When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed Israel’s growing global isolation amid the two-year war with Hamas in Gaza, he delivered one of the strangest speeches of his career. He declared that Israel must become a self-reliant economy and transform itself into a “Super-Sparta.”

The analogy was both absurd and revealing. Sparta, after all, was a warrior society that vanished from history more than two millennia ago—a cautionary tale, not a model to emulate. Ever defiant, Netanyahu blamed Israel’s pariah status on his political rivals, the left, the media and antisemites. They bear part of the blame, to be sure, but so do his government’s own policies. Beyond the hostages, perhaps nothing symbolizes Israel’s loss more than the collapse of its global image.

Israel’s moral adv

See Full Page