Yahav Zohar / March 2026

Sitting at my desk in Jerusalem, looking at the lovely spring outside, occasionally the windowpane shakes in its frame. High above interceptor missiles are exploding, trying to stop an Iranian missile heading toward Tel Aviv. Once every few hours the interceptions are particularly close and a siren goes off and sends me to meet the neighbours in our shared basement.

Missile fragments crash down, punching small holes in the sidewalk and rooftops. So far, no serious damage in Jerusalem. It’s been 18 days now, and we are getting used to it.  Like Brits in Orwell’s 1984, we are being conditioned to a reality of permanent war.

In 1984, permanent war is a feature of the system of government. “Rocket bombs fell daily on London… Sometimes, in some street little knots would gather and look at some dirty bundle which had been flung on the pavement, and which might be a severed hand or foot. After a minute or two they would disperse again.” Meanwhile, watching newsreels in the cinema “The audience cheered violently when the bombs fell on the enemy’s cities, and clapped when whole blocks were blown to pieces”.

Orwell explains the policy of constant war in economic terms: “the primary aim of modern warfare… is to use up the products of the machine without raising the general standard of living”.  Certainly, some of that is true here.

Last week the SIPRI (the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute) published its global arms trade report. Comparing the last five years, 2021-2025 with the previous five 2016-2020, the report finds that while global arms trade has grown by 10%, Israel’s share of it has grown by 56%. According to data from the Israeli ministry of defense, Israeli arms exports have grown from 8.3$ billion in 2020 to 14.8$ billion in 2024. Meanwhile, Israel’s defence spending has grown proportionally from some 22 Billion in 2020 to an estimated 37 billion in 2025. War, it seems, is Israel’s biggest export, as well as its biggest cost. The money from selling arms is used to build more weapons and fight more wars which in turn are used to try out and market new weapons, which are then exported, and so on. 

Israel is becoming, in Netanyahu’s terms, a super Sparta, a country devoted to and completely engrossed in the constant conduct of war.

Sure, during these 18 days schools have been shut, and students are “remote learning” through zoom. The Israeli Bureau of Statistics reports that 1 in 4 businesses has been closed or severely restricted by the war, but other businesses are literally booming.

Constant war, as Orwell’s book shows, is not only about money, but about maintaining a society  in a constant state of emergency, to suppress dissent and any criticism of the government.

In Israel today there is virtually no opposition to the war. The leader of the so-called opposition in the Israeli parliament supported the attack on its first day, calling it “a just war against evil”. A poll by the Israeli Democracy Institute found 93% of Israeli Jews support the attack on Iran. 

Some of the very few Israelis who oppose the war tried to stage a protest  in Tel Aviv. The protest was attacked by right wing counter-demonstrators and shut down by the police after 20 minutes. The only arrest was of an anti-war protestor who tried to protect a fellow protester from a right-wing thug.  

In a press conference on March 12th Netanyahu spoke in glowing terms about Israel’s new expanded regional power, at the same time he hinted that the war would likely weaken the Iranian regime rather than overthrow it. Similarly, Israeli generals say the plans to conquer a strip of Southern Lebanon up to the Litani river will in no way bring about the dismantling of Hizballah, or stop it firing further missiles at Israel.

Just  as the attack on Gaza has mostly stopped, for now, with Hamas back in power, building missiles, Israeli wars are no longer designed to or expected to end, certainly not in treaties or peace. Every war is just a setup for the next one.

The price, for now, is being paid by millions of Iranians and Lebanese who have fled their homes because of Israeli and American bombings, and who will likely find themselves at the end of this ruled by the same regimes, made even more paranoid and oppressive by war, by two million Gazans living in the rubble of their destroyed cities, which often still hold the remains of their loved ones.

At the heart of this huge machine of war is the need to maintain Jewish supremacy, and the refusal to share the land and allow Palestinians a state in the West Bank. Those in Israel and around the world who want to stop the missiles, to put people back in their homes, must work to stop US support for the Israeli war machine, and end  European purchase of Israeli weapons. At the same time, we must keep working within this country to build solidarity, to support the most vulnerable Palestinian communities, and to advocate for an equitable sharing of the land. Constant war can only exist when we accept it, when we turn our eyes away from its victims, when we accept its lies. 

Yahav Zohar is a Senior Partner and tour guide with the Green Olive Collective.