. Today, though, Israelis are asserting their right to be free of emotional terror and let their enemies do the walking on eggshells.
