POLITICS: Israel will never again forget who its neighbors are

The two decades preceding the Oct. 7th Hamas attack had been spectacularly good to Israel. Miraculous even. What was once an inflation-plagued, war-prone pariah state had evolved into a global center of economic and cultural excellence — a soft-power success story whose complicated political situation no longer dominated every headline. 

Crowned the “start-up nation” thanks to a tech sector worth nearly $100 billion, Israel’s economy more than doubled between 2010 and 2022. Today, the country is home to nearly 10,000 tech firms, almost 150 of them listed on the NASDAQ — the most of any nation after the US, China and Canada. 

Meanwhile, Israel’s tourism industry hit near-record numbers before the Hamas invasion, while the nation’s culinary scene brought shakshuka to every city as chefs like Eyal Shani and Yotam Ottolenghi became international foodie sensations.

Across Tel Aviv, Pritzker Prize-winning architects like I.M. Pei and Richard Meier built sleek skyscrapers while the city’s distinctive Bauhaus architecture lured design pilgrims from across the globe.

And Tel Aviv’s high-throttle club culture — and annual Mediterranean-front Pride Parade — helped crown it the world’s top LGBT party capital.

Back in the US, “Wonder Woman” Gal Gadot became Hollywood’s first bona fide Israeli superstar, celebrated in an April 2020 Vogue cover feature for her easy Israeli cool and backstory as both a former IDF soldier and Ms. Israel winner.

Israeli television shows such as “Fauda” and “The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem” became global streaming smashes, part of a robust production industry that included “Prisoners of War” — remade in the US as “Homeland” — which The New York Times crowned the best international television series of the decade.

Most astoundingly, Tel Aviv — a place I had lived for years but had not visited for close to a decade — was declared the world’s most expensive city by the Economist a few months before I arrived for a two-week stay in the summer of 2022.

Everywhere I turned, the city looked hip — and pricey.

And priciest of all was real estate: An average Tel Aviv apartment cost more than its counterparts in Paris or London, according to a 2022 report by Deloitte, a startling data point considering Israel’s tiny size and geographic isolation.  

The biggest shock, however, wasn’t sticker, but culture. After nearly 75 years, Israelis appeared to have achieved the impossible: normalcy.

With peace secured between many of its regional Arab neighbors — and Israelis now unremarkable elements of any cosmopolitan crowd — Israelis had finally become like citizens of any other small-sized, high-income, sun-drenched nation. A Jewish Portugal, or Hebrew-speaking Greece. 

The country was at the forefront of just about everything: gay rights and reproductive rights, medical cannabis and psychedelics research.

Bio-tech had replaced bomb shelters, occasional Hamas flare-ups in Gaza quickly extinguished via diplomacy and the Iron Dome. A branch of Israel’s Technion University even opened on Roosevelt Island in 2017.

But at what cost progress, and for how long? By the end of that two-week visit back in 2022, I couldn’t help but think, can this last?

Despite Israelis’ understandable quest for normalcy, Israel has never been a normal nation and has never had normal neighbors. There was a fall-of-Rome feel to the place — and fall Israel did quickly.

By the following January, thousands of Israelis began taking to the streets each weekend to protest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposed judicial overhaul, shutting down much of Tel Aviv and threatening to topple the Netanyahu government.

Then, 10 months later, the real fall arrived — Oct. 7 and the surprise Hamas attack on Southern Israel which saw 1,200 Israelis massacred and over 250 taken captive into Gaza. 

Almost in tandem, Hezbollah rockets began to hit Israel’s north from Lebanon, rendering nearly a third of the nation uninhabitable.

Then came the Houthi attacks in the Red Sea and the first Iranian missile barrage on Israel in April — along with Islamist militant build-ups in the West Bank not seen for decades.

And at every stage, thousands of anti-Israel protestors calling for an end to Zionism in nearly every corner of the globe. 

As I walked through Tel Aviv earlier this year, the city empty of tourists and covered in hostage posters, Israel’s decades-long winning streak felt deep in the rearview. And as news emerged of six Israeli hostages murdered in Gaza in late August, the nation, once again, felt as if it had run out of luck.  

Israel’s problem, however, wasn’t a lack of luck, but an oversupply of hubris: an inevitable consequence of Israelis believing that they were finally just like everyone else and that Israel had become a normal nation.

But neither Jews (nor the Jewish nation) have ever been like everyone else — a sentiment starkly on display this past week as the IDF brazenly dismantled Hezbollah’s fighting capabilities in Lebanon while, yet again, Iranian missiles rained down across Israel. Miraculously, just one person was killed. 

On the eve of the first anniversary of the October 7th massacre, Israeli luck — as is Israeli winning — is returning, even as over 100 hostages remain trapped in Gaza and Hamas terrorists shot six dead in Tel Aviv last week.

Nothing is normal about Israel today; not the hundreds of soldiers killed nor the thousands of civilians made homeless nor the millions crouching in bomb shelters on Tuesday evening. And, of course, not the tens of thousands of Gazans dead as a consequence of Hamas cravenness. 

True, Israeli companies are now being boycotted and Israeli artists banned. But as Benjamin Netanyahu continues his campaign of deterrence and response, Israel has made clear that it has not forgotten who its neighbors are — and that it will never again rely on luck alone. 

dkaufman@nypost.com