Israel’s Greatest Weapon Was Fear – And It Is Now Failing

Israel’s war on Iran reveals a deeper crisis: the collapse of a psychological doctrine built on fear and invincibility.

Origins of Israel’s Psychological Warfare

Wars are rarely fought only on battlefields. They are also fought in the minds of societies, in the perception of power and vulnerability, and in the political imagination of entire regions. Israel understood this principle early in its history, and psychological dominance became a central component of its military doctrine.

From the earliest years of the Zionist project, the idea that power must appear overwhelming was openly articulated. In 1923, the Revisionist Zionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky wrote in his famous essay The Iron Wall that Zionism would only succeed once the indigenous population became convinced that resistance was hopeless. Only when Palestinians realized they could not defeat the Zionist project, he argued, would they accept its permanence.

The events surrounding the Nakba of 1947–48 reflected this logic. Between 800,000 and 900,000 Palestinians were expelled or forced to flee their homes, as hundreds of villages were destroyed or depopulated. The expulsions occurred through a combination of direct military assault, forced displacement, and the collapse of Palestinian society under war.

Massacres played a crucial role in spreading fear. The killings at Deir Yassin in April 1948, in which more than one hundred civilians were killed by Zionist militias, quickly reverberated across Palestine. But Deir Yassin was only one among many massacres that occurred during that period. Killings in places such as Lydda, Tantura, Safsaf, and numerous other villages contributed to a climate of terror that accelerated the depopulation of Palestinian communities.

The psychological impact of these events was enormous. News of massacres spread from village to village, convincing many Palestinians that remaining in their homes meant risking annihilation. The lesson was clear: war could function not only as a tool of conquest but as an instrument of psychological domination.

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