Author’s Note on the Use of the Term “Regime”

As outlined in the original article, The Ontological Collapse of a State Consumed by Its Own Shadows, the term “regime” is used to refer to the governing structure, leadership, elites, and systemic machinery of decision-making that operates as the locus of power. It is not a pejorative label or political slur. Rather, it isolates the apparatus of authority and accountability from the general population or cultural identity. To conduct ontological diagnosis responsibly, such systemic distinctions are non-negotiable.

Note on Framework

This analysis draws upon the Ashkan Tashvir’s forthcoming book, in which the Unified Ontology of Systemic Integrity is formally introduced. This philosophical framework offers a structured lens for understanding systemic integrity, sustained effectiveness, and the ontological foundations of both transformation and collapse. It is not a political ideology, but a way to illuminate what occurs when systems—political, organisational, economical, or civilisational—deviate from integrity and lose coherence.

The Ritual of Dominance: When War Becomes a Performance of Irrelevance

Is there a fight with the enemy? No. What is occurring is a fight with reality. We all do this, sometimes, to some degree. But what is unfolding in the case of Israel’s regime is an utter, unfettered war on reality, authenticity and congruence. One where engaging in a ritual of dominance that no longer delivers meaningful results is leading. This manifests into compulsion without any cogent or even rational payoff. Essentially, as a regime, the more you act, the more irrelevant you reveal yourself to be. You are not proving power. You are broadcasting decay.

This is not merely about geopolitics or military operations. It is an ontological failure, where the very being of a system is unraveling under the weight of its compulsions, its delusions, and its refusal to evolve.

This is no longer war as strategy. It is theatre. Repetitive, compulsive, hollow. There is no strategic manoeuvring. No intelligent restraint. No historical learning. Just the same exhausted reflex. Kill. Erase. Bury. Then repeat. Like a war machine stuck in a feedback loop, confusing shockwaves with significance, unable to distinguish movement from meaning.

Some regimes still indulge the fantasy, the delusion, that one can erase entire populations and still walk through the global corridor of legitimacy. That you can obliterate lives and still sit among the nations as if nothing happened. That if you act further upon your supremacy and attempt to erase what is inconvenient, the world will simply adjust, rebrand the crime, and move on.

There is no strategic recalibration. Only historical redundancy. The idea that you can erase Gaza and still walk through the global corridor of legitimacy persists, as if repetition itself produces justification. But legitimacy is not self-replicating. It decays under the weight of ethical fraudulence and ontological incoherence. If this path of supremacy is pursued further, if the aim is to erase a people from view and memory, those who do it must know: the world will not look away forever. Partners cannot mortgage a client that no longer follows the agreements. The choreography is broken. Collaboration falls apart. And the more they keep going, the more irreversible this systemic disintegration becomes.

And now, in what can only be described as rhetorical gymnastics, we are told this is “preemptive defence.” A term paraded by officials to justify Israel’s recent missile strike deep into Iranian territory, allegedly to deter future threats from a so-called axis of resistance. But what exactly is being preempted? The timeline? The narrative? Or the rising discomfort with accountability?

Was this an act of protection? Or was it an unprovoked escalation, dressed in the language of deterrence but performed in the theatre of domination? Ontologically, this is a calculated move to sustain supremacy, not safety. The logic then is not defence—it is mythology. A mythology that assumes erasing threats at their root includes striking sovereign nations and provoking a region already teetering on the edge. The only thing being defended here is a fantasy, not a people. And when policy becomes mythology, the collapse is no longer military—it is ontological.

Let this be clear. This is not a defence of any regime, nor an alignment with ideological blocs. This is not spoken on behalf of the Islamic Republic of Iran, nor is it an attempt to preserve the moral branding of any Western democracy. This is a philosophical diagnosis. An ontological reflection on what happens when a state turns away from coherence and becomes addicted to operating from its own shadows. When domination replaces discernment and mythology overtakes meaning, collapse is no longer a possibility. It becomes a trajectory.

