In his new book, American Covenant, Yuval Levin explains how the Constitution can help the United States repair its deeply broken political culture. Levin, in this conversation with Tunku Varadarajan, also has some insights into how the same lessons might apply to Israel, the land of his birth:

I think Israel in some ways has exactly what the United States lacks—and lacks exactly what the United States has. Israel has a lot of solidarity. There’s a real national feeling in Israel, a sense of national belonging that is very real in people’s lives. But the institutions of Israel’s government are weak. They make no sense at all. They’re barely thought through. And Israel has managed to avoid disaster despite having so little institutional structure because of its solidarity.

The United States has much less social solidarity, but it has very strong and well-conceived institutions. I think, in a funny way, the last few years have forced me to ask which of these is better than the other. They’re both problems. And both countries feel those problems intensely.

There’s an interesting sense of precariousness about Israel’s existence that used to be true of 19th-century America. If you think about the American national anthem, it’s from 1814. It’s just a song about surviving the night. It’s not a song of triumph and victory. It’s a song of amazement at the very existence of our society. And Israel is very much like that. Israel’s national anthem too. It’s a song of hope about someday creating Israel. That’s a very odd way to think about yourself, but I think there is a connection between these ways of a new nation conceiving of itself.

Robert Clark explains why the resumption of hostilities is both just and necessary:

These latest Israeli strikes come after weeks of consistent Palestinian provocation; they have repeatedly broken the terms of the cease-fire which they claimed they were so desperate for. There have been numerous [unsuccessful] bus bombings near Tel Aviv and Palestinian-instigated clashes in the West Bank. Fifty-nine Israeli hostages are still held in captivity.

In fact, Hamas and their Palestinian supporters . . . have always known that they can sit back, parade dead Israeli hostages live on social media, and receive hundreds of their own convicted terrorists and murderers back in return. They believed they could get away with the October 7 pogrom.

One hopes Hamas’s leaders will get the message. Meanwhile, many inside and outside Israel seem to believe that, by resuming the fighting, Jerusalem has given up on rescuing the remaining hostages. But, writes Ron Ben-Yishai, this assertion misunderstands the goals of the present campaign. “Experience within the IDF and Israeli intelligence,” Ben-Yishai writes, “has shown that such pressure is the most effective way to push Hamas toward flexibility.” He outlines two other aims:

The second objective was to signal to Hamas that Israel is not only targeting its military wing—the terror army that was the focus of previous phases of the war up until the last cease-fire—but also its governance structure. This was demonstrated by the targeted elimination of five senior officials from Hamas’s political and civilian administration. . . . The strikes also served as a message to mediators, particularly Egypt, that Israel opposes Hamas remaining in any governing or military capacity in post-war Gaza.

The third objective was to create intense military pressure, coordinated with the U.S., on all remaining elements of the Shiite “axis of resistance,” including Yemen’s Houthis, Hamas, and Iran.