[There are now] two [Jewish] states – with contrasting visions of what the nation should be. There is an elephant in the Israeli room – and 'no': it's not occupation, though that is its main cause.

The elephant in the room is Israel gradually but inexorably being divided [into a high-tech, secular, liberal state] … and a Jewish-supremacist, ultranationalist theocracy with messianic, antidemocratic tendencies that encourage isolation.

Zionism … has morphed and mutated through the settler movement and extreme right-wing zealots into a Masada-like political culture, based on the concept of the redemption of the ancient kingdom in the ancestral land. (Masada was a Sicarii cult in CE 73).

Pinkas continues:

[I]n essence, there is a civil war raging in Israel. It has not reached Gettysburg levels, but the deep and wide schism is becoming glaringly evident. The two political value systems are just not reconcilable. 'We are fighting the Arabs (or Iran) for our existence' remains the only common thread, but it is weakening. That is a negative definition of national identity: a common enemy and threat, but very little of what unites us in terms of the type of society and country we want to be.

Even the most fundamental common narrative, the Declaration of Independence, is now being questioned with some of its basic tenets and guiding principles a source of political contention.

Of course, one can see from which side of the divide Pinkas views his world – yet "above and beyond pondering 7 October, there is a growing realization that 'unity,' 'one destiny' and 'we have no choice and no other country' have become meaningless and hollow clichés. Instead, more and more Israelis on both sides of the divide see their country as essentially split into two distinct (non-reconcilable) entities."