TrendMacro conversation with Haviv Gur on rising anti-Semitism and Israel’s strategic realities after Trump’s election

13 months after the Hamas attacks, Israel is now in a regional war against Hamas, Hezbollah and ultimately Iran. The elimination of Hamas remains a painful exercise in costly urban warfare. The elimination of Hezbollah is proceeding more easily thanks to well-executed surgical strikes. Israel has demonstrated superiority in tit-for-tat strikes with Iran, achieving complete dominance of the skies over Teheran (humiliatingly to the regime, using female pilots). That leaves Iran with few choices except to complete nuclear capabilities, so arguably the time to strike to prevent that once and for all is here and now. Biden has generally supported Israel, but as a key supplier of weapons and funding, drove a four-month delay in the siege of Rafah that cost many lives on both sides -- driven by a desperate US and European preference for maintaining the status quo at all costs. Trump is a stronger friend of Israel and of conservative PM Netanyahu. And he will likely enforce sanctions on Iran that have been ignored by Biden, depriving Iran of funds. But Trump has strong isolationist and pacifist instincts too, so Israel is not yet sure what to expect. In the meantime, anti-Semitism continues to erupt, seen most recently in the attacks on Jews in Amsterdam. World media still refuses to see anti-Semitism for what it is -- not just opposition to Zionism, and not just racial prejudice, but a centuries-old dogma shared by certain threads of Christian, Muslim and Marxist thought that Jews stand in the way of the salvation of the world and must be eliminated for the sake of humanity. Israel remains Judaism's refuge from this, and as it visibly rises up around the world, Jews will never surrender their nation no matter the cost.