Israel’s Impossible Mission?

If you’ve watched any of the Mission: Impossible movies, or if you’re old enough to remember the original television series, you’ll be familiar with the Impossible Missions Force, better known as the IMF.

The basic premise is simple: Ethan Hunt and his predecessors are called upon to undertake the jobs that governments either can’t do themselves or don’t want to be seen doing. They’re sent into impossible situations, usually against enormous odds, to deal with a threat that somebody has decided needs to be dealt with.

But there’s always a catch. If the operation goes wrong, the government which sent them will deny knowing anything about it.

The concept may be fictitious, but the world has had its own version of the Impossible Missions Force for the past 78 years.

It’s called Israel.

There have been numerous occasions during Israel’s short modern history when the international community has condemned some evil, issued statements about it, held meetings, passed resolutions and expressed its deep concern – but failed to act, leaving Israel to actually take action and do something about it.

Adolf Eichmann is perhaps one of the best examples. One of the principal organisers of the Holocaust, he escaped Europe after the war and lived under an assumed name in Argentina until Mossad agents found and captured him in 1960. Israel flew him back to Jerusalem, gave him a public trial with legal representation, convicted him of crimes against humanity and the Jewish people, and executed him in 1962. A little more than a decade later, after 11 Israeli athletes were murdered by the Palestinian terrorist group Black September at the 1972 Munich Olympics, Golda Meir’s government authorised Operation Wrath of God, a long-running Mossad campaign against those responsible for the massacre and associated terrorist operations.

Then came Entebbe. In 1976, an Air France flight from Tel Aviv to Paris was hijacked by Palestinian and German terrorists and flown to Uganda, where Jewish and Israeli passengers were separated from many of the other hostages and threatened with death. Israel initially negotiated while secretly planning something far more ambitious. On July 4, Israeli commandos flew thousands of kilometres into Uganda, landed at Entebbe Airport and rescued more than 100 hostages in one of the most audacious military operations in modern history. Once again, Israel’s approach was to actually do something rather than wait for somebody else to act.

The United Nations Secretary-General at the time criticised the Entebbe raid – but most of the world cheered it on, recognising the moral clarity at play.

That tension has followed Israel throughout much of its modern history – the political rhetoric with its condemnations, warnings, diplomatic language and finger-wagging, and the quieter recognition that Israel has an extraordinary habit of actually doing the things that other countries only talk about doing.

But there’s also another part of the IMF analogy that matters. The reason that Ethan Hunt gets the mission isn’t simply because everybody else is too frightened to do it. It’s because the IMF has people with capabilities that ordinary agencies either don’t possess or can’t deploy in the same way. The IMF have the specialists, the intelligence, the technology and, perhaps most importantly, the willingness to act when circumstances demand it.

Israel has developed something similar over the course of its modern history.

No doubt other countries would sometimes have preferred to capture men like Adolf Eichmann, rescue hostages from places like Entebbe or track down terrorists responsible for murdering Olympic athletes. But wanting to do something and actually having the intelligence, operational capability and political determination to do it are very different things.

Israel developed those capabilities because it had to. It couldn’t assume that somebody else would hunt the people who murdered Jews. It couldn’t assume another country would rescue Israeli hostages. It couldn’t assume that the international community would turn condemnation into action. Over time that necessity produced a particular kind of expertise, built around intelligence, speed, technology, improvisation and an unusually high tolerance for undertaking missions other countries would often regard as impossible.

And that brings us to a much less cinematic version of exactly the same phenomenon because Israel’s specialist capability isn’t confined to commandos, intelligence agents and spectacular military operations. It also turns up in the things that Israel builds.

Over decades Israel has become extraordinarily sophisticated in a particular class of military technology. It has built multilayered missile defence systems capable of dealing with everything from short-range rockets to long-range ballistic missiles. It has developed advanced radar, drone detection, counter-drone technology, electronic warfare systems, battlefield surveillance, intelligence systems and command-and-control networks designed to identify and respond to threats at extraordinary speed. Systems such as Iron Dome, David’s Sling, Arrow, SPYDER and BARAK MX weren’t conceived in some comfortable theoretical environment. They were developed because Israel was being attacked and needed answers that worked.

