“We Jews are still here, but where are the ancient Greeks?”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked me, a classical historian, this question 10 years ago when we met at a national prize ceremony. A decade later, he seems to have found them.
Last week, Netanyahu invoked the ancient Greeks in delivering a stark warning to his country. Citing Europe’s growing hostility, the influence of militant Muslim minorities on European foreign policy, and what he described as Qatari-funded disinformation campaigns on social media, Netanyahu argued that Israel faces creeping international isolation. His solution: prepare for a new economic and strategic reality.
“We will need to adapt to an economy with autarkic features,” he declared. “I am a supporter of free markets, but to survive, we must ensure the capacity to produce what is necessary for national security, especially weapons. We are Athens and Sparta—and perhaps a Super-Sparta. We have no choice.”
The analogy is seductive but dangerous. Beyond its rhetorical punch, “Super-Sparta” reflects a striking misreading of history and a troubling projection of Israel’s future. The analogy is not one of strength but of insecurity. If taken seriously, it risks steering Israel toward the same fate that befell the original Sparta: the erosion of state and society and, eventually, military defeat.
Sparta and Athens already functioned as archetypes in antiquity. Athens stood for openness; trade; intellectual curiosity; and, however imperfectly, democracy. Sparta represented paranoia and militarism: an austere, secretive society ruled by a warrior elite, perpetually mobilized for war, and afraid of the enslaved nation that it dominated.
Netanyahu’s invocation of both Athens and Sparta is curious, since the two were not complementary but antagonistic models. When Netanyahu suggests that Israel is “Athens and Sparta” and perhaps “Super-Sparta,” he collapses the dichotomy into a single vision of survival through isolation and siege—a vision rooted far more in the Spartan model.
The danger of Netanyahu’s metaphor lies not only in the militarized imagery but also in the deeper historical logic that it invokes. Ancient Sparta, like biblical Israel, justified its very presence on its land through what historians call charter myths. Both societies saw themselves not as native to their territory but as newcomers who had seized it with divine sanction. For the Israelites, the promise was made to Abraham by God; for Sparta, it was delivered by Zeus to the descendants of Heracles.
Charter myths—narratives that legitimize territorial possession—tend to emerge not from confidence but from anxiety. What is taken as self-evident requires no elaborate justification. The ancient Mesopotamian city of Eridu, whose existence supposedly dated back to the moment of creation itself, never needed a founding tale or a story of conquest. Its existence was beyond challenge.
By contrast, peoples who viewed themselves as latecomers to history often constructed elaborate accounts of why they belonged. Both the ancient Greeks and the Hebrews understood themselves as outsiders who had arrived, displaced others, and settled. Their myths addressed political questions: What are we doing here? Why here? Who authorized our presence?
For the Hebrews, legitimacy rested on divine promise—the covenant with Abraham and the narrative of the Exodus. For the Spartans, it was the myth of the “return of the descendants of Heracles.” In this story, Zeus himself bestowed Sparta to the Spartans, thereby justifying their overthrow of the older dynasty of Menelaus and Helen and the establishment of a new Dorian order.
Israel’s biblical narrative similarly reflects a people worried about the fragility of its hold on the land. When Netanyahu reaches for Sparta as Israel’s analogue, he inadvertently reveals not resilience but unease.
Whether or not Netanyahu knew it, the idea of an affinity between Jews and Spartans had already surfaced in antiquity. As early as the second century B.C.E., when Mediterranean powers routinely fabricated kinship ties with one another, echoes of such a connection appear. According to 1 Maccabees, King Areus of Sparta addressed a letter to the high priest in Jerusalem:
“King Areus of the Spartans. To the high priest Onias. Greetings! It has been discovered in a written record that the Spartans and the Jews are relatives and are both of the family of Abraham.”
The claim was almost certainly a political invention. Yet it reflects, perhaps, a perception of parallel destinies—two small nations justifying their place in the world.
Built on an abiding sense of insecurity, the “Super-Sparta” analogy is particularly ill-suited as a strategic model for the 21st century. Sparta could sustain the appearance of self-sufficiency only because it sat atop a wealthy agrarian economy worked by an enslaved helot population.
Yet even this image of isolation is misleading. In reality, Spartan autarky was a myth. Sparta was never cut off from the wider world. It pursued colonization, maintained overseas trade, and relied on the commercial networks of its subordinate communities—the perioikoi, or “dwellers around” its territory.
Netanyahu presents Israel, like Sparta, as a besieged country surrounded by enemies and forced into perpetual defense. But this misunderstands both states. In reality, Sparta was never truly the besieged victim. Like a modern superpower, Sparta was a regional hegemon seeking dominance beyond its borders. Similarly, in contrast to the early days when it was indeed besieged, Israel now projects power across the Middle East. Nowhere has this been more evident than in Gaza, where Israeli military campaigns have produced unprecedented destruction and civilian suffering.
Moreover, Israel’s economic miracle rests on integration into global markets—high technology, pharmaceuticals, energy exports, and venture capital flows. To suggest that Israel could—or should—retreat into autarky is to undermine the very foundations of its prosperity. Even its defense industries, which Netanyahu champions as the backbone of national self-sufficiency, rely on international partnerships, global supply chains, and export markets. No small state, however militarized, can thrive by cutting itself off from the world.
In fact, the Spartan model was ultimately unsustainable even for Sparta itself. Rigid militarism delivered short-term dominance but ensured long-term decline. In the archaic period, Sparta produced art, poetry, and music. But by the classical era, in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.E., these cultural expressions had mostly vanished. An all-consuming focus on internal control and external conquest drained the city’s resources and steadily eroded its citizen body. What began as a military lifestyle meant to secure a flourishing polis gradually became an end in itself—leaving little room for anything else.
Athens, by contrast, though defeated in war, left a legacy of ideas, institutions, and culture that shaped Western civilization.
The Athenian-Spartan analogy endures because it reflects a genuine strategic dilemma: openness versus closure, democracy versus militarism, and engagement versus siege. Netanyahu’s answer is clear. But history suggests that those who choose the Spartan path, however proudly, ultimately find themselves weaker, not stronger.
Sparta’s myths of divine promise were born from apprehension; its rigid regime and a dwindling citizen body led to decline. Israel’s strength has always been its ability to combine security with openness in order to become a thriving democracy, a hub of global innovation, and a bridge between cultures. To abandon that in favor of a misleading image of Spartan self-sufficiency is to mistake fragility for strength.
The alternative to “Super-Sparta” is engagement. Israel’s survival will depend not only on its military might but also on its ability to maintain alliances, integrate economically, and remain credible as a democracy.
The post ‘Super-Sparta’ Is Bad History and Bad Strategy appeared first on Foreign Policy.
