Germany, Japan, South Africa, Iraq, Gaza - what does it take for a people to change? ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Monday, August 18, 2025

Germany, Japan, South Africa, Iraq, Gaza - what does it take for a people to change?

What does it take for an entire society to abandon a destructive ideology and embrace something radically different? History offers us a few examples, and also many failures.

This is a critical question as the world looks at Gaza and what can follow the war. We need to examine what has worked in the past, what has failed and why.

The ethics framework I've been developing gives us a way to examine the history of these transformations and failed attempts through "Derechology" - the study of events through understanding how values are anchored, applied, and amplified.

There may be a path to transform Gaza, but the odds are not good.

Derechology sees moral change on a national level in three tiers:

Core values – life, dignity, truth, justice, responsibility. These are the anchors. A transformation fails if these values are not re-anchored in lived reality.
Relational obligations – extending responsibility from family to community to nation and, finally, to humanity. A society cannot stabilize if obligations collapse inward to tribe alone.
Amplifiers – institutions, schools, media, courts, and the economy. They transmit and normalize values in daily life. Without amplifiers, abstract ideals never take root.

A meta-level is equally vital: transparency and a path for society-level reform - "teshuvah" which includes acknowledging wrongdoing and reintegrating with dignity. Without that, humiliation breeds grievance, not positive change.

The most successful programs of change occurred in Germany and Japan post-1945. Both societies suffered total defeat, which created the opening. Values were forcibly re-anchored through public exposure of atrocities and new constitutions. Obligations expanded from racial or imperial narrowness to universal rights and democratic responsibility. Amplifiers—schools, media, courts, and economies rebuilt through the Marshall Plan—reinforced the shift daily. Crucially, there was a path to communal teshuvah: not everyone was punished, but the worst were held accountable, and ordinary citizens were given a dignified way forward.

A more limited example was South Africa in the 1990s. Apartheid was dismantled, universal suffrage instituted, and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission created a structured mechanism for teshuvah. Obligations widened from racial tribe to nation. Yet the amplifiers were weak: the economy remained unequal, corruption hollowed governance, and prosperity was not delivered broadly. The initial moral transformation was real, but fragile.

Other times, the attempts to change society have failed.

The Soviet Union fell in 1991, and there was a brief hope that it would embrace democratic ideals. But amplifiers—courts, media, economy—were corrupt and fragile. Obligations collapsed inward to oligarchic clans and survival networks. Within a decade, nostalgia for authoritarian order paved the way for Putinism.

The Iraqi regime was toppled in 2003, but values were never re-anchored. De-Ba’athification humiliated rather than reconciled, obligations shrank into sectarianism, and amplifiers collapsed as the army and civil service were dismantled. No teshuvah path was offered. What followed was chaos, insurgency, and regression.

Societal change is almost never bottom up, coming from the people. It begins with defeat or crisis that makes the old system untenable. Change only endures if amplifiers are rebuilt to transmit life, dignity, truth, justice, and responsibility in daily life. Over time, people learn to want the new order because it works—because it gives them security, prosperity, and dignity.

Where amplifiers fail, people relapse. Where no teshuvah path exists, humiliation festers into grievance (think Germany after World War I.) The process is slow and generational.

One sobering point is that with Japan and Germany, the Western commitment was unconditional and open-ended. Money and time were no object - there was simply no choice because the alternative was horrific and fresh in everyone's minds. That environment of urgency is almost impossible to reproduce.

By this standard, Gaza faces the hardest of tests. Islamism and antisemitism are not marginal but central to the identity propagated through its schools, media, and governing institutions. Polling shows broad opposition to disarming Hamas and other armed factions, and textbooks and sermons continue to glorify violence and martyrdom. Core values are mis-anchored, obligations are narrowed to the in-group, and amplifiers reinforce the ideology rather than challenge it.

Even if Hamas is militarily defeated, the horrible system it built remains intact. For true change, history and Derechology show that all of these conditions must take effect:

A single authority holds the monopoly of force.
Schools and media are restructured with enforceable audits.
Economic dignity is provided through jobs and services.
A teshuvah mechanism exists that allows people to renounce support for terror without humiliation.

Without all of these, any short-term “victory” will revert to the same cycle.

Last year I floated an idea of a UAE-led protectorate-style administration in Gaza. The concept was to build model communities, secure jobs, and embed amplifiers of dignity and prosperity that would gradually displace Hamas’s appeal. Whether or not that specific model is feasible, the underlying point remains: Gaza’s transformation will not come from punishment alone, nor from rhetoric. "Total victory" over Hamas is necessary but far from sufficient. Real reform will require amplifiers strong enough to re-anchor values and institutions, and a long-term process of education, economic dignity, and structured teshuvah.

Given the centrality of antisemitism in Palestinian ideology, this seems like a tall order.

History shows that nations can change, but only when the architecture of values, obligations, and amplifiers is rebuilt and reinforced over generations. Success is rare.

The challenge in Gaza is that all three tiers are aligned against change. To imagine otherwise is fantasy. Yet to imagine it is impossible is despair. The sober truth is that it will take a generational, structured, and externally reinforced effort—otherwise the cycle will continue forever.

The idea that a "Palestinian state" would solve these real issues is purely wishful thinking. But too few people are seriously thinking about everything that has to align to lead to a true peace. And suggesting shortcuts without looking soberly at the real challenges and a holistic view of how reform can and must be accomplished will make things worse, not better.

(h/t Irene)