Other countries obviously have their own defence industries. Germany, France, Britain, Italy, the United States and many others manufacture sophisticated military equipment of their own – so the point isn’t that they’re incapable of making weapons.

It’s that Israel has become exceptionally good at solving particular military problems because it has been forced to confront those problems earlier, more often and under more immediate pressure than most of them.

How do you stop thousands of short-range rockets aimed at civilian towns?

How do you intercept a ballistic missile before it reaches your population?

How do you detect and destroy drones?

How do you integrate radar, intelligence and multiple layers of missile defence quickly enough to deal with several threats at once?

Those aren’t theoretical questions for Israel.

They’ve been matters of survival.

And just as Israel developed a reputation for taking on operations that other countries couldn’t or wouldn’t undertake, it has now developed expertise in areas of defence that other countries increasingly need but haven’t developed to the same degree themselves.

That’s where the IMF analogy starts to take on a different form as other nations increasingly turn to Israel for the specialist equipment and expertise that Israel happens to do particularly well.

And that’s where the irony begins.

Israel has always taken matters into its own hands because it couldn’t rely on the international community to get the job done – but it has now stepped up its efforts to become even less dependent on the rest of the world for the weapons it needs to survive.

The events of the past few years have reinforced an uncomfortable lesson that Israel has understood for most of its modern history: friends can change.

A relationship between two countries might be warm and dependable today, but that doesn’t mean it will remain that way after the next election, the next change in public opinion or the next geopolitical crisis. For Israel the consequences of getting this wrong aren’t simply diplomatic embarrassment or economic inconvenience. They can be existential.

Italy has provided a good recent example. In April, Italy suspended the automatic renewal of a defence cooperation arrangement with Israel which had been in place since 2003, following ‘disagreements’ with Israel.

Israel faces a similar strategic problem with the United States, although on a vastly greater scale. Donald Trump has generally been an extraordinarily strong supporter of Israel, but Trump’s position can shift according to his assessment of American interests and his desire to reach particular deals. And beyond Trump lies an even bigger uncertainty. American administrations change every four or eight years and it’s entirely possible that a future Democratic administration could take a considerably more hostile approach toward Israel than Washington does today. Israel can’t control that.

But what it can control is how vulnerable it chooses to remain to those political changes. Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged this late last year when he announced that Israel would invest around 350 billion shekels, roughly US$110 billion, over the coming decade developing a much more independent domestic arms industry.

Netanyahu was explicit that Israel wants to reduce its reliance on foreign suppliers, including suppliers in countries it regards as allies. He also acknowledged that, while complete self-sufficiency probably isn’t realistic, Israel would produce more of the things that it simply can’t afford to run out of during a war. Munitions, missile interceptors, artillery shells, armoured vehicles, critical components and other military supplies need to be available because Israel needs them, not because another government has decided that supplying them remains politically convenient.

The logic is simple. Israel can’t rely on its allies to ensure that the Jewish state survives.

Only Israel can do that.

Which makes what is happening elsewhere in the world particularly ironic: while Israel is increasingly trying to make sure that it doesn’t have to depend on other countries for its defence, a growing number of those countries are becoming increasingly dependent on Israel for theirs.

The world’s Impossible Missions Force is becoming the world’s armourer.

The most recent example is Greece. On August 31, Greece signed an agreement worth around €3 billion under which Israel will help build a comprehensive multilayered air defence system known as the Achilles Shield. The system will bring together Israeli-made David’s Sling, SPYDER and BARAK MX missile systems, along with radar, national command and control technology and anti-drone capability. The agreement also includes technology transfer and industrial cooperation with Greece. In effect, Israel will help construct a significant part of the architecture Greece intends to use to protect its skies from future attack.

