David Who Became Goliath: How We Developed a Body and Lost the Spirit

By: Avraham Burg

יIsrael of 2025, once a quick and clever David, has turned into a heavy, armed giant who has lost his ability to discern, doubt, and be wise. A long journey from the spiritual Jew to the forceful Israeli has created a reality in which enormous power produces existential fear, and military greatness hides moral and strategic blindness.

If you ran a public opinion poll in Israel and asked: “Who are you — David or Goliath?” I’m willing to bet that an overwhelming majority would say David. We? Goliath? Impossible. After all, we are beautiful, smart, quick. We’re winners. And besides, we are weak, persecuted, and the whole world is against us. In short — David’s children.

But this is not a simple identity question. It is a reflection on what we lost along the way, whether it was all worth it, and where exactly we lost the path. How did we turn from a civilization of wisdom into a culture of force— from poets and prophets to conquerors and abusers. And the truth haunts us: the People of the Book became the people of the weapon. Today we pay the full price for building the body while depleting the spirit. We survived a terrible war and lost our soul.

Not many are willing to remember — and internalize — what happened to that handsome-eyed youth from the biblical stories. How his disgraceful final years grew out of the betrayal and arrogance of his youth. True, we attached to him the Book of Psalms and turned him into an eternal poet of love and faith. But the documented facts of the Bible have not changed. He was promiscuous, treacherous, cunning, and a serial shedder of blood. Worse: as the years passed, David became Goliath. The shepherd boy who knew how to sing and play music, strike with a sling, and lead his gang, became a grumpy king surrounded by intrigue and rebellion—until he died in grief and old age, unloved and rejected, at odds with everyone close to him.

This is not a biblical story — it is a historical dynamic: the nimble becomes clumsy, the clear-eyed becomes blind, the lover becomes a killer. And history shows that more than once the surprising and original victor became a giant golem and was defeated himself. This dynamic repeats again and again. Rome began as a small, flexible city, winning through maneuverability and creative thinking; once it became a vast empire, it lost the abilities that built it — until it fell. Napoleon began as a sharp and agile commander and became the ruler of a bloated empire waging wars of vanity beyond its capacity. The United States was a young nation that cast off the yoke of old empires; in the drunkenness of its power, it embarked on unnecessary wars and was humiliated repeatedly by enemies far more “David-like” than itself — in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan. The Soviet Union, holding a massive nuclear arsenal, collapsed under the lies it told itself about itself. And so it was for many liberation movements in Africa and Asia.

And us? Jews who became Goliaths. Just like the biblical giant, we are armed with the best technology. Like him, we have become heavy and cumbersome. And like him, we took a deadly stone right to the forehead. Yes, mighty Israel — the Goliath nation — was struck hard by weaker, more cunning, more daring opponents. The David of 1948 turned into a Goliath by 2025. We have hundreds of unacknowledged nuclear bombs, leading innovations on earth and in the sky, weapons for anyone who wants them. Our discourse is violent, the killing of innocents interests no one, and “only here you relax when you pass a shop and see someone with a rifle.” The armed giant called Israel couldn’t defeat “a band of miserable men in flip-flops.”

But when did this actually happen? Not in one day. Not even in one year. It was a slow, deep transformation of collective consciousness. First, we preferred the strong sabra over the wise Jew. Then we turned force into the only value. And once we replaced Talmudic skepticism with simplistic patriotism, and chose the “military man” over the “man of spirit,” we turned from Jews into Israelis — into Goliaths.

The classic Jew we once were compensated for physical weakness with intellectual sharpness. We survived thanks to Jewish wisdom, not Jewish muscles. Cunning, rhetoric, and the ability to adapt to changing realities made us sometimes beaten — but never defeated.

Zionism wanted to change that and created the “new Jew” — a farmer and a fighter. It broke the Jewish balance. The sabra was born as the antithesis of the Diaspora Jew: muscular, simplistic, not understanding complexity. Instead of combining Jewish complexity with sabra strength, we threw Jewishness into the trash and were left with crude power.

In Israeli society today, “intellectual” is almost an insult. It means “leftist,” “disconnected,” “not understanding reality.” Thinking is perceived as weakness. Skepticism as betrayal. Complexity as cowardice. In their place, proud simplicity, aggressive militarism, and the worship of raw power have taken over. This didn’t happen by chance — it was guided educational policy for decades. Brainwashing that begins in kindergarten, continues with influence trips to Auschwitz, and culminates in a military service of order-followers. All means are kosher to shape a collective identity with simplistic heroism, victimhood based on the Holocaust, and a national illusion of pure weapons, moral army, and “beautiful warrior.” The result is evident in Gaza and in the occupied territories.

We are Goliaths who think we are Davids. A split identity embedded in us. We are “eternal and strong,” yet “in existential danger.” This duality enables the use of brutal force without moral responsibility — to be an aggressor while feeling like a victim. This gap between perception and reality creates a deep strategic problem. The state behaves with the mentality of a small player but wields the power of a big one. It reacts to threats as if it is about to be erased, even when it holds near-total supremacy. It clings to victimhood even while it is slaughtering. Every threat is a catastrophe. Every enemy is Hitler. Every failure is a Holocaust. A nation that sees itself as David but acts like Goliath is doomed to strategic blindness — just like the original Goliath. And its end is already written in the Bible.

A Goliath who does not know he is Goliath relies only on brute force, asks no questions, is foolish and unaware of his limitations. Power creates the illusion of control. And this is exactly what is happening to us: we are so strong that we have lost the ability to understand why we are losing.

Recently I took part in a conversation with former combat soldiers — the kind who are willing to listen and then return to the old narrative of “shoot and cry,” “reflect and kill.” At some point one of them asked me: “But… don’t you have doubts? Don’t you fear all the enemies? And who will we rely on if not on ourselves?”My answer was complex and detailed. But at its heart was a deep insight that left him angrier and speechless. I told him something like this:“I have been a Diaspora Jew for 2,000 years — without power, without an army, without a government, without nuclear bombs or heroic pilots. And not for a single day did I worry about the future of the Jewish people. And you have been an Israeli for almost 80 years — with an army, commandos, heroes, tanks, advanced weapons — and not for a single day do you stop worrying that this might be the end. What is wrong with this bullying Israeli identity that makes you so terrified? What did we lose in the transition from Jew to Israeli?”

The Goliath Loop

This question strikes at the heart of the contradiction: all this power has not brought us security — only chronic anxiety. The Diaspora Jew, with all his weakness, knew something the Israeli forgot: survival is not about absolute power but about flexibility, wisdom, and the ability to adapt. Zionism sought to heal the Jew from the existential fear of exile; instead, it created an Israeli with existential fear many times stronger — because now he has something to lose. And he has weapons. And weapons invite use. And use invites hatred. And hatred invites more fear.

This is the Goliath loop: the stronger we become, the more frightened we are. The more armed we are, the more threatened we feel. Because we lost the ancient ability to live with uncertainty. Goliath must win always. David could lose and still survive. That is the difference.

And perhaps, in light of this tragedy, all that remains is to read the Psalms:“A horse is a false hope for salvation, even its great strength cannot save” (Psalms 33:17).The horse — the advanced weapon of biblical times — is a lie. The warrior will not be saved by brute strength. Power alone will not save. David knew this when he wrote the Psalms but forgot it when he became king.And we?

As long as we continue believing the stories we tell ourselves, we will continue repeating the same mistake — again and again — until the next small stone strikes, and then there will be no one left to retell the story.