This is not courage. It is a demonstration of the shadow of courage manifesting as avoidance dressed as aggression. The performance of resolve by a system unwilling to confront its own contradictions. Every missile, every calculated detonation, every act of destruction is not a projection of strength. It is the unfiltered scream of confusion that points to a regime that no longer knows who it is without an enemy. Its identity is violence. Its legitimacy? Withering.

One does not get to dismantle entire communities in the name of self-defence and still lecture the world about human rights. You do not get to displace, flatten and silence a people, and still expect your words to resonate with authority. This is not defence. It is the psychology of unchecked supremacy. It is not a sovereign response. It is inherited vengeance posing as moral clarity.

They speak of deterrence. Of legitimacy. Of existential threats. But the real threat is internal. What is under siege is not just a region. It is the collapsing myth of moral clarity, civilised restraint and eternal victimhood. That image can no longer hold the weight of what is being done.

This is not political commentary. It is an ontological exposure. This is not a debate about security doctrines or geopolitical alignment. It is a description of the disintegration of coherence itself. The undoing of a system that has turned from away from self-awareness to self-preservation of dysfunction. From responsiveness to performative ritual. This is a system addicted to dominance because it has forgotten how to, and likely refuses to evolve.

Entangled in Decay: Allies, Values, and the Cost of Misplaced Primacy

And those watching, those who call themselves allies, investors or strategic partners, are beginning to feel the tremors. What they are experiencing are not just geopolitical vibrations, but deep ontological dissonances. What they once aligned with—security, stability, shared interests—is fracturing. The performance is no longer synchronised. The public narrative diverges from the lived reality. The rhetoric of democracy clashes with images of demolition and destruction. The moral high ground they once echoed is now eroding beneath them.

The cost of propping it all up is becoming too high. Funding, justifying, and defending a system that is visibly collapsing in coherence is no longer viable. Because it means distorting one’s own values to align with a partner’s dysfunction. It means silencing internal dissent, undermining credibility, and risking moral authority for the sake of political choreography. Morally. Strategically. Ontologically. The more this machine continues, the more irreversible this systemic disintegration becomes.

But let us not be naive. It is possible the world will continue to adjust. That boardrooms will find ways to rationalise the intolerable, and institutions will rebrand tyranny as policy. It is possible that deceit will be rewarded, and dominance will be recast as stability. But then we must ask: is that the world we want to inherit? A world where the architecture of legitimacy is built on performance, not principle? Where reality is whatever those in power say it is, and truth is a casualty of convenience? That world may be real—but it is not sustainable. And it is certainly not one worth aspiring to.

Recent events have underscored this rupture. The United States, previously a distant observer, has now launched its own airstrikes against Iranian nuclear sites—Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan—citing preemptive defence and collective security. What was once rationalised as Israeli exceptionalism is now a shared script. The U.S. has joined the choreography, deepening its entanglement. This is not solidarity; it is complicity. And it signals something far more dangerous than escalation: it signals ontological alignment with a pathway of systemic decay that will deeply impact and ripple out beyond the involved regions and into our global community.

This is no longer strategic partnership. It is ontologically dysfunctional — a co-dependency with a collapsing system. Those still underwriting it—morally, materially, rhetorically—are gambling the trust of their own citizens, the integrity of their institutions, and, ultimately, they will lose the coherence of their own sense of purpose.

This is not only an ontological co-dependence; it is an axiological disorientation, a collapse of value hierarchy. The uncritical backing of Israel’s regime, even at the cost of global destabilisation, is a symptom of misplaced primacy. When the preservation of alliance takes precedence over averting international war, over the global economic fallout, the mass killing of civilians, or even the looming threat of radioactive escalation with generational consequences, then we are not witnessing strategy; we are witnessing a civilisation that no longer knows what truly matters. This is not clarity of purpose. It is a systemic confusion of values masquerading as resolve.

