What if the central mistake in understanding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict… was never military—but conceptual?
Dr. Einat Wilf argues that for decades, Israel—and much of the world—has been fighting the wrong battle. While attention is fixed on land, borders, and security, the real war, she says, has been unfolding in ideas, language, and narrative.
In this J100 conversation, Wilf traces her evolution from Oslo-era optimism to a far more unsettling conclusion: that the conflict is not simply about competing national claims, but about a fundamental rejection of Jewish sovereignty itself.
We discuss October 7, the failure of “comforting lies,” Palestinian political ideology, Iran, and the stakes of regime change, and why Israel has struggled to tell its own story in a world increasingly shaped by perception.
This is not a conventional conversation about geopolitics. It’s a deeper examination of what happens when a society misunderstands the nature of the conflict it’s in—and what it takes to correct course.
Condensed Transcript
David Cohen: Dr. Einat Wilf, it’s an amazing privilege to have you on the J100 podcast. You were recently selected to our J100 list, and there is so much going on in Israel, the Diaspora, and the broader world. I’d love to begin with your upbringing in Israel.
Einat Wilf: I grew up in Jerusalem, in Beit HaKerem. It was a classic secular, middle-class, Labor-oriented neighborhood. Everyone’s parents were teachers, public servants, university people. It was a very good childhood, and very Jerusalem. Later, when my father did a postdoc at the NIH, I went to public school in Bethesda, Maryland, which is where I got my English.
David Cohen: When did you begin thinking about speaking for Israel on the world stage?
Einat Wilf: Oddly, very early. Around 14 or 15, my teenage heroes were not pop stars. They were Abba Eban and Benjamin Netanyahu as Israel’s ambassador to the UN. I wanted to be able to speak English in a way that could tell Israel’s story. There was nothing obvious in my family background that explained it. It was simply what I knew I wanted to do.
David Cohen: You later served in Unit 8200. How did that shape you?
Einat Wilf: Israel’s small geography and many enemies meant that intelligence and the Air Force became central to its defense. In 8200, you were surrounded by extraordinarily high-level people. Later, when I went to Harvard, I expected that to be the global version of being among the best and brightest. In some ways, it was actually a coming down. My army years were also the years of the First Intifada, the fall of the Soviet Union, the Madrid Conference, and the first Gulf War. I lived through a moment when a whole world order was changing.
David Cohen: Your political worldview changed dramatically over time. What caused that shift?
Einat Wilf: The arc was from the First Intifada to the Second Intifada. The First Intifada felt like a genuine uprising. It had powerful symbolism: slingshots, Molotov cocktails, David and Goliath imagery. I projected onto Palestinians the Zionist story: that they were a people seeking freedom, self-determination, and statehood. So I supported Oslo, Rabin, Peres, Barak, and the peace process.
David Cohen: And then Camp David and the Second Intifada changed that?
Einat Wilf: Yes. Barak offered what I had grown up believing they wanted: a sovereign Palestinian state, no settlements, a capital in East Jerusalem. Arafat walked away, was embraced as a hero, and then came the Second Intifada — buses exploding, suicide bombings in Tel Aviv, Netanya, Beersheva. I began asking: if they could have had a state, what do they actually want?
David Cohen: What did you conclude?
Einat Wilf: I began meeting so-called moderate Palestinians — highly educated, sophisticated people — and they told me the Jewish people are not a people, have no connection to the land, and invented that connection to steal someone else’s land. I realized we were on parallel tracks. I thought the conflict was between two peoples with claims to the same land, meaning we should divide it. They were saying: what are you doing here? Get out.
David Cohen: You’ve said the key was learning to listen.
Einat Wilf: Exactly. The issue is whether you assign agency to Palestinians. For years, I projected onto them what I thought they should want. Then I started listening. And what I heard was a consistent ideological commitment to no Jewish state, no sovereign Jews anywhere in the land. That is what I call Palestinianism.
David Cohen: How does that connect to October 7?
Einat Wilf: Before October 7, people didn’t want to hear harsh truths. They wanted comforting lies: that it was only Hamas, not Gaza; that Hamas and the Palestinian Authority had different goals; that something good was being built in Gaza. After October 7, reality became too harsh to ignore, and people became more willing to hear those who had warned about it before.
David Cohen: You also argue that Israel has failed in the war of ideas.
Einat Wilf: Yes. In Gaza, I would say 30 percent of the war was physical, and there Israel largely did what it needed to do. But 70 percent was in people’s minds, on screens, in words. Our enemies understood that battlefield. Israel was effectively a no-show. The most important war Israel must fight is a war of ideas.
David Cohen: How do you see Iran in that framework?
Einat Wilf: Iran is also ideological. For me, this is a one-or-zero situation. Nothing short of the fall of the regime is a real achievement. Anything else leaves you stuck in the same loop. The only true victory is Iran becoming what so many of its people want it to be: free, secular, democratic, and pro-Western.
David Cohen: Why has Israel, such an ingenious country, fallen short in the realm of persuasion?
Einat Wilf: We didn’t always fall short. When ideas were our only battlefield, we had Herzl, Weizmann, Abba Eban. Jews had no land and no army, so they had to tell their story. Once we had land and a powerful military, that muscle atrophied. But if you don’t get the story right, nothing else matters.
David Cohen: Tell me about your new political project.
Einat Wilf: Oath/Oz was created after October 7 because I saw that the ideas I was advancing cut across left and right. Many Israelis feel politically homeless. They are tired of politics organized around one person, for or against. We are trying to build politics around “what” rather than “who,” around what it means to be a sovereign Jew.