Germany provides an even more remarkable example. In December last year, Israel handed Germany the first operational Arrow 3 ballistic missile defence system under the largest defence export agreement in Israel’s history. Arrow 3 is designed to intercept long-range ballistic missiles outside the Earth’s atmosphere and is jointly developed by Israel and the United States. It has demonstrated its capabilities against actual missile attacks on Israel.

There was something deeply symbolic about the handover of a weapon which Israel’s Defence Ministry described as having been born out of Israel’s existential necessity and now being used to defend Germany. It’s difficult to think of a better summary of what is happening.

Finland is doing something similar. It has quietly extended its defence materiel cooperation agreement with Israel through to 2034. That agreement isn’t simply about purchasing Israeli products. It specifically facilitates cooperation in the research, development and procurement of military equipment. Finland proposed the extension while the Gaza war was already underway and signed it despite significant political criticism at home.

Again, that matters. Finland doesn’t need to endorse every decision made by the Israeli Government to recognise that Israel possesses military expertise and technology Finland considers important to its own security.

Slovakia has reached a similar conclusion. In April this year, Israel delivered the first BARAK MX air defence system to the Slovak Air Force under a €560 million agreement to deal with the kinds of threats European defence planners are increasingly worried about, including drones, fighter aircraft, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles.

The agreement also involves Slovak industry, local production and technology transfer, so once again this is much more than somebody buying a piece of equipment from an Israeli catalogue.

The same phenomenon extends well beyond Europe.

India and Israel have had an important defence relationship for many years, but that relationship continues to deepen. In February, Narendra Modi and Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to expand cooperation through joint development, joint production and technology transfer, moving their relationship further beyond a traditional customer and supplier arrangement.

Argentina is also developing a much closer strategic relationship with Israel under Javier Milei. The two countries have discussed expanding cooperation in cyber defence, unmanned aerial vehicles, border protection, satellite communications, light arms, ammunition and other equipment.

Think about what this all means. Israel has spent years being criticised for the way it responds to missiles, drones and other attacks against its territory, developing these advanced technologies because it had to. Now other nations are turning to Israel for help because of threats that are much closer to home.

Countries which have spent decades reducing their military capability are suddenly rebuilding it and discovering that many of the problems confronting them are problems Israel has been solving for years.

The numbers tell the story. Israel’s defence exports reached an all-time record US$19.2 billion in 2025, an increase of almost 30 percent in a single year. They have more than doubled in five years and quadrupled over the past decade.

This doesn’t mean that these nations have necessarily become cheerleaders for Israel. Political populism still holds a strong sway and these governments remain perfectly capable of criticising Israel when domestic politics demands it. We’ve repeatedly seen how quickly ‘the Secretary’ can ‘disavow’ the real world Ethan Hunt.

Which brings us back to the Impossible Missions Force.

For decades Israel has been the country that acts when difficult things need to be done, whether that meant bringing Adolf Eichmann to justice, hunting those responsible for Munich, rescuing hostages at Entebbe, or developing the systems needed to stop rockets, ballistic missiles and drones. And it has done so knowing that some of the same countries which benefit from that expertise may still publicly distance themselves from Israel when politics requires it.

But there’s another reason that the analogy matters.

At some point in the future, Israel will face an overwhelming Islamic coalition led by Turkey. That’s not an opinion – it’s the overwhelming conclusion of scripture – so the question isn’t whether that confrontation will occur, it’s when it will occur.

And once again – Israel will be entirely on its own.

Except it won’t really be alone, because when that future coalition comes against it, the Creator of the universe will step in – and that’s where the Mission: Impossible analogy finally runs out.

In the television series and the movies, the government disowns the IMF when the mission becomes too dangerous or politically inconvenient.

In real life, the God of Israel will do exactly the opposite.

At the moment when Israel appears most alone, He’ll step in in the most visible and forewarned act of human history. And when He does, the whole extraordinary story of Israel, and ultimately the story of human history itself, will finally come into sharp perspective.

Until then, there’s something remarkable about watching the nations of the world quietly discover what many of us have known for a long time: when the mission really does look impossible, Israel is a very useful country to have around.

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