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Strategic Empathy Is Missing in Action, in the US and Israel: And the Price is Terrible
By Shlomo Maital
Consider ‘sympathy’ and ‘empathy’. Sympathy — you offer it to those bereaved. Empathy? Empathy is shown in how much compassion and understanding we can give to another, in our actions.
Empathy is good, right? The foundation of community and brotherhood. The glue that binds us together as human beings. “And you shall love your brothers and sisters as yourself”.
Not according to the world’s richest man. Direct quote from Elon Musk: “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy – the empathy exploit.” He said this on Joe Rogan’s podcast – same podcast that refused to host candidate Kamala Harris.
Empathy is Western civilizzation’s fundamental weakness! And why? Because the United States, through AID and other organizations, helps those abroad who are poor, ill, uneducated. This is, by Musk, a weakness. It invests resources in others, who exploit our compassion, when we could be buying more $100,000 Tesla cars. This, from the person now dominating US government (and destroying it), who, as far as I know, was never elected by anyone.
LACK of empathy causes wars. Here is the analysis of MIT Professor Barry Posen: “Vladimir Putin likely viewed Russia’s strategic situation through a preventive war frame. NATO membership for Ukraine would shift the balance of power against Russia, and U.S. and NATO military cooperation with Ukraine intensified during the Joe Biden administration. These developments likely convinced Putin that he did not have much time to forestall Ukraine’s NATO membership.”
The US lacked what Posen calls “strategic empathy”. Understanding how foes feel and think.
“The United States is an enormously powerful actor in international politics. But U.S. leaders often fail to consider the knock-on effects of their own policies. U.S. foreign policymakers are always alert to how the United States’ behavior affects the confidence of its allies. They are attentive to how U.S. behavior does or does not strengthen deterrence of its potential adversaries. But U.S. leaders are often oblivious that U.S. power and behavior might feel threatening to other states.” [1]
Posen shows that Russia’s Putin for years, dating to 2014 and before, felt threatened by Ukraine’s avowed desire to be part of NATO. He felt in February 2023 that if he did not occupy Ukraine now, Ukraine would join NATO – and that would bring, by force of law, the entire military might of NATO on him. His invasion of Ukraine was predictable – with a bit of strategic empathy.
Consider Hamas’ murderous attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. Hamas leader Yihya Sinwar spent 22 years in Israeli prisons. Enough time to get inside his head? And he made no bones about it. His goal was to destroy Israel. He attacked on October 7, because he saw Saudi Arabia close to normalizing its relations with Israel – and that would forever marginalize the Palestinian cause and leave the ‘occupation’ permanent. The October 7 attack led to over 50,000 Palestinians’ death. But it has delayed, maybe for years, Saudi normalization. Or maybe forever.
And Israeli intelligence? And government? That fed Qatari billions into Gaza, even when it became clear that the money was going to Hamas tunnels and weapons, not to food and water for Gazans. The total lack of strategic empathy, to understand what Posen calls the ‘preventive war’ (you go to war to keep a worse war or event from happening), was rampant. Especially in the Netanyahu government, in power since March 2009, with only a short break.
The Netanyahu government is culpable, directly, including its head, because it lacked strategic empathy. And we, the people, paid a terrible price.
The ancient Chinese general Sun Tzu, author of The Art of War, wrote this some 2,500 years ago: “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
On October 7, we learned that Israel neither knew the enemy, nor knew itself. Despite having imprisoned Yihya Sinwar for over two decades, we failed to learn, understand, and pay attention to his intentions –- even though he declared them openly.
And despite some 15 major operations and wars against Gaza since 1948, Israel and IDF did not come to know themselves — applying strategies that repeatedly failed, while building blindly on assumptions (the enemy is deterred) that were visibly and obviously false.
No, Elon Musk. Strategic empathy is not a weakness. The total lack of it is. And the price we pay is truly terrible.
[1] Barry Posen. Putin’s Preventive War: The 2022 Invasion of Ukraine. International Security, February 2025.
How Israel Screwed Up: Anatomy of Catastrophe
By Shlomo Maital
This is the story of how Israel, and its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, totally screwed up how it handled the pandemic. This, after congratulating itself for being a “model for all nations”. It is based on an article in today’s daily Haaretz by Ido Efrati. It will take me only 695 words. And they are almost too painful to write. Because it is my country, and it is unbearable to see what our leaders have done to it.
According to the Israeli government press office: as late as on May 7, “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, today, participated in a conference of the leaders of the countries at the forefront of dealing with the coronavirus pandemic, [whose leaders] sought to learn from the Israeli model for dealing with outbreak zones.” Really??
Ten costly mistakes that cost lives:
- Very few nurses have been assigned to do contact tracing. And they are not well coordinated. A new contact tracing center does not yet operate – it hasn’t yet received the necessary authority. It now takes 6 days or more to trace a patient’s contacts – it has to be 24-48 hours to stop an outbreak.
- PM Netanyahu decided to open all schools fully for all grades in mid-May. He scrapped the previous system of ‘capsules’, and small groups. And days later, the new Health Minister Y. Edelstein scrapped the requirement that kids wear masks. Too hot, he said. So much for getting adults to wear masks. Schools spread the virus and soon hundreds had to close and quarantine teachers and kids.
- It has taken many months for the Health Ministry to increase daily tests to 25,000. Only on May 31 did the Health Minister say that asymptomatic people should be tested, too, if they came in contact with someone infected. Only on June 22 did Dr. Sadetzki (Health Ministry official) order officials to test those quarantined within 48 hours. Result: Many carriers spread the virus widely before they were identified.
- Until a week ago, the Health Ministry used a strategy of declaring ‘red zones’ (local hotspots). But because the virus is now so widespread, this failed utterly. And under pressure, the Ministry backed down.
- Israelis are exhausted, hungry and jobless. After the PM and other leaders made empty promises and false claims, they no longer believe what they are told. Police are trying to enforce mask-wearing, with little success. Moreover, both the President of Israel and the Prime Minister of Israel broke quarantine laws during Jewish religious holydays, inviting relatives against then-strict lockdown rules – and the Press reported it. This infuriated many Israelis and led to widespread defiance. Now, only about a quarter of those who should be in quarantine actually do so, according to the Health Ministry.
- Five months after the pandemic broke out in Israel, critical information is missing. What proportion of Israelis are asymptomatic, with virus? We don’t know. How long does it take to trace patients’ contacts? We don’t know.
- Israel has a well-staffed professional experience organization that can best deal with the pandemic. It is the Israel Defense Forces’ Home Front command. It has almost infinite manpower, able to call up trained soldiers for reserve duty. Yet the Prime Minister stubbornly refuses to mobilize the Home Front Command. The reason is transparent. Home Front is under the Defense Ministry, and Netanyahu’s rival Benny Gantz is Defense Minister. What if, heaven forbid, the Home Front succeeded? Gantz would get the credit. No way. It will not happen. As with Trump, Bibi is only, and totally, about Bibi, and not Israel or its wellbeing.
- “Israel’s decision making, from the earliest stages of the crisis, has been influenced by only a handful of professionals. …Many professional associations are furious that they can’t even get a foot in the door to influence decision-making.”
- “The coronavirus crisis has laid bare years of neglect in the public health system, including its diagnostic laboratories.” The country’s 37 diagnostic labs have for months relied on student volunteers to help. There are too few doctors and too few hospital beds.
- And the previous Health Minister, appointed in July 2015, allowed the healthcare infrastructure to degrade – believe it or not, while most civilized nations appoint doctors or veteran healthcare managers to head the Health Ministry, Israel appointed an ultra-Orthodox Hassid who once came to a key pandemic press conference wearing his bear-fur hat in celebration of the Jewish festival Purim. During the pandemic, while in office, he persistently fought against lockdown restrictions on the ultra-Orthodox – and partly as a result, they have suffered disproportionately many cases and deaths.
TIMnovate 