How Do Israelis View the End of Their State?

No diligent observer can ignore the fears of Israelis, at both the popular and elite levels, regarding whether the Jewish state has effectively been moved to the intensive care unit and is on a respirator, which lacks a warranty certificate to protect it from the anticipated disappearance from the Middle East map.

The question of Israel's "disappearance" has led to other possibilities, jumping to hypothetical, potential, and worst-case scenarios: What would happen if Israel vanished from the world?!

In 2025, Eugene Brusilovsky wrote in the "Times of Israel" asking, "What if the Jews disappeared: a thought experiment about Israel and the world?".

In 2009, the Russian film "Lekh Lekha", directed by M. Kovinski, imagined a world grappling with the sudden absence of Jews, finding no solution, but rather a state of disorientation and instability. The film ultimately claims that the Jewish presence is something the world cannot do without.

In June 2016, former editor of the Israeli newspaper "Haaretz", Aluf Ben, pointed out in "Foreign Affairs" under the title "The End of Israel" that Israel— at least the secular and progressive version that captured the world's imagination— has come to its end.

And since the mention of Jews necessarily evokes "the State of Israel", or that is how the amalgamation between them has settled in the public imagination, it also inevitably brings up the question: Is it conceivable that the State of Israel could one day disappear?!

A report from Harvard University highlighted the demographic horror that has kept the policymakers of the Jewish state awake at night, leading them to hide nearly 200,000 Palestinian children in Gaza.

The value of the report lies in its author being the Israeli professor Yaakov Garb, who used data-driven analysis and spatial mapping to show how the Israeli army's siege of Gaza and indiscriminate attacks on civilians in the sector led to a severe drop in its population.

At the end of November 2007— in an interview with Haaretz— former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned of the specter of the disintegration of the State of Israel unless a two-state solution is reached with the Palestinians. He stated: "If the day comes when the two-state solution collapses and we face a conflict similar to what happened in South Africa for equal voting rights (with the Palestinians)... then, as soon as that happens, the State of Israel will come to an end."

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Israel is sensitive to any comparison with apartheid-era South Africa, but Olmert has previously expressed such opinions. When he was deputy prime minister under Ariel Sharon, he supported the withdrawal from most of the territories occupied by Israel in the 1967 war, which would have left Israel with the maximum number of Israelis and the minimum number of Palestinians.

The anxieties have reached the point of contemplating scenarios for a future post-collapse and fall that is no longer unlikely, despite the difficulty of imagining it, according to a package of sober analyses from within the community of Israeli public opinion makers.

For although the disappearance of Israel is unimaginable, it is very possible, says Rubin Washington, who is, by the way, the editor of the Jewish independent newspaper "The Forward".

In fact, the latter seems to be swept up by the scenarios and asks in January 2024: If the Jews were expelled from the river to the sea- and this without even touching on how such atrocities would be carried out- how would the world view us, the remaining ones? Would the Jews return to their historical position as a stateless people with the return of the Palestinians to their homeland? Would they return to the diaspora as they had for most of the past two thousand years?

In the book "The End of Israel", released after the Al-Aqsa flood in November 2023, the articles of the famous Israeli journalist Bradley Burston in Haaretz traced the deep roots of what he called the horrific war between Israel and Hamas, exploring how the country could have chosen a different path and the possible options for its future.

The articles detail— in Burston's words— "the decline and fall of a failed nation, which began to question before the outbreak of war whether its Independence Day this year would be its last?" He said: "Israel, where deluded and fanatical ideologies dominate, is a land— as the Book of Numbers in the Bible warns us— that eats its inhabitants alive." He adds: If you ask me: "How are things here?" I would answer: "Things here go beyond madness."

In June 2016, former editor of the Israeli newspaper "Haaretz", Aluf Ben, pointed out in "Foreign Affairs" under the title "The End of Israel" that Israel— at least the secular and progressive version that captured the world's imagination— has come to an end. Although that version was in some ways a figment of the imagination, that myth was at least rooted in reality.

Today— as Ben believes— this reality has changed, and the state that has replaced it is fundamentally different from the one envisioned by its founders nearly seventy years ago.

He reaches early conclusions about the future of the state, noting that since the March 2015 elections, the pace of several slow trends has significantly accelerated, and if it continues, it may soon make the country unrecognizable.

