Israel has spent decades perfecting the art of war. It built one of the most sophisticated militaries on the planet, invested in cutting-edge intelligence infrastructure, and developed doctrines for striking enemies with surgical precision. What it never built — and what may now prove its greatest strategic liability — is the diplomatic architecture capable of actually ending a conflict, not merely pausing it.
That is the central argument of a sharp commentary published Tuesday by Ezra Taylor in The Jerusalem Post, which dissects Israel’s so-called “mowing the grass” doctrine and traces a direct line from that posture to Washington’s decision to pull back from Israel’s war effort against Iran. The piece argues that former U.S. President Donald Trump — Israel’s closest international ally — effectively walked away not out of hostility, but because he was confronted with an open-ended, economy-draining conflict that Israel had never equipped itself to resolve.
The reason, Taylor argues, is structural. Israel built its military instrument for decades while its diplomatic one atrophied. At one point, the country’s foreign ministry was reportedly so underfunded it could not afford pens. The guns were always loaded. The negotiating table was never set.
The consequences of that imbalance are now in plain sight. Iran’s regional network — built through terrorism, proxy militias, drug trafficking, and political subversion — created a long list of aggrieved states and governments who share Israel’s interest in seeing that network dismantled. Those countries, Taylor writes, represent a natural coalition. But assembling it would require something Israel has structurally resisted: going to nations it treats as permanent adversaries, acknowledging shared interests, and asking them in.
That step demands diplomatic humility — the willingness to admit need, to offer concessions, and to trust a process that cannot be controlled by airstrikes. Israel, the article concludes, has never seriously attempted to build the conditions that would make such a coalition possible. Instead, it kept the world at arm’s length, managed threats rather than dismantled them, and left force as the only instrument sharp enough to reach for in a crisis.
The result, Taylor argues bluntly, is not merely a failed strategy. It is the deliberate maintenance of a problem — and until Israel’s leadership decides it actually wants to solve the conflict rather than administer it, no amount of military capability will be enough to finish the job.