Strategic Assessment

Israel’s international standing has suffered severe damage in the wake of the Gaza war. This decline is evident across most areas of national life—the economy, academia, culture, the security of Jewish communities in the diaspora, and most essentially – the basic legitimacy of the State of Israel and its right to defend itself. Attempts to isolate Israel are not new. They are rooted in disagreements over the appropriate resolution of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, ideological opposition to Israel’s existence, and internal demographic and societal trends in various countries unrelated to Israel. However, the Gaza war has been marked by an unprecedented peak in the intensity of the cognitive campaign and efforts to isolate Israel, a challenge for which Israel was insufficiently prepared. The purpose of this policy paper is to identify the range of failures with the aim of correction and to present decision-makers with a series of practical steps required for improvement.