How to Know If You Should Support Israel

“We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere.”

The Israeli flag (photo: Stanislav Vdovin/Unsplash)

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Intelligence agencies like the CIA, Israel’s Mossad, and the UK’s MI6 hire operatives on a spectrum of their ability to be morally and ethically flexible.

Indeed, most people are, at heart, morally and ethically flexible.

You and I would probably never randomly punch somebody in the face. Some people out there would even say that they would never hurt another human being. But as soon as some human being poses a direct threat to their daughter or their son or their mother, suddenly they will change their moral or ethical stance in self-defense.

Now, imagine your daughter was gang-raped by a brigade of Palestinian terrorists. Imagine your mother had her private parts maimed. Imagine your nephew was mutilated. Imagine your sister’s baby was beheaded and then baked in the oven in the kitchen of their house. Imagine your uncle, in his 70s, was badly beaten and then kidnapped back to Gaza, where he has been locked up in an underground dungeon patrolled by jihadists.

If you were in any Israeli’s shoes right now, you too would be passionate about the Jewish state ensuring Gaza never represents any type of threat to your home (Israel) again — whatever it takes.

I do not write that as a warmonger, but as someone whose country was provoked into self-defense on October 7th. And self-defense, at least in Israel’s eyes, does not just mean putting up a fight in the moment. It also entails preemptively establishing the foundation so that, in this case, Gaza never poses a viable threat to Israelis again.

If you still cannot wrap your head around this (unfortunate) reality, you probably have not practiced enough empathy for the victims of October 7th. Or you have been brainwashed into thinking that the Hamas-led atrocities that day were somehow justified because Israel “oppresses” the Palestinians and has a “siege” on Gaza. Both claims are quintessential Palestinian propaganda that have zero basis in truth and intellectual honesty.

The other thing that many people do not realize about Israel is that it is not like other (larger, more populous) countries. The Jewish state is tiny, which means that everyone knows someone who has been directly affected by October 7th and its aftermath. Even I, who did not grow up in Israel and only moved here in 2013 at the age of 24, know multiple people who were caught up in the Hamas-led massacres that day.

A few months before October 7th, I went on a date with a woman who was murdered (along with her sister) at the now-notorious Nova Music Festival. Also a few months before October 7th, I met in Tel Aviv to discuss potential business collaborations with the father of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, the Israeli-American hostage who had his left arm cut off by Palestinian terrorists and is still in Gaza.

Now, put yourself in my shoes. Would you wake up each day worrying about the “poor Palestinians” in Gaza? Would you want your country to hold back from going after Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the other perpetrators of these horrific pogroms because of “the Palestinian women and children”?

War is undoubtedly tragic, disgusting, and senseless — especially when one side (Gaza) has been turned into a jihadist fortress that leverages human shields and schools, hospitals, mosques, and other civilian infrastructure as its primary military infrastructure.

It is incredibly curious that, with the billions — that is right, billions with a B — in international aid which has poured into Gaza annually for dozens of years, neither Hamas nor the United Nations, the Red Cross, or any other so-called humanitarian organization with a presence there ever thought about building bomb shelters for Gazans in the event that, I don’t know, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad would break into Israel and gang-rape, maim, mutilate, behead, burn to death, and kidnap thousands of civilians.

There is no problem with feeling sad or concerned about the plight of Gazans in the aftermath of October 7th. The question is who do you blame or hold responsible for their plight. If it is the Israelis, you have again been brainwashed.

Back in Israel, there is a law in which every building constructed after 1970 must include a bomb shelter for its residents. I guess the difference between Israel and, say, Gaza is not financial or economic, but ideological. One side believes in preserving human life for all citizens (including non-Jewish Israelis), while the other is eager to sacrifice human life (and then blame Israel for their self-inflicted unpleasant conditions because, you know, f*ck the Jews).

In the 11-plus years that I have lived in Israel, I have never heard a single Israeli — of the literally thousands that I met across the country — assert that they want to wipe out the Palestinians (or the like).

That said, we obviously have crazy Israelis (including in our current government) who are extremists, just like you have in your country. But the vast majority of Israelis, like most other people around the world, do not take pleasure in war. We enjoy the opening of a new museum — indeed, Israel is said to have the world’s most museums per capita — and when flowers bloom in the desert.

At the same time, Israelis are not suckers. When Israel is attacked, we defend ourselves at all costs — and we are unapologetic about it, as we should be. Jewish texts predominantly promote peace, human rights, and justice, but Judaism is not ignorant about reality. After all, the Talmud states: “If someone rises to kill you, rise up to kill him first.”

I find this to be an impressive trait, one that tends to be lacking in many other places where people would never want to fight for their country because of “anti-war” fairy tales they tell themselves, even as their country provides them with individual freedoms and liberties never before afforded to the masses in human history.

Don’t take it from me but, if you are not willing to defend your freedoms and liberties, others will come and take them away. All you have to do is read a world history book to understand that simple truth.

We can incessantly hope, wish, and pray for the days where peace on Earth is the prevailing way of life, or we can accept reality for what it is: There are nearly eight billion people on this planet, and expecting all of us to neatly subscribe to the exact same program is probably impossible.

It does not help, as well, that a quarter of these eight billion people are Muslims who follow a religion (that doubles as a political doctrine) which means “submission.”

That is right: The word “Islam” literally means submission, and the Quran repeatedly dictates that its followers must convert you to Islam or kill you if you refuse to convert. Furthermore, much of the Quran speaks not about religion but about how believers must submit, and it commands how they must live, dress, treat women and slaves, and practice jihad.

Yet, somehow, many of us have been manipulated into thinking that we are unjustifiably scared of people who detest and desire to harm us (or support other Muslims who aim to harm us) for not being Muslim. Whoever rebranded “Islamophobia” should be given an Academy Award for Best Costume Design.

That is why, sometimes, within this unfortunate but pertinent reality, we have to choose a side. As the famed Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel famously said:

“We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere.”

Of course, the Palestinians — thanks to direct, hands-on help from the murderous Soviets and then jihadist countries like Qatar and the Islamic Republic of Iran — are seen by many people as the “victims” in the Israeli-Palestinian saga. In some cases, some Palestinians have been victims of injustice, but if your allies are the murderous Soviets and then the jihadist Qataris and Iranians, what does that ultimately say about you?

Moreover, if the Palestinians are so “poor” and “in need” while all their leaders are mega-millionaires and even billionaires, what does that say about them?

The reality is that most people have been duped by nefarious, systematic propaganda originally created by, again, murderous Soviets and more recently by jihadists (i.e. a death cult) to brand the Palestinians as forever-victims and Israel (i.e. the Jews) as the no-good, devilish oppressor.

To add insult to injury, the increasingly gullible, incompetent, and biased mainstream media (and, by extension, social media) disseminate this propaganda as if it is undeniably factual, intellectual, and historically accurate “news.” Spoiler: It is anything but.

And then, as a poisonous cherry on top, politicians (including the Joe Biden’s of the world) consume this “news” and repeat this propaganda to millions of people as if these politicians have any competence when it comes to the Middle East. Spoiler: They do not.

Thus, if you find yourself overly concerned about the “humanitarian crisis” in Gaza — the use of quotation marks is because no real humanitarian crisis in Gaza exists, although conditