Israeli security forces detain a man during a rally against the government and the war in Gaza in Tel Aviv, on July 2, 2026, marking 1000 days since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel. (Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images)
I returned to Israel this summer for the second time in less than a year.
My first trip was in December 2025.
Eight months isn’t very long. But in Israel, eight months can feel like a lifetime.
The country I found this time was different.
Quieter. Tighter. More watchful. And certainly more cynical.
Last December, conversations with Israelis often drifted toward optimism — what would happen after the wars, what the country might look like when things finally settled down.
This time, almost every conversation seemed to come back to two subjects: security and the growing feeling that Israel may ultimately have to defend itself largely on its own.
I spoke with IDF reservists, business owners and parents who have already sent their children into the military.
They’re tired. They’re worried. And they’re preparing themselves for whatever comes next.
I kept hearing the same phrase, “This is the calm before the storm.”
For the moment, Iranian and Houthi drones and ballistic missiles aren’t arriving with the frequency they once did. Hezbollah has been badly degraded. But nobody I met believes these threats have disappeared.
Hamas is trying to rebuild. Hezbollah remains dangerous.
And Mahmoud Abbas, now 90, presides over a weak Palestinian Authority whose future is deeply uncertain. A post-Abbas struggle between Fatah and Hamas could create yet another crisis for Israel.
The nightmare scenario is obvious: Hamas eventually gaining control not just of Gaza, but the West Bank.
When Israelis talk about the next storm, they aren’t being theatrical. It’s more like someone in Florida talking about a hurricane after feeling the barometric pressure suddenly drop.
They know the weather. Iran remains the biggest threat.
The February campaign that killed Ali Khamenei and decimated much of Iran’s senior military leadership dealt a staggering blow to the Islamic Republic. But it did not produce the democratic revolution many hoped might follow.
Iran remains wounded, but dangerous.
It can rebuild missiles, activate proxies and threaten the Strait of Hormuz.
Israelis understand that they won an enormous battle. They don’t believe they won the war.
And that reality comes with an enormous human cost.
Israel’s military depends heavily on reservists, and those reservists are being pushed far beyond anything envisioned before Oct. 7, 2023.
Some combat reservists have served 170 days or more since the attack. Before the war, the expectation was roughly 25 reserve days over three years.
Think about that.
These are not professional soldiers spending their entire lives on military bases. They’re fathers, husbands, entrepreneurs, engineers, farmers and students.
Israel keeps asking the same relatively small pool of people to deal with Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and Iran.
Somehow, they keep doing it. But they can’t do it forever.
Then there’s Turkey.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s neo-Ottoman ambitions are no longer some abstract academic debate.
Ankara’s growing influence in Syria, Erdoğan’s hostility toward Israel and Turkey’s complicated relationship with Washington are becoming major strategic concerns.
Israelis look north and see Turkey planting deeper roots in Syria while Erdoğan talks about Jerusalem and simultaneously courts Washington.
That makes Syria particularly important.
Its new president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, was once known as Abu Mohammad al-Julani, the jihadist commander associated with an al-Qaida affiliate that helped overthrow Bashar Assad.
Now he wears a suit, talks about reconstruction, courts Washington and discusses security arrangements.
But Israelis understandably ask: Has Julani really become Sharaa?
Or did he just change his clothes?
Nobody I met claimed to know the answer.
And nobody wants Israel to discover the truth the hard way.
One phrase I heard sums up the new Israeli security doctrine pretty well, “We’ll judge them by their capabilities, not their intentions.”
That attitude also helps explain Benjamin Netanyahu.
Netanyahu Bibi remains polarizing within Isreal. Israelis are exhausted by years of war. His political rivals see an opening, and voters clearly want something resembling normal life again.
Yet there is another side to the Netanyahu story.
Israelis look around their neighborhood and ask themselves a very practical question: Who do we trust to navigate this?
For all his faults, Netanyahu has spent a generation dealing with precisely these threats. Some voters who might personally prefer someone else may ultimately decide that the old hand is still the safest hand.
It’s less enthusiasm than resignation.
Israel is also painfully aware that it is losing the global information war over Gaza.
During my visit, I saw humanitarian aid moving toward Gaza — trucks, convoys and enormous quantities of supplies.
Yet Hamas continues to exploit Gaza’s suffering and manipulate the images reaching audiences around the world.
Israel is accused of genocide while Israelis are still living with the trauma of Oct. 7.
For Americans, perhaps the closest comparison is 9/11.
But imagine if after 9/11 Americans had been told that Osama bin Laden was really the victim. Imagine if Al Qaeda lived just a few miles away and was openly trying to rebuild so it could do it again.
That is closer to the psychological reality Israelis live with.
Oct. 7 shattered something beyond lives and buildings.
It shattered the idea that Israel could simply manage its enemies indefinitely.
Israel’s military leadership now talks about never returning to the assumptions of Oct. 6.
And yet, here’s what surprised me most about this trip. Israel is still Israel.
I stopped for a beer at Jerusalem’s Mahaneh Yehuda Market.
People were talking about war and politics — and then, suddenly, they broke into song.
That tells you something.
The same stubborn pioneer spirit that built Israel is still everywhere.
You see it in Jerusalem.
You see it in the bars and beaches of Tel Aviv.
You see it in the Golan Heights and communities around Gaza.
You see it in technology companies raising money between missile sirens. You see it in reservists finishing another military deployment and going straight back to a laboratory, farm or business.
And you see it in Israel’s loud, argumentative democracy, which somehow keeps functioning while surrounded by failed states, theocracies, terrorist organizations and aspiring regional empires.
Israel built the Mideast’s most successful democracy out of desert, malaria-infested swamps, refugees and a remarkable wager: that a people who had spent centuries without a country could build one — and make it work.
That wager was never cheap. It was never safe.
And today it may be more important than ever.
Some of history’s greatest societies have been created by people willing to look at an empty or hostile landscape and build something anyway — and then refuse to apologize for defending what they built.
Israel today is tired. It is tense.
And it is watching the horizon because Israelis know another storm may be coming.
But Israel is also unmistakably still Israel.
After seeing it again up close, I find that deeply inspiring.
John Bachman joined Newsmax Media after more than a decade working as a producer, anchor and reporter in Atlanta, Augusta, GA and West Palm Beach Florida television markets. He’s also covered special assignments for CBS News, CNN, and Fox. Since joining Newsmax in 2011, Bachman has traveled the country and won an award for a documentary he wrote and produced for Newsmax to commemorate 40 American Heroes – which coincided with a special edition of Newsmax Magazine. He is currently the host of John Bachman Now, on Newsmax’s N2.
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