Ancient Memory, Modern Miscalculation

To call for Iran’s “unconditional surrender,” whether justified or not, reveals a poor grasp of the nation's civilisational memory and identity. Iran is not a state that emerged yesterday. It is the inheritor of an ancient legacy shaped by centuries of adversity, resistance, and regeneration. Moreover, as a predominantly Shia Muslim country, a significant portion of its cultural psyche is anchored in the yearly ritual of commemorating Imam Hussein—who refused surrender even at the cost of his life. This is not merely religious sentiment; it is an existential narrative. For those seeking to influence or confront the Iranian regime with serious intent, a first step is to understand the historical identity that animates it—from the defiant cadence of ancient Persia to the theological symbolism of Karbala. Without this comprehension, any demand for submission, however strategic, is destined to clash with a people who have been culturally conditioned to see dignity in resistance and disgrace in surrender.

To misunderstand this is not just a strategic oversight. It is a fundamental failure of sense making, a refusal to engage with the deep cultural memory that animates a people’s choices. Iran’s responses, however flawed or controversial, are not impulsive. They are rooted in an existential narrative where surrender is not a political manoeuvre but an ontological rupture. Any engagement that ignores this narrative, be it diplomatic, military, or rhetorical, will misfire because it attempts to overwrite meaning with might. And in the long arc of history, meaning outlasts force.

The Spell Is Broken: When Illusion No Longer Holds

And here is what is not yet understood. The world is shifting. The narrative is cracking. This is not the early 2000s. This is not a blank cheque era. Even within the architecture of global hypocrisy, something has shifted. The threshold of tolerated atrocity is thinning.

You cannot flatten Gaza and expect history to forgive you because you had good PR—especially not with the emerging generation, whose eyes are no longer filtered through the myths of old, but sharpened by access, awareness and a deepening hunger for authenticity.

Nor can you casually launch missiles deep into another sovereign nation—filled with actual people and communities, not just regimes—and expect to be congratulated for your “foresight.” A premeditated strike on a nuclear scientist’s home, inside a densely populated city, is not just policy theatre. It’s an illegal act dressed in strategy cosplay. It doesn’t matter how many strategic briefings are printed or how many slogans are broadcast—destruction does not become wisdom simply because it’s planned ahead.

What is being done is not resolve. It is avoidance with air support. You attack a family. Its father does not even get the dignity of facing an enemy. You invade from the sky. This is not courage. It is cowardice delivered by drone, wrapped in ceremony, narrated as necessity.

But history will not buy it. And neither will the conscience of the world.

This is not about whether another round is won. That has already been lost with ripples and consequences we as a global community will have to bear. The moral war is gone. The alliances are fractured. What is being defended now is not sovereignty. It is delusion. The regime is clinging to a ritual of dominance like a relic, praying it still commands awe. But the spell is broken.

And so we return to the question. Are you fighting the enemy, or are you fighting the collapse of your own illusion? Because the world is watching. Not through the lens of propaganda, but through the clarity of blood, rubble and silence. And we are all beginning to feel the tremors as a global people.

When the dust settles, you will not just be remembered for what you did.
You will be remembered for who you became in order to do it.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. This is not a geopolitical manifesto. Nor is it a public relations op-ed aimed at salvaging anyone’s narrative. Those looking to extract a binary—“whose side are you on?”—are in the wrong conversation. This is not about defending one regime by attacking another.

What is being explored here is something far more confronting. The ontological consequences of systemic dysfunction. This is not about Israel versus Iran. The West versus the East. Or democracy versus theocracy. Those are surface distractions. Institutional decoys. Generational misdirections.

What matters is this. What happens when a system—any system—collapses inward, blind to its own pathology, addicted to control and unable to recognise the mirror it avoids?

So, to spare those already typing out their outrage or their applause, pause. This is not about your favourite flag. It is about your forgotten soul.

