“If it’s right to pursue the objective of eliminating Hamas militarily and politically, then do it, and then present the world with the result”
So part of the reason that Israel feels beleaguered is that contrary to what happened in most earlier Middle East conflicts involving Israel, the adversary has been able to dominate news coverage. It has been able to do so in part because of this change in perception — largely in the universities, possibly because of immigration from the Middle East — that Israel is the land of oppressors and the Palestinian people are oppressed.
Now, for Jewish people, this is an amazing transformation — going from being oppressed themselves to being called oppressors in historical record time. But it’s cold comfort when you look at what the implications are.
The real question for Israel is whether its government and people will continue to have the resolve that they had at the beginning to follow through with their declared objective, which is to eliminate Hamas’s military and political capabilities. Because if Israel fails to do that, it could be a fatal signal to its enemies in the region and around the world.
Part of the problem for Israel — and certainly an understandable one — is that the triggering barbarity of October 7 focused their efforts at explaining the military campaign against Hamas as if this were purely a Gaza-versus-Israel fight, which clearly it is not. And I think what Israel needs to do better, along with those who support Israel’s right to a legitimate self-defense, is to explain that this is not a Palestinian-Israel war, and it’s not an Arab-Israel war. This is an Iranian war against Israel, using terrorist proxies to try to meet Iran’s objectives.
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