For the most part, Israel’s enemies will accept Reason only as subterfuge. To plan accordingly, Jerusalem should premise certain key forms of security, planning on enemy Unreason. This is not to suggest that Israel’s state and terror-group foes will generally act against Reason, but rather that even singular enemy attacks could be conclusively lethal.
Sometimes, truth is counterintuitive. To wit, bewildering insights of classical mythology could help the Jewish State understand its complex strategic options. From ancient Greece, Jerusalem could learn that the pagan gods condemned Sisyphus to roll a huge rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would immediately fall back of its own weight. By rendering this tormenting judgment, the Olympian deities imposed a bewildering punishment of interminable and useless labor. At the same time, they revealed something perplexing and predictive of the “human condition:”
Useless labor need not be meaningless. Amid tragic circumstances, such labor can be heroic.
Even after its impressive 2025 victories over Iran and jihadi surrogates, Israel faces a daunting task. Foreseeably, the great rock will always roll back down the mountain to its point of origin. Why, then, should “Sisyphus” bother to push at all?
This is a purposeful query.
It is not a silly question.
For Israel, there is no comprehensive military solution to its security problems. In the mythically heroic fashion of Sisyphus, Israelis should accept the evident burden of incessant conflict and avoid politically contrived remedies (e.g., the “Abraham Accords” are not necessarily eternal). But what then?
There are variously underlying particulars. For Israel, the burden of perpetual conflict is not the “worst case.” The worst case for Israel is not to endure one war or terror attack after another - to keep rolling the rock up the mountain. It is to try to work its way free from penalties of geopolitical absurdity by adding to such incoherence. An especially clear example of such self-defiling contradiction would be to carve “Palestine” from its own still-living body.
All Palestinian Arab factions, Iran and certain other Islamic states share a genocidal orientation toward Israel, one that is both unhidden and declared. This means, among other things, that Jerusalem’s agreement to Palestinian Arab statehood would represent a violation of authoritative international law, especially the Convention on the Rights and Duties of States (Montevideo Convention, 1933) and the Genocide Convention (1948).
This latter treaty explicitly criminalizes not only genocide per se, but also "incitement to commit genocide." The former accord defines and identifies the specific criteria of statehood.
From the standpoint of any single individual on earth, each person’s own existence is manifestly improbable. Mathematically, the number of possible combinations for the human DNA molecule is ten to the 2,400,000,000th power. Though I am not a mathematician, this seems to signify that the odds of any one of us actually being “me” are one in ten to the 2,400,000,000th power.
Those are not betting odds.
Such unpromising numbers apply equally to nation-states. Nonetheless, when we speak of Israel, the singular Jewish state, we must enter into a different and substantially unique sort of calculation. In essence, Israel’s existence is less probable than the life of a single individual.
That is a very small probability.
Let us return to elucidating Greek myth. Always, we should recall that Sisyphus is a heroic and tragic figure. This is because he labored valiantly, against all odds, and in spite of an all-too-apparent futility.
Today, twenty-years after Ariel Sharon’s Gaza “disengagement,” vain hopes for “Palestinian demilitarization” endure. For the moment, at least, the theatrical genre portrayed by such continuance can best be described as “farce.” Resembling the bleak and minimalist poetics of Samuel Beckett, the still-unraveling “play” is inherently meaningful but simultaneously preposterous. True tragedy contains calamity, but it must also reveal greatness. In the final analysis, this means heroic attempts to endure misfortune.
The Jewish People have always accepted an obligation to ward off disaster “as needed.”. Formally, at least, Jews have understood that humans have “free will.” Saadia Gaon included freedom of the will among the central teachings of Judaism, and Maimonides affirmed that human beings must stand alone in the world “to know what is good and what is evil, with none to prevent him from either doing good or evil.”
For Israel, authentically free will must be oriented toward life, to the blessing, not the curse. Accordingly, Israel’s obligation should be to strive in the direction of individual and collective self-preservation, by using intelligence and by carefully disciplined acts of will. Where such striving would be limited to improbable or narrowly-strategic remedies, the outcome could never rise to dignifying levels of tragedy.
The ancient vision of “High Tragedy” has its origins in Fifth Century BCE Athens. Here, there is complete clarity on one overriding point: The tragic victim is one whom “the gods kill for their sport, as wanton boys do flies.” It is this wantonness, this caprice, that makes a situation tragic. Otherwise, it would merely display pathos.
Regarding classical theatrical terminology, there is tragedy, but there is also farce. In farce, matters generally end badly, but sometimes there is a last-minute rescue by deus ex machine, a “god in the machine.” By definition, of course, no “god in the machine” could ever rescue a Jewish State. To recall the specifically Jewish commentary of Rabbi Yanai: “A man should never put himself in a place of danger, and say that a miracle will save him, lest there be no miracle….” (Talmud, Sota 32a and Codes; Yoreh De’ah 116).
Aristotle understood, in Poetics, that true tragedy must elicit pity and fear, but not pathos. Pathos is always unheroic suffering. Moreover, the Greek philosopher identified tragedy with characters who are “good,” those who suffer only because they commit grave error (hamartia) unknowingly.
Up until now, the promise of meaningful peace with a persistently murderous adversary, whether Iran, “Palestine” or both together, has been a delusion. Protracted war or terror hardly seems a coherent policy choice under any circumstances, but managed conflict remains better for Israel than actively assisting with its own annihilation.
Like Sisyphus, Israel must learn to understand that its "rock,” the agonizingly heavy stone of national survival, may never remain securely at the summit. Still, it must struggle without existential assurances and without tying collective survival to transient military victories. Israel should continue to labor against the ponderous weight on its back, whatever the level of difficulty, for no other reason than to endure.
For Israel, true heroism lies in recognizing something beyond normal human understanding: Pain and uncertainty are not necessarily unbearable; sometimes, they must be borne with full faith and equanimity. Failing such tragic awareness, the government and people of Israel would continue to grasp at temporary victories and illusory prospects. Defeating Hamas is not the same as total victory. The first objective is sensible. The second is probably unachievable
Israel is not Sisyphus, nor is there any reason to believe that it must ever endure without personal and collective satisfactions. Even if made aware that its titanic struggle toward an always-receding summit may lack definable moments of "success,” the Jewish State could still learn that a tragic struggle can be heroic. Even a seemingly absurd struggle can yield notable accomplishments, unheralded blessings and more-or-less tangible rewards.
In the end, to survive into the future, Israel's only real choice will be to keep rolling the rock upwards, not to surrender to successively vacant political or diplomatic promises. On the official maps of all authoritative Palestinian Authority decision-makers, not just Hamas, Israel has already been subjected to cartographic disappearance. On these maps, ipso facto, Israel has suffered a virtual extermination.
Unlike Sisyphus, Israel and its people can still enjoy palpable achievements and multiplying satisfactions. Like Sisyphus, however, Israel must ultimately recognize that its individual and collective life will require a tragic and plausibly perpetual struggle. For Israel, there is latent but overriding consolation in such recognition.
True tragedy is heroic.
Tragic circumstances do not necessarily diminish or denigrate.
They exalt.
Prof. Louis René Beres is Emeritus Professor of International Law at Purdue, was educated at Princeton (Ph.D., 1971). He is the author of many major books on international relations and international law. Born in Zürich on August 31, 1945, an earlier book, Mimicking Sisyphus: America’s Countervailing Nuclear Strategy (1983), offered a different strategic adaptation from the classical Greek myth. Professor Beres’ twelfth book is Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy: https://paw.princeton.edu/new-books/surviving-amid-chaos-israels-nuclear-strategy.