There is a tragic naivety in believing the next intervention, the next sanction, the next strike, will finally make it right, as though reality responds to military bravado or institutional spin. But what you are up against is not geopolitical complexity. It is axiomatic law, laws not written by regimes but woven into the fabric of Existence itself. These are not theories. They are ontological constants, as real as gravity, as non-negotiable as breath.

You do not design the algorithm of this cosmic order. You merely gamble within it. And the house you wager against, the structure of Existence itself, does not tolerate infinite incongruence. You may temporarily suspend accountability through narrative, force, or silence. But the architecture of being recalibrates with time. Not always when we expect. But always with consequence.

Now let us do what most political analysts won’t. Return to the anatomy and mechanism of collapse.

The Anatomy and Mechanism of Disintegration: A Regime in Ontological Freefall

What we are witnessing is not merely a political failure. It is the full-spectrum collapse of a regime trapped in the Disintegration Sphere of the Unified Ontology of Systemic Integrity—a descent that unfolds through four cumulative and compounding stages:

Shadows → Misery → Suffering → Entrenchment.

It begins with Shadows—disowned truths, denied realities, and suppressed dimensions of the self or the system. In the case of Israel’s regime, these shadows include its historical trauma, unprocessed identity wounds, the inherited fear of annihilation, and the suppression of Palestinian dignity and personhood. These truths are not addressed and integrated—they are ignored, neglected, and ultimately projected. Anyone who dares to reflect the regime’s fragility back to itself is either silenced or demonised.

And when shadows remain unaddressed, they do not simply vanish. They accumulate and mature into external conditions, referred to here as Misery. Misery is not a mood—it is a systemic state of misalignment where ethics, identity, and structures fall out of coherence. In this stage, domination is mistaken for stability, and dissent is recoded as an existential threat. Reality becomes an adversary. Civilian life becomes expendable. Trust is eroded. Truth is negotiable.

But these conditions are not abstract—they are experienced by sentient beings. And that is where Suffering enters: the direct, lived experience of misery. Suffering is what misery feels like when absorbed by human beings—individuals, families, communities, nations. It marks the breakdown not only of systems but of meaning, empathy, and cohesion. A suffering regime lashes out, not because it sees a vision of the future, but because it can no longer conceive of one.

And if this feedback loop is not interrupted—if misery reinforces itself and the suffering it generates becomes self-sustaining—the system sinks into Entrenchment. Here, both the condition and the experience converge: the system becomes trapped, rigid, and incapable of recalibrating. Violence becomes habitual. Paranoia is institutionalised. Repression is no longer just a tactic—it becomes identity. Reform is no longer unthinkable—it is structurally impossible.

As will be discussed further, this ontological flow from shadow to entrenchment represents more than dysfunction—it is a civilisational unravelling. The Israeli regime’s conduct in Gaza and beyond exemplifies each of these stages in motion. This is not merely geopolitical—it is ontological.

The Inversion of Integrity: When Noble Forces Turn to Shadows

On the other end of the spectrum lies the Integrity Sphere—a configuration built on the systemic cultivation of: Intention, Trust, Sovereignty, and Being.

But here’s the warning embedded in the ontology: even these noble forces have shadow expressions when corrupted by fear, control, or moral blindness.

• Intention, when severed from ethical clarity, becomes manipulation.

• Trust, when weaponised, becomes coercive loyalty.

• Sovereignty, when divorced from mutual respect, becomes supremacist autonomy.

• And Being, when stripped of its depth, becomes self-idolatry—an inflated identity that clings to existence by suppressing others’.

This final distortion of Being is what we articulated in our analysis of Israel’s ontological collapse: a state consumed by the shadows of its own existential insecurity, addicted to its mythology, and incapable of distinguishing authentic existence from its performance. Read the full article here. The regime no longer is—it only performs being. And the performance demands a stage soaked in blood and denial.

The Architectonic Failure: Collapse at the Root of Discernment

At the deepest layer sits the Architectonic Sphere, which governs how a system perceives, orients, and sustains itself across time. Its four core components are:
Meta-awareness, Systemic Integrity, Sustained Effectiveness, and Normativity.

