Israel once again faces a painful and troubling gap between expectation and outcome. The confrontation with Iran was accompanied by hopes for a deep strategic blow to its nuclear program, missile capabilities, terrorist proxies, and perhaps even the stability of the Iranian regime itself. There were important operational achievements, and they should not be dismissed. But if, in the end, the emerging arrangement fails to realize the goals presented to the public, the sense of missed opportunity is hard to ignore.

The difficulty is not only diplomatic or military. It is also public. Most Israelis supported the move, and it is therefore hard to say plainly now: we were wrong; we misread the situation; we expected too much. It is easier to place responsibility on the leadership, the military, the American president, or the circumstances. It is harder to acknowledge that the public, too, shared the expectation that the use of external force could solve a deep and complex problem.

Yet precisely at such a moment, when the sense of failure becomes sharper, it is worth looking at another historical example. In 1864, Denmark went through one of the greatest crises in its history. It was defeated in war by Prussia and Austria and lost important territories in the southern part of the kingdom. The defeat damaged national self-confidence, undermined public trust in the leadership, and forced Denmark to rethink its power, its borders, and its future.


Prussian soldiers storm Danish positions at the Battle of Dybbøl, 1864. Illustration by Richard Knötel, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Out of that crisis came the Danish phrase:

Hvad udad tabes, skal indad vindes — “What is lost outward must be won inward.”

This sentence does not express surrender. It expresses a national decision: when a country discovers the limits of its external power, it must rebuild its internal strength — through education, trust in institutions, solidarity, economic renewal, civic responsibility, and the ability to live together.

Israel after October 7 is, of course, in a very different place from Denmark in 1864. Denmark lost territory in a war between states; Israel experienced a massacre, mass kidnapping, the collapse of a security concept, a long war, the uprooting of communities from their homes, and severe damage to public trust. And yet there is an important point of similarity: in both cases, an external failure exposed a deep internal weakness.

October 7 intensified the Israeli crisis. For years, sharp polarization had been building around Netanyahu’s trial, the judiciary, religion and state, military service, the treatment of minorities, the nature of democracy, and the identity of the state. In the year before the war, that polarization reached a peak around the judicial overhaul and the protest movement against it. For a brief moment after the catastrophe, it seemed that pain might restore a basic sense of partnership to Israeli society. But as the war continued, the divisions returned, sometimes with even greater force.

Today Israel is living through several crises at once: war, grief, the exhaustion of reservists, anxiety for residents of the border areas, lack of trust in the leadership, political radicalization, and a deep feeling that the old order no longer holds. The political polls are not only a question of Knesset seats. They reflect a society searching for a decision, yet struggling to produce broad agreement on the way forward.

In such a situation, the question of responsibility cannot be skipped. Denmark in 1864 did not face only an external enemy. The defeat was also accompanied by harsh criticism of the leadership, of political judgment, of the conduct of the war, and of the assessment of the balance of power. In Israel, too, it will be difficult to heal society without a truthful inquiry. A state commission of inquiry is needed. A full examination of the failures is needed. Personal and institutional conclusions are needed. Without responsibility, trust will not be rebuilt.

After 1864, Denmark did not return to being a great military power. It grew stronger in another way: through popular education, agricultural cooperation, local institutions, civic organizations, and communal responsibility. Folk high schools educated people toward citizenship, language, responsibility, and public participation. Agricultural cooperatives taught farmers to share risk, arrange financing, make joint decisions, and market their produce together. In cooperative dairies, for example, a large farmer and a small farmer could belong to the same organization, sometimes operating according to the principle of “one person, one vote.” In this way, trust did not remain an abstract value; it became an economic and social system practiced day after day.

In Denmark, 1864 is remembered not only as a year of defeat but as a turning point. That choice did not solve all of Denmark’s problems, nor did it turn the country overnight into a model society. But it laid important foundations for modern Denmark: a small and stable country with high social trust, functioning institutions, civic solidarity, and one of the highest standards of living in the world. It is also the foundation for a civic culture in which a person can leave produce by the roadside and trust that the buyer will pay and that the payment will remain safe.


A self-service roadside produce stand — an everyday expression of social trust: produce is left out, and buyers are trusted to pay. By Franzfoto – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0,

Israel cannot copy Denmark. It faces far more severe security threats, a more diverse and divided society, and an ongoing national conflict. But it can learn the principle: external power cannot endure without internal strength. A strong army is not enough when the society behind it is losing trust in itself, its institutions, and its leadership.