Then Aluf Ben wrote again in March 2024, after October 7, 2023, in the same media platform "Foreign Affairs", under the title "Israel is Destroying Itself", pointing to a telling comparison between Moshe Dayan and Netanyahu. He states: "On one bright day in April 1956, Moshe Dayan, Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces, with his one eye, went south to Nahal Oz, a recently founded kibbutz near the borders of Gaza.

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Dayan came to attend the funeral of Roy Rothberg, a 21-year-old who was killed the previous morning by Palestinians while patrolling the fields on horseback. This incident caused deep shock and sadness across the country.

Dayan said at the time: "Let’s not blame the murderers. They spent eight years in refugee camps in Gaza, and before their eyes, we were converting the lands and villages they and their fathers inhabited into our property."

Dayan was referring to the Nakba, when the majority of Arab Palestinians were forced to displace themselves after Israel's victory in the 1948 War of Independence.

The former editor of Haaretz sought to make an implicit comparison between two experiences: the 1950s under Dayan, which rationalized the political and strategic discourse that fortified Israel and postponed early collapse, and the current irrational experience, predicting that the "End of Israel" would come at the hands of the current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Yuval Renon, a professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, tells the French magazine "Orient 21": that Samson, Israel's national religious hero, was "a selfish zealot" and "feels the need for humiliation".

This symbolic character of the Messianic Zionists— who hasten the return of the savior Messiah— currently participating in ruling Israel, believed that their strength made them invincible; that myth, which is constantly echoed in the propaganda books, is on its way out.

Liberal historian Yuval Noah Harari points out that "Netanyahu continues to promise Israelis 'complete victory', but the truth is we are on the brink of a crushing defeat". From his perspective, the Prime Minister has shown "pride, blindness, and revenge" much like Samson.

There were early signs of concern about the state’s fate, that it may have crossed the threshold of endurance that it has clung to for the past seven decades.

The issue is no longer merely a debate on elite platforms and among white-collar individuals, or the uproar within cultural salons in hotel halls, but is closer to a potential truth, supported by numbers, statistics, and empirical studies— those based on reality and data on the ground.

The "Middle East Monitor" described the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics report issued at the beginning of 2025 regarding the reverse migration of Jews as "shock waves", and Israeli media headlines described the figures as "grim". It noted that 82,000 individuals had been excluded from the population count, which represented bad news for the Israeli political and security circles, according to the organization’s expression.

This came alongside the latest report from the Knesset, released in October 2025, regarding the mass exodus of Jews from Israel, which was described by Itamar Eshner in one of the prominent Israeli news sites "ynetnews" as presenting a very bleak picture, with the events of October 7 driving 145,900 Israelis to flee.

A recent survey conducted by Hebrew University at the initiative of the World Zionist Organization showed that an astonishing 80% of Israelis who fled abroad say they do not intend to return to Israel.

The survey's authors quoted Gusty Yehoshua Braverman, head of diaspora activities at the World Zionist Organization, to the Hebrew media saying: Most Israelis do not intend to return to Israel.

Meanwhile, "The Cradle"— a geopolitical news platform specializing in West Asia and Middle East issues— states that in the first few months following the October 7 operation, around half a million Israelis left the occupied territories. The country also witnessed a sharp decline in the number of Jewish immigrants to Israel.

In a conversation with Press TV, the famous Israeli historian Ilan Pappe explained why he believes that Zionism has entered its final stage and how Israeli society is unraveling internally.

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A report by the "Times of Israel" published in October 2025 emphasizes that the Gaza war has changed Israeli society in ways no previous war has, noting that Israel has long imagined itself, throughout its history, as an impregnable fortress surrounded by enemies.

However today, this fortress is crumbling from within. The greatest threat to Israel's stability no longer comes from Iran or Hamas, but from the divisions that are tearing at its society.

The term "civil war", which was once considered an exaggeration, is now frequently used among the public. What was previously regarded as unimaginable has now become a common expression of concern overshadowing Israeli life.

Wars seldom begin with the first shot; they begin when citizens stop seeing each other as members of a common political community.

And this is precisely what is occurring in Israel, as Yuval Lukash, a professor at George Mason University, states.