Israel's regime today suffers a collapse across all four:

• Meta-awareness—the capacity to observe itself, its history, and its narratives through the Nested Theory of Sense-Making—is absent. It does not reflect; it reacts. It has become blind to its own pathology.

• Systemic Integrity—the ability to act coherently across different parts of itself—is fractured. The state’s institutions, ethics, and propaganda no longer align. The moral justifications collapse under the weight of empirical atrocity.

• Sustained Effectiveness—the capacity to evolve in service of its declared aims—has been sacrificed for short-term domination. Yes, it may achieve momentary gains through assassinations and acts of terror, but these are fleeting victories. They generate noise, not longevity. No strategy survives, only tactics. No vision endures, only vengeance. What remains is a system incapable of sustaining effectiveness or legitimacy.

• Normativity—the discernment between what is and what ought to be—is functionally dead. This regime no longer distinguishes justice from vengeance; it has collapsed them into a single act of force. It now mistakes volume for virtue, believing that the loudest blow is the most legitimate one. What we are witnessing is not just a lapse in judgement, but an axiological crisis: a fundamental misordering of values. And worse, an ethical freefall—one that violates the core moral tenets of Judaism itself.

A Civilisation Unwilling to Integrate

What we are witnessing is not just the disintegration of a regime—it is the failure of a civilisation willing to integrate its shadows for sustainable growth and evolution. A refusal to move from paranoia to awareness. From control to discernment. From trauma to transformation.

You cannot bomb your way back to legitimacy. You cannot erase a people and expect your name to be remembered with reverence. History already holds the record. The Nazis believed their dominance would secure their legacy. What remains instead is a searing indictment of their inhumanity and a global vow to never forget. The Holocaust is not just a memory of horror—it is a lesson in the moral collapse that follows from systemic dehumanisation. You cannot substitute domination for Being and expect anything other than condemnation.

And those who still finance, support, or excuse this collapse—know this: the shadows you ignore today will be the suffering you inherit and create tomorrow.

This is not political. It is ontological. It is existential. And it is irreversible unless confronted now.

The Way Forward: From Systemic Disintegration to Systemic Integrity

The collapse we are witnessing is not irreversible, but only if confronted with ontological rigour. To reverse the downward spiral, we must understand how the current state came to be.

1. How Shadows Spiral into Entrenchment

It begins with Shadows—disowned, disintegrated aspects of reality. When shadows remain unaddressed, they metastasise into Misery—not merely emotional discomfort but an external condition. This condition can range from trivial disconformity to mounting difficulties, adversities, catastrophe, or crisis.

When these conditions are not addressed systemically and coherently, they eventually reach the realm of experience—that is, they are felt by sentient beings, primarily human beings, both individually and collectively.

The outcome is Suffering—not just pain or sadness, but the prolonged and lived experience of dysfunction. This suffering is not random; it is the consequence of unprocessed misery, of systems failing to make sense of and respond to their own conditions. In the context of a nation, it becomes a cultural mood, a generational trauma, a governing paradigm.

And if this suffering is allowed to reinforce itself—if both the condition (misery) and the experience (suffering) are left to spiral—they eventually become Entrenchment. This is where both system and people feel trapped, stuck, and as if there is no way out—at the verge of collapse, frozen in fear, addicted to control, and accelerating toward total disintegration.

Breaking this cycle requires a healthy and conscious relationship with all four:

• Acknowledging shadows instead of projecting them.

• Addressing misery with structural intervention, not denial.

• Allowing suffering to be witnessed and processed, rather than repressed.

• Disrupting entrenchment by reintroducing movement, perspective, and choice.

This is not mere repair. It is ontological transformation.

2. Reactivating the Integrity Sphere

Transformation is not possible without a reactivation of the Integrity Sphere, which consists of four foundational forces: Intention, Trust, Sovereignty, and Being.