The Israeli debate must therefore move from the question of which camp will win to a different question: what rules will allow all of us to continue living here together? In a wounded and polarized country, broad agreements are not a luxury but a practical necessity. No camp will disappear, and so the question is how we can continue to argue without tearing down the house.

One central test is service to the state. For years, service in the IDF was a source of solidarity, responsibility, and a shared language. Today it is also a focus of deep injustice: part of the public bears a heavy burden of service, reserve duty, and personal cost, while others do not share that burden. This gap erodes trust.

Israel must therefore consider moving from the narrow idea of compulsory military service to a broader concept of compulsory service to the state. Those suited to the IDF should serve in the IDF; others should serve in essential civilian frameworks: health, education, welfare, emergency response, rehabilitation of communities, agriculture, firefighting, Magen David Adom, care for the elderly, youth at risk, and mental health.

The principle is simple: the state should not erase identities or beliefs, but every young man and woman should take part in building it. Such service is not a second-class track, but part of a new Israeli covenant: everyone gives, each according to a path suited to him or her, and the state gives back through training, rights, belonging, and opportunity.

Another part of this new Israeli covenant should be a lean constitution. Not a constitution that tries to resolve all of Israel’s identity questions, and not a broad document that imposes the worldview of half the public on the other half. On the contrary: precisely because Israeli society is divided, the right step may be a minimal and agreed-upon constitution that deals first and foremost with the rules of the game.

Such a lean constitution need not solve in one day all the disputes over religion and state, Jewishness and democracy, borders, and identity. Its first role is more modest but essential: to ensure that political disagreement does not become, each time, a constitutional crisis. It can address the formation and replacement of governments, the relationship between the Knesset, the government, and the courts, the protection of basic rights, and the obligation to conduct an official inquiry after a national catastrophe or severe systemic failure.

Within such a lean constitution, there should also be a special chapter on the prime minister: term limits, regulation of investigations of a sitting prime minister, postponement of legal proceedings during the term of office subject to serious exceptions, and an obligation to complete the process immediately after the end of the term. This is not an exemption from the law, but an attempt to establish in advance rules that prevent the state from becoming hostage to a single criminal proceeding.

The political-legal entanglement also requires treatment. Netanyahu’s trial, the indictments, the question of responsibility for the failure, the demand for elections, and the mutual suspicion between the camps have all become part of one trap. Netanyahu’s opponents see his continued rule as a danger to democracy and to the management of the state; his supporters see the legal process as political persecution. Thus, a trial that was supposed to determine personal guilt has become one of the focal points of the national fracture.

Already in early 2023, Professor Menachem Mautner described Netanyahu’s trial as the “Gordian knot” of the crisis, following Yuli Tamir’s proposal to postpone the trial in order to enable a broad unity government and curb political radicalization. One can disagree with the details of the proposal, but it is hard to ignore the diagnosis: when the trial of a sitting prime minister becomes the axis around which the entire political system is organized, the trial is no longer only a trial.

Jewish legal tradition also recognized this tension. The rule that “the king does not judge and is not judged” does not teach that a leader stands above the law. Rather, it emerged against the background of a Talmudic story in which the attempt to bring King Yannai before the court, in connection with the trial of his servant, ended in a dangerous clash between ruler and judges — and in catastrophe. The lesson is not immunity, but the need to regulate in advance the legal status of a sitting leader.

In this sense, the arrangement proposed above as part of a lean constitution is not meant to rescue a particular person, but to rescue the state from a trap. Such rules must be set in advance, as general rules, not as a personal response to a particular crisis. They do not place the prime minister above the law; they seek to ensure that the law applies without turning the entire country into a hostage of one criminal proceeding.

Denmark emerged from the defeat of 1864 through a decision to build inward what it could no longer achieve outward. Israel’s hope after the catastrophe of October 7 lies in its ability to turn crisis into the beginning of a new Israeli covenant: full responsibility for failures, shared and fair service, a lean constitution, broad agreements, term limits, regulation of the relationship between law and government, and the strengthening of institutions that serve the public rather than themselves.

None of this is a substitute for military power or for defeating enemies. It is an understanding that such power cannot endure over time without internal trust and stable institutions. Therefore, this is Israel’s next test: to turn the sense of failure into the beginning of repair. Not one camp against another, but a society that understands it has no choice but to rebuild trust, responsibility, and partnership.

In other words: What is lost outward must be won inward.