Despite possessing unprecedented military, economic and technological power, Israel still deals with almost every crisis as an existential threat, a reflection of a collective memory formed over 2,000 years of persecution and persecution, with which the survival mechanism that protected Jews in the diaspora turned into an obstacle to understanding the meaning of sovereignty.

According to an opinion article written by Reserve Colonel Amir Nooy, and published by the Israeli “Maariv Online” website, trying to understand why major military achievements do not always turn into a feeling of victory within the Israeli consciousness leads to a deeper question related to the roots of this phenomenon.

Noy believes that Israel is a regional power, as it possesses one of the most powerful armies in the world, advanced intelligence services, an advanced economy, and defensive capabilities that the Jewish people did not possess at any previous stage.

Despite this, almost every security, political, or social dispute is accompanied by immediate warnings of the “destruction of the Third Temple,” the “end of the state,” or the “end of Zionism.”

The writer wonders whether these warnings result from a realistic and balanced assessment of the risks, or from an awareness that was formed over 2,000 years of diaspora, persecution, and trauma, and still finds it difficult to comprehend the meaning of Jewish sovereignty.

According to Noy, the most important battles of Zionism may not have been resolved yet, which is “the battle over consciousness,” because countries do not inherit psychological genes, but peoples inherit memories.

For nearly 2,000 years, the Jewish people lived in a reality in which almost every generation experienced displacement, massacres, humiliation, or mass murder, from the Crusades and the Chmelnytsky massacres, through the Inquisition and the Chisinau massacre, all the way to the Nazi Holocaust.

This path created, according to the writer, an almost unfathomable series of collective traumas.

Noé says that when a traumatic event lasts one or two generations, it turns into a memory, but when it is repeated over 60, 70, or 80 generations, it turns into a culture.

This may be one of the reasons for the continued voices predicting the end of Israel and the “destruction of the Third Temple,” despite the establishment of a sovereign Jewish state for the first time in history, and its possession of one of the most powerful armies in the world, advanced intelligence systems, and technological capabilities that only a few countries possess, in addition to remarkable economic strength.

Noy stressed that this proposal does not mean that the threats facing Israel are not real, stressing that they exist, and may sometimes be existential.

However, he raised the question of whether part of Israeli society interprets every threat through the lens of memory associated with the diaspora.

When collective memory is so deeply rooted, reactions arise not only from reality, but also from history, so that every new enemy is reminded of an old enemy, every disagreement quickly turns into “1938,” and every tactical failure is seen as the beginning of a national disaster.

In this case, historical memory fills the voids that the facts have not yet filled.

Psychology describes this mechanism as “cognitive availability,” where traumatic events from the past become more present in consciousness, affecting the way current reality is evaluated.

When it comes to an entire people, this availability turns into collective memory, but this mechanism comes at a price.

A society that constantly believes that it is standing on the brink of an abyss may find it difficult to realize the extent of its power, tend to underestimate the value of its achievements, exaggerate the power of every danger, and treat every internal dispute as an indication of comprehensive ruin.

This appears, according to Noy, in the public discourse inside Israel, where every security, political or social crisis is given, within a few hours, descriptions such as “the end of the state,” “the ruin of the Third Temple,” “everything is lost,” and “we have no future here.”

The writer believes that there is hardly any other nation in the democratic world that predicts its end so quickly.

Noé wondered whether this represented pessimism, before suggesting it might be an ancient survival mechanism.

For many generations, Jews who detected danger early sometimes succeeded in escaping before the massacres occurred, or moving to another city, or saving their families, so caution and caution turned into a life strategy.

However, the mechanism that was effective during the diaspora is not necessarily compatible with the reality of a sovereign state.

According to the writer, Israel is not a Jewish group unable to protect itself in Poland during the 17th century, or in Europe during the 1930s, but rather a regional power with unprecedented military, economic, technological and political capabilities in the history of the Jewish people.

Here, according to Noy, lies the greatest challenge to Zionism, which sought not only to establish a state, but also to change the psychology of the Jew, transforming him from a person whose events are shaped by history around him, to a person who writes history himself.

This revolution has been largely successful at the military, scientific, and economic levels, but it may not yet be complete at the level of awareness.

Therefore, nearly 80 years after the establishment of Israel, the debate is still taking place between two different consciousnesses.

The first is the diaspora consciousness, which sees the world as a hostile place, every success is temporary, and every victory is liable to end in disaster.

The second is the awareness of sovereignty, which sees in Israel the first time in 2000 years that the fate of the Jewish people is essentially in its hands.

The article included pictures of Israeli Air Force pilots returning from a strike in Iran, and an Israeli plane before carrying out an attack there, in addition to a picture from Auschwitz-Birkenau.

It also included a picture of the Israeli army in Beirut during Operation “Safety of Galilee” and the first Israeli war on Lebanon, along with a picture of the founder of the Zionist movement, Theodor Herzl.

Noé concludes that the most important battle that this generation is fighting may not be limited to Israel’s borders, but rather is taking place within it as well, between memory and reality, and between fears inherited from history and power built with hands.

Thus, the Israeli challenge lies not only in possessing power, but in the ability to see it and act as a sovereign state, not as a group still waiting for the next catastrophe.