Let us define what a healthy relationship with each looks like—and then contrast it with what we currently observe in the Israeli regime.

• Intention: This is not just desire—it is the ontological alignment of one’s aims with the reality of the world and the dignity of others. A healthy relationship with intention requires clarity, coherence, and goodwill. Not every intention is valid; ill-intention and bad faith can be masked as strategy. In Israel’s case, what is presented as security is often a performative cover for domination, revealing an unhealthy, distorted, and sometimes delusional relationship with intention.

• Trust: A healthy system cultivates trust by being trustworthy. Trust cannot be demanded—it must be earned. In Israel’s context, there is an obsession with being trusted by global powers while betraying the trust of its neighbouring populations and even its own dissenting citizens. It expects solidarity without introspection. That is not trust—it is coercion.

• Sovereignty: True sovereignty is the capacity to self-govern without compromising the sovereignty of others. A healthy relationship with sovereignty requires self-restraint, self-responsibility, and maturity. It means allowing others the freedom to see, choose, and relate to you on their own terms—even when their choices do not align with your preferences or worldview. You may seek to influence, persuade, or inspire, but only through their willing participation. The moment influence turns into coercion, manipulation, or conditional loyalty, sovereignty is no longer being honoured—it is being overridden.

Israel’s posture, however, reveals a sovereignty modelled not on self-governance but on supremacy. It is not content with being—it demands dominance over how others perceive and relate to it. It punishes non-alignment, equates critique with threat, and treats disagreement as defection. This is not sovereignty. It is a shadow expression of it, rooted in insecurity and the compulsion to control.

• Being: As we explored in the previous article, the Israeli regime suffers from a fractured relationship with Being. It performs existence without depth. Its identity has become defensive, militarised, and reactionary. It exists in a state of ontological agitation, constantly seeking to prove its right to exist by suppressing the existence of others. This is not Being. It is existential mimicry under threat.

To move forward, Israel must reconstruct a genuine, healthy relationship with all four components—not through image management, but through deep ontological reform.

3. The Role of the Modulation Sphere

Between disintegration and integrity lies a transitional, regulatory domain: the Modulation Sphere, made up of four essential faculties: Patience, Tolerance, Adaptability, and Surrender.

These are not passive traits—they are active forces of systemic regulation, especially in moments of complexity and volatility.

Let’s examine what a healthy relationship with each looks like, and then reveal what Israel's current relationship with them indicates:

• Patience: The ability to allow time to reveal deeper dynamics without impulsively reacting. Israel’s regime exhibits impatience as policy—it seeks instant resolution, instant retaliation, and instant submission. This restlessness fuels escalation.

• Tolerance: Not about agreement, but about the capacity to coexist with difference. In Israel’s case, tolerance has been replaced by a need for absolute control over narratives, land, identity, and even grief. This intolerance creates existential friction that perpetuates conflict.

• Adaptability: The flexibility to shift, evolve, and respond to new realities. Israel remains trapped in a 20th-century geopolitical identity while the world around it has moved on. Its inability to adapt to the legitimacy of others' narratives and suffering is a critical fault line.

• Surrender: Not defeat, but the grace to let go of what no longer serves systemic integrity. The Israeli regime refuses to surrender its outdated worldview—even when it clearly leads to more destruction, more enemies, more fear. This refusal to surrender illusions ensures the cycle of suffering continues.

To move toward Systemic Integrity, Cohesion, and Sustained Effectiveness, the Israeli system must rediscover and rebuild a healthy relationship with these four modulators. Without them, no amount of weapons, alliances, or historical grievances will prevent eventual collapse.

The Missing Willingness: When Systems Refuse to Heal

The situation has been examined through the lens of the Unified Ontology of Systemic Integrity, rooted in the Authentic Sustainability Discourse, not merely to critique, but to illuminate a pathway forward. What is presented is an ontological solution. A map has been laid out detailing what would be required for a regime or system to regain coherence, rebuild trust, and transcend the adversity it has generated.

While such a path remains technically possible, it must be acknowledged that it takes something rare for a system—particularly one deeply embedded in a trajectory of disintegration—to genuinely choose transformation.

It is not simply a matter of introducing new policies, rebranding intentions, or moderating diplomatic language. To shift toward systemic integrity after decades of trauma, bloodshed, broken alliances, manipulated populations, and coerced legitimacy requires far more.

It requires:

• Willingness — the internal decision to evolve, even if it means relinquishing old myths.

• Vulnerability — the capacity to see shadows, confront complicity in suffering, and allow truth to destabilise long-held illusions.

• Execution — the deliberate and sustained enactment of ontological labour to shift culture, perception, structures, and systems at their root.

In truth, that willingness, that vulnerability, that execution—at least in large part—does not appear present.

Many chances have passed. Each war, each crisis, each ceasefire, each negotiation—each one a moment where evolution could have been chosen—was bypassed. Rejected. Often deliberately.

In its current condition, the system is entangled in its own justifications to such a degree that the premise of genuine healing feels out of reach. The machinery continues, not toward resolution, but toward preservation of what it has become. And what it has become is not merely unsustainable. It is exhausted.

This is not a condemnation. It is a recognition of the existential cost of refusing transformation. No regime, system, organisation, or civilisation can sustain itself on fear, control, and denial.

The map exists. But a map without the courage to travel is meaningless.

Until that courage emerges, systemic integrity will remain not a lived experience, but an unrealised potential.

From Breakdown to Possible Breakthrough: The Role of Allies

When it comes to transformation, whether individual or collective, we must acknowledge a simple yet often uncomfortable truth: there are moments when the crisis pierces beneath our intellectual efforts. A person may have access to profound philosophical or psychological insight, yet remain in a state of paralysis, trapped by overwhelming anxiety, hormonal imbalances, or depression. In such cases, temporary medication may be necessary—not as a cure, but as a stabiliser. It creates a window—a chance—to engage in sustainable coaching, reflective practice, and deep ontological work. Only then can the person traverse the terrain of healing and reclaim authorship over their existence.

The same principle applies to systems. When a system becomes so entrenched and prolonged in its dysfunction, it may require temporary yet decisive external containment. Not interference for geopolitical gain, but support from those with genuine goodwill. In Israel’s case, these external parties are its longstanding allies, particularly the United States, European countries, and others who claim to stand with it.

But supporting Israel cannot mean indemnifying its pathology. The real existential threat to Israel is not external—it is internal. It is a state being consumed by its own shadows. And the worst thing its allies could do is to enable its aggression under the guise of loyalty. That only deepens the wound. That only ensures more regret on all sides. Not to mention the ripple effects and costs for all of us to bear as a global people.

As a philosopher, I say this without political theatrics but with ontological clarity: do not spoil Israel. Do not shield it from its reflection. Bring its shadows to its face—not to punish, but to liberate. To interrupt the trance. To hold up the mirror so the system can finally see itself, not its mythology, not its PR, but its actual posture in the world.

Just as with an individual, a system—or more precisely, the decision-makers who uphold it, and the participants who vote it in—has no viable path toward transformation without first owning its shadows. Not deflecting. Not outsourcing. Not projecting. Not spiritualising. Owning. The shadows must be acknowledged, confronted, and cleaned up. Not to dwell in guilt, but to make space for healing and integrity. This is the starting point of any meaningful transition toward systemic integrity. Until that is done, there is no true moving on. Only repetition. Only regression. Only more finely tuned delusion wrapped in the performance of resolution.

The beginning of transformation—real transformation—is not diplomacy, not strategy, and certainly not force. It begins with the mirror. With the terrifying, redemptive act of seeing.

