Field Dossier: The Fifty-Year Front

Israel won the war with Iran. The war that started against it in 1975 remains undecided — which, on current trajectory, is a problem.

Iran broke. The Supreme Leader is dead, the IRGC's senior command is dead, the nuclear program is functionally destroyed — and the same week Netanyahu named the achievement at Yad Vashem, Italy walked, eighteen governments condemned, forty Senate Democrats voted to deny a wartime ally weapons, and the Washington lobby that still prints pro-Israel announced it would phase out the interceptors keeping Israeli children alive in their bedrooms. The ground between Tel Aviv and the West was taken fifty years ago, on the same day as the Zionism-is-racism vote, and Israel never went to contest it. This one runs without a paywall — the argument is too operational to gate.

Until Israel builds ground it owns, it will keep winning the wars and losing the ground around them.

The Israel Brief is the Mitzpe Institute's read on Israel and the region — most mornings, Sunday through Thursday. More at mitzpe.org.