Last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke bluntly about Israel’s current challenges: “Israel is entering diplomatic isolation. We will have to deal with a closed economy. The world is dividing into blocs, and we are not part of any bloc. That makes it easier to isolate us… We may find ourselves blocked not only in research and development, but also in production itself. Our defense industries could be blocked, and we will have to be Athens and super-Sparta, adapting to an autarkic economy. We have no choice. At least for the coming years, we will have to cope with these attempts at isolation, and we must first develop the ability to manage on our own.”
The response from Netanyahu’s political opponents came quickly – and they didn’t hold back. Yair Lapid snapped: “You caused this. You are the main cause of the diplomatic isolation.” Business leaders warned that talk of Israel becoming isolated like Sparta would lead Israel into an abyss. The head of the Histadrut trade union declared, “I don’t want to be Sparta. We deserve peace.”
Do Netanyahu’s critics have a point?. Are we in Israel isolated because of Netanyahu and his policies, or is something deeper at play?
The people of Israel had only just left Egypt, still bearing the scars of slavery, when Amalek struck. God had parted the Sea for us and shattered the might of Pharaoh, yet we were weary and vulnerable. We were not an army. We were a nation of former slaves, exhausted and unprepared for war.
Amalek had no practical reason to fight us. Their attack was ideological, driven by hatred and the desire to erase Israel from the earth. They did not confront us in open battle. Instead, they targeted the weakest among us—women, children, and the stragglers at the rear of the camp. As the verse records:
This was not war in the ordinary sense. It was deliberate cruelty. It was a war crime, carried out against the defenseless, with the intention of annihilation. And how did the nations respond? They did nothing. No kingdom, no tribe, no neighbor came to our aid. The world looked on and remained silent. The people of Israel were left to fend for themselves – a theme that would continue throughout history.
Generations later, after the destruction of the First Temple, the Jews were exiled to Babylonia and soon found themselves subjects of the Persian Empire. In Persia, Jews were accepted, respected, and comfortable. We spoke the language, we sat at the king’s table, and we lived as loyal citizens. Yet when Haman decreed our destruction across an empire from India to Ethiopia, not a single voice rose in protest. Esther risked her life to save us, but the nations around us remained silent and did nothing to prevent our annihilation.
Fast forward to the Holocaust, when Hitler and the Nazis systematically planned and executed the slaughter of six million Jews. The Final Solution was carried out in Europe, the supposed center of enlightenment and culture. Yet instead of standing up for the Jews, millions of Ukrainians, Poles and Lithuanians happily joined the killing.
Meanwhile, Western democracies offered words of pity while refusing to act. President Roosevelt knew about Auschwitz and the other death camps. The United States could have sent planes to bomb the rail lines to Auschwitz, to strike the gas chambers and crematoria. Yet Roosevelt chose not to divert a single plane. He would not risk American resources to save Jewish children. Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Minister of Propaganda, was not wrong when he said, “Fundamentally, the English and Americans are also happy that we are destroying the Jewish riff-raff.” The Jews were abandoned by the world, left alone to die.
Today, after October 7, 2023, we see the same dynamic at play. For a brief moment, after Hamas terrorists murdered 1,200 of our people in cold blood, the world expressed sympathy. But then, almost immediately, came the calls for “restraint,” the boycotts, the sanctions, the resolutions condemning Israel while ignoring Hamas. Once again, we are facing our enemies alone.
Only fourteen million Jews remain in the world, and less than eight million in their “natural habitat,” the land of Israel. Jews are very much an endangered species. Yet, as Joshua Block has pointed out, the world will do more to preserve the spotted owl in its natural habitat than the last remaining Jews in theirs.
When God forced Balaam to bless Israel instead of cursing them, he said:
It is Israel’s destiny to be a people that dwells alone. Our current diplomatic isolation is not due to Netanyahu’s decisions or any government’s policies. It is about who we are. We are not like the nations, and we will not survive like the nations. Our existence depends on God, the Rock of Israel, and on our own unity and strength.
This does not mean we will be entirely without partners. India, Japan, and South Korea will not boycott us. Our technology and defense capabilities are incredibly valuable, and many nations depend upon our partnership. Germany will not openly cut ties with us because of their evil history. Nevertheless, when the real battles come, we cannot depend on America, Europe, or anyone else. We must rely on ourselves and on God.
Netanyahu’s words simply reflect this reality. In comparing Israel to Sparta, Netanyahu was not glorifying endless war. He was simply stating that Israel cannot count on the goodwill of the nations. That realization is not a weakness; it is a step toward clarity. Our destiny is to stand apart, to place our trust not in Washington, not in Brussels, not in any foreign power, but in God alone.
If we take this lesson to heart, then today’s isolation will be transformed. What appears to the world as weakness is in fact the very path to fulfilling our unique national mission. Our standing apart is not a curse – it is the fulfillment of our calling.
The prophets told us that the day will come when the nations will stream to Jerusalem, saying: “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, that He may teach us His ways and that we may walk in His paths” (Isaiah 2:3). That day will not come because we begged for allies or compromised our survival to win favor in the eyes of cowardly Western nations like England and France. It will come because we stood firm, trusted in God, and lived as the people we were chosen to be.
This is our future. We are destined to be alone in order to learn to depend only on God. Netanyahu’s acknowledgment of this reality points us in the right direction. When we embrace our unique role, when we place our full faith in God, we will not remain isolated. We will become what we are meant to be: the center of the world’s hope, the nation to which all humanity will one day turn.
