Israel’s Hidden Victory: The ‘Defeat’ Of The West Is a Myth | Yakov Rabkin

## Artyom Kirpichenok’s Arrest and the Limits of Public Knowledge The case of Artyom Kirpichenok crystallizes several of the most troubling themes running through contemporary Israeli politics: secrecy in the name of security, opaque legal processes, and the swift curtailment of ordinary legal protections. Reported details about his detention are scarce and contested; what emerges from the conversation is less a neat dossier than a portrait of uncertainty. Kirpichenok, a scholar with longstanding ties to Israel and Russia, was detained upon arrival, and the official record is thin. His purported charge—spying—strikes many observers as implausible given his profile, yet the accusation has been enough to trigger prolonged detention, restricted lawyer access, and a cloak of state secrecy. That practical reality—being held as a “security detainee” without public charges or timely legal representation—illustrates a broader phenomenon. Facts are withheld, procedures opaque, and the usual safeguards of transparent criminal justice are suspended under the label of national security. The immediate human consequence is clear: friends, colleagues, and family are left in limbo; the detained person is stripped of the informational and procedural anchors that would normally mitigate injustice. Kirpichenok’s case functions as a recent and striking example of what a security-first legal culture can produce: uncertainty, fear, and a presumption of state prerogative. ## Security Courts and Unequal Jurisprudence A central theme that arises from the exchange is the deep dualism embedded in Israel’s legal system. Outside security cases, courts and police procedures operate broadly like those in many liberal democracies: trials, appeals, and civil protections exist and are often effective. Yet when a matter is framed as a security issue, a different logic takes over. Evidence may be withheld, hearings closed, and extended pre-trial detention permitted. The result is an uneven system in which the law’s protective mantle is conditional rather than universal. Yakov Rabkin draws attention to the stark disparities in outcomes depending on the defendant’s identity. For Palestinians—whether citizens of the state or residents of the occupied territories—security prosecutions are common and conviction rates soar. The figure cited, of a very high conviction rate for Palestinians charged in security cases, points to a system that does not adjudicate neutrally but operates with embedded assumptions about threat and belonging. Even Israeli citizens who are Palestinian can be treated with different standards than Jewish citizens. This bifurcation of legal status—military justice for occupants, civil law for settlers a few meters away—encapsulates a juridical geography of unequal rights where proximity does not equal equality, and where law becomes an instrument of political sorting. ## Western Support and Double Standards A recurring undercurrent in the conversation is the West’s selective enforcement of international norms. Rabkin identifies an asymmetry in how Western powers apply tools like sanctions, rhetorical pressure, and diplomatic censure. He contrasts the rapid and robust responses deployed against some states with the far more cautious, tentative stance toward Israeli policies that many critics deem violative of international law. This inconsistency is not simply an administrative detail; it reshapes incentives and emboldens certain political actors. The explanation Rabkin advances links Western reluctance to principle with strategic and political priorities. Israel occupies an unusual place in Western foreign policy imaginaries: a long-standing ally, a convenient proxy in regional contests, and an object of domestic political lobbying. That cocktail produces a tolerance for practices that would trigger stiffer responses elsewhere. In practice, this selective outrage translates into half-measures—symbolic rebukes, narrow punitive actions that avoid systemic attention—rather than sustained pressure to change structural policies like settlement expansion or military operations that provoke mass civilian suffering. The effect is to normalize impunity for powerful allies while maintaining rigid discipline toward others. ## Colonial Pride and the “New Hebrew” Rabkin invokes a historical sensibility to explain how certain ideational elements of Zionism endure: a language of reclaiming land, a narrative of heroic return, and an ethos of creating a “new Hebrew” that displaces older identities. But this cultural self-fashioning has political consequences. The claim to a land as a site of rebirth and national renewal often carries with it an implicit hierarchy of belonging; it valorizes one group’s claims at the expense of another’s presence. This ethos helps explain the social and institutional attitudes that undergird discriminatory practices. If the state is conceived—and presents itself—as a vessel of national resurrection, then protective instincts toward the in-group become morally ennobled. Acts that elsewhere would read as exclusionary or repressive are reframed as necessary measures to preserve the national project. Rabkin’s analysis suggests that ideologies of belonging and rebirth cannot be treated as merely symbolic; they configure policy choices, shape legal norms, and provide cultural cover for measures that concentrate security prerogatives in the hands of the majority. ## Britain and Christian Zionism The conversation also touches on the particularities of Britain’s historical and contemporary engagement with Zionism—an engagement infused with religious and colonial strands. British sympathy for the Zionist project historically mixed imperial interests with strands of Christian millenarianism and humanitarian rhetoric. Those legacies persist in the form of political and cultural affinities that complicate Britain’s posture as a neutral arbiter on Middle Eastern disputes. Christian Zionism, as a strand of supportive belief, matters because it mobilizes constituencies around theological commitments that translate into political backing, lobbying, and influential narratives within policymaking circles. When religious narratives align with strategic interests, they add a layer of durability to political support that is resilient to ordinary diplomatic pressures. Rabkin’s reflections imply that understanding Western support for Israel requires attention not only to geopolitics but to the religious and historical narratives that animate public opinion and elite commitments in key capitals. ## Israel’s Hidden Victory and the Myth of Western Decline One of the sharper claims explored in the discussion is the idea that Israel’s current posture—its openness about settlement expansion, its blunt rhetoric from leading politicians, its diminished appetite for hedging policies—represents a “hidden victory.” The victory is not merely territorial; it is the achievement of a political status in which Israel feels able to act with a degree of impunity, secure in the knowledge that Western allies’ objections will be limited, qualified, or quickly neutralized. Rabkin challenges the narrative that these developments signal an inevitable Western decline or collapse. Instead, he suggests a more pragmatic reading: regional fracturing, shifting alliances, and the realpolitik calculus of Western elites might be serving strategic aims even as they erode normative commitments. The political classes that back Israel are not simply acting out of altruism; they are projecting their own interests and anxieties onto the Middle East and using Israel as an instrument within broader geopolitical games. Thus what looks like a decline in Western power can also be understood as a strategic choice to preserve certain partnerships and frameworks at the cost of human-rights consistency. ## Security Laws and Shrinking Civil Liberties A further thread in the conversation interrogates the dom