The Collapse Beneath the Surface

Sustained Effectiveness, the capacity to evolve in service of declared aims, has been sacrificed for short-term domination. Yes, the regime may still strike targets and win assassination rounds in its theatre of supremacy. But there is no longevity in that. No coherence. No enduring vision. No peace that can be truly reached. Just the temporary gratification of momentary vengeance that may parade as victory. But no strategy survives. Only tactics. No vision endures. Only retaliation.

Normativity, the discernment between what is and what ought to be, is functionally dead. The regime no longer distinguishes between justice and vengeance. It simply confuses the loudest act with the most legitimate one. It is experiencing an axiological collapse, a breakdown in its ability to discern what truly matters. Misjudged priorities have consumed ethical clarity. It violates not only those so-called 'universal ethics' we pretend to agree on, but also the fundamental moral tenets rooted in its own Judaic heritage.

And still, it believes it can sustain this collapse. That it can project moral clarity while losing the very soul of its system. But even the most elaborate choreography cannot mask a system that is structurally unwell. You cannot continuously burn the fabric of coherence and expect history to preserve your image. The soul of the state has become a machine. Ritualistic. Paranoid. Performative. And its allies, knowingly or not, are subsidising that dysfunction with silence, funds and PR.

There is a difference between defending a people and defending the pathology of a system. The world can see the difference now. The hosts will turn. The conscience of history is slow but not asleep.

To those allies, especially those who frame themselves as custodians of freedom and order, there is still time to choose differently. The casino you are betting in does not belong to you. You did not write its algorithm. This universe is not a sandbox for supremacy. There are axiomatic laws that sit beneath geopolitics and statecraft. You may violate them for a time, but not without cost nor consequence. The sand beneath your house is shifting. You can gamble another round if you like. But the house always wins.

And what we are witnessing now, in plain sight, is the slow but certain collapse of a house built on supremacy, vengeance and the avoidance of truth.

Deception as Doctrine, Collapse as Consequence

They say, “Where there is no counsel, the people fall.” But what if the counsel itself is deception? What if safety is built not on truth, but on manipulation? When war is waged through subterfuge rather than vision, when narrative control replaces dignity, the outcome is not protection. It is systemic decay dressed in tactical applause.

Mossad’s motto proclaims, “By way of deception, thou shalt do war.” But deception is not wisdom. And war fought through deception is not defence. It is erosion with a disguise. There is a difference between strategic sophistication and ontological collapse. No amount of clandestine manoeuvring can redeem a system that has lost its capacity for coherence.

There are doctrines in this world, well known to those paying attention, that do not elevate wisdom but enshrine deception as a strategy. But deception is not wisdom. And war fought through deception is not defence. It is erosion with a disguise. There is a difference between strategic sophistication and ontological collapse. No amount of clandestine manoeuvring can redeem a system that has lost its capacity for coherence.

“Where there is no vision, the people perish”. And “the house built on sand will never stand the course of time”. These are not just poetic warnings. They are structural realities that history enforces without favour. You may build with deception, but time will collapse what truth never sustained.

To the people of the world

You are not powerless. You are not voiceless. You are not spectators in the theatre of global dysfunction. You are part of the evolving conscience of this world, an echo of clarity that remains when the noise of collapsing empires grows quiet. Do not let exhaustion smother your discernment. Do not let repetition of injustice dull your ethical imagination.

The world is not fated to be ruled by shadows and cycles of fear. It is shaped by those who still choose to see, to care, to speak, however softly, however consistently. Every act of sense making, every gesture of meaning making, every refusal to conform to disintegrating systems is not small. It is how the arc is bent.

The future will not be inherited by the loudest, but by those most aligned with coherence. By those willing to live as expressions of systemic integrity, where Being is not reduced to survival but elevated to stewardship. So stand, not for sides but for sanity. Not for vengeance but for vision. Not for a flag but for the shared dignity of what it means to be fully, consciously human.

In that, there is still hope. And in hope, a responsibility: to see clearly, to act deliberately, and to become what our systems have forgotten how to be.