F*ck around with Israel and find out.
History shows what happens when Israel’s patience is mistaken for weakness.
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“F*ck around and find out,” often abbreviated to FAFO, is modern internet slang for an ancient truth: Reckless or provocative behavior brings painful consequences.
It’s the edgier cousin of “Play stupid games, win stupid prizes” and “You reap what you sow.”
For Israel, FAFO isn’t just slang; it’s a survival principle, forged in war, blood, and necessity.
The world saw this principle in action again on Sunday, when the Israeli Air Force launched strikes deep into Yemen’s Houthi-controlled capital, Sanaa. The targets were strategic: the presidential palace, a fuel depot, and two power stations. The strikes came just days after the Houthis escalated their campaign, firing a ballistic missile tipped with a cluster bomb warhead — the first of its kind — that struck central Israel and damaged a civilian home.
The message was immediate and unmistakable: You escalate, we escalate harder. You terrorize Israeli civilians, you’ll wake up to the sound of F-35s screaming over your capital. That is FAFO diplomacy at its purest — swift, unambiguous, and unforgettable.
The clearest example of FAFO in modern memory, though, came on October 7, 2023. Hamas didn’t just poke the bear; it unleashed a savagery so grotesque, so depraved, that the response was always going to be cataclysmic.
In a single morning, thousands of terrorists stormed across the border, massacring 1,200 innocent people: men and women, children and grandparents, babies in their cribs and teenagers at a music festival. Families were burned alive in their homes. Women were raped in front of their children. More than 250 hostages were dragged back into Gaza’s tunnels like war trophies. And all of it — every last bit — was gleefully filmed and shared, as if to dare Israel to respond.
And then — somehow — Hamas and its enablers expected Israel to do nothing.
What followed should be studied in war colleges for decades: the methodical dismantling of Hamas’ military, political, and financial infrastructure. Entire neighborhoods that hid tunnels or weapons caches were reduced to rubble. Senior Hamas leaders were hunted down, one by one. Tens of thousands of terrorists were killed.
The rocket factories? Gone. The command centers? Dust. The tunnel network once called “the Metro”? Collapsing by the day.
Western critics call it “collective punishment.” Israelis call it collective consequence. Gaza is not being destroyed for no reason. It is paying the price for decades of choices — for embracing terror over coexistence, for turning schools into arsenals, for electing leaders who vowed to wipe Israel off the map.
This is what “found out” looks like.
October 7th and the strikes on Sanaa aren’t anomalies. They’re just the latest chapters in a 77-year saga in which Israel’s enemies misread its patience as weakness — and paid dearly for it.
1948: Five Arab armies invaded the newborn State of Israel, promising to drive the Jews into the sea. Instead, Israel expanded its territory and humiliated its attackers.
1967: Egypt, Syria, and Jordan mobilized for war, blockaded Israeli shipping lanes, and promised annihilation. Six days later, the IDF controlled the Sinai, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights.
1973: On Yom Kippur, Arab armies launched a surprise attack. Israel bled, but it didn’t break. Within weeks, the IDF had crossed the Suez Canal and surrounded the Egyptian Third Army.
2006: Hezbollah kidnapped and killed Israeli soldiers on the northern border. In response, southern Lebanon was torn apart, and Hezbollah has lived with that summer’s memory ever since.
2012, 2014, 2021: Hamas rained rockets on Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Each time, Gaza paid a steeper price than before.
This is the immutable law of Israel’s neighborhood: Attack the Jewish state, and you will face overwhelming force.
And still, Israel doesn’t live by FAFO out of choice; it lives by it out of necessity. When you’re surrounded by enemies, deterrence is your first and last line of defense.
That’s why Israel strikes weapons convoys in Syria, why it sabotages Iran’s nuclear program, and why terrorist masterminds like Ismail Haniyeh and Hassan Nasrallah met their ends without warning.
This isn’t vengeance; it’s survival. When your existence is non-negotiable, clarity of consequence becomes your greatest insurance policy.
Of course, every time Israel acts, the world erupts in outrage. United Nations resolutions fly. Western journalists wring their hands. College campuses seethe. And yet, when Israelis are massacred, when Palestinians are arrested in Tel Aviv for alleged ties to a planned terror attack in the city (which happened today), when children grow up running to bomb shelters, the world shrugs.
The hypocrisy is staggering, but irrelevant. Israel learned long ago that no one else will defend the Jewish state. The IDF doesn’t wait for permission slips from the UN or lectures from pundits. It acts because it must.
And every time the world underestimates Israel’s resolve, they “find out” just how far the Jewish state is willing to go to protect its people.
Ironically, FAFO doesn’t just lead to war; it sometimes leads to peace. Egypt made peace with Israel not because it fell in love with Zionism, but because it understood, after 1967 and 1973, that Israel could not be defeated. Jordan reached the same conclusion. And the Abraham Accords — starting with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco — are built on the same foundation: respect earned through strength. In the Middle East, deterrence is the currency of survival — and, sometimes, the down payment for coexistence.
Perhaps the most tragic part of the FAFO equation is that it didn’t have to be this way for the Palestinians.
They had opportunities — after the Oslo Accords in the 1990s, after Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, after billions in international aid poured in — to build a functioning state, to embrace coexistence, to write a different story. Instead, their leaders chose terror and antisemitism. They chose rockets and tunnels over schools and hospitals. They chose martyrdom over modernity.
Now, Gaza is in ruins. And while the world rushes to paint Palestinians as eternal victims, the harsh truth is this: The bill came due.
The Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the regime in Tehran would do well to take note. Israel has already shown it can reach into Iranian territory to establish immediate air supremacy, assassinate nuclear scientists, hack critical infrastructure, disrupt weapons programs.
FAFO also carries a deeper meaning in the Jewish story. From Masada to the Warsaw Ghetto to the birth of Israel in 1948, Jewish survival has always depended on a simple truth: Strength is the only guarantee of safety. The world may lecture. The world may condemn. But the Jewish state will never again wait for others to come to its rescue.
Finally, FAFO isn’t just a message for Israel’s enemies; it’s a message for Jews everywhere. When we stand unapologetically with Israel, when we reject the temptation to bow to fashionable lies or to soften our voice to appease others, we send the same message: Weakness invites danger, but strength ensures survival.
In a world where antisemitism is resurgent, there is no room for timidity. There is only one path forward: Be strong, be proud, and make it clear — to everyone — that the Jewish People will not be victimized again.
For 77 years, Israel’s enemies have deluded themselves into thinking that if they just hit harder, if they just terrorize civilians enough, Israel will fold. They confuse Israeli patience with fragility. They mistake democratic debate for existential fatigue.
And every time, they learn the same hard lesson: Israel may bend, but it never breaks. “F*ck around and find out” isn’t a slogan here. It’s statecraft, born of necessity and sharpened by survival. For those who still don’t understand, the message couldn’t be clearer: If you come for the Jewish state, be prepared to find out — the hard way.
Excellent piece. Yes, Israel is armed to its teeth and essentially is defending the entire West. Here is then a larger problem: the West no longer distinguishes between right and wrong. Perhaps it never truly did, as the horrific persecution of Jews for so long has shown. The West is weak, mentally ill, and responding to an appeasing complex once it regards Islam's domination as inevitable . The proof is that the West takes no measures against that very possible future. America, being still young and still principled, is not yet under such urgent peril, but as soon as Jew hatred appears, unexpected, we know what comes next. Come 2028, new elections, who knows? We can't despair, as we still have the miraculous fact of Jewish survival. But we need leadership.
our retribution and eventual elimination of H*m*s should become an unofficial holiday called Yom Faforim