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Notes -
What if they just get grey-zoned down?
Imagine waves of rockets and bombs coming forever, putting a constant strain on cost-inefficient missile defence.
There's never a full-scale invasion that can be responded to with nuclear weapons (and there's a latent Iranian and a realized Pakistani arsenal), only endless skirmishing and posturing that eats away at Israel's fiscal security. Its high-tech economy is already under a lot of pressure. Emigration. Then more emigration. The budget cannot support prolonged mobilization.
Say, Israel lashes out and invades Lebanon or Gaza or the West Bank. It devolves into an attritional slugging match, there is no decisive victory. As usual, they go around blowing up hospitals and gunning people down willy-nilly, the Arabs do the same thing of course. But the Arabs aren't dependant upon military aid and friends in high places to veto sanctions. The Arabs aren't dependant upon a world power choosing to keep huge amounts of its scarce seaborne firepower nearby - those carrier groups are needed elsewhere.
I recall you dismissing the power of nuclear weapons when we were discussing Russia-Ukraine/Europe, in the context of full-scale war. Yet the Russian and even European nuclear arsenals are much more capable than Israel's and conditions for use are a lot more straightforward.
Then the dismissal of the historical comparison to the Crusader States would be validated, as the Crusader States were not grey-zoned down, they were conquered by invading armies.
And the reason why I dismiss the relevance of Russian nuclear weapons in the Ukraine war is the same point made below on other examples of nuclear powers losing wars: the wars in question are not existential threats to the nuclear state posed by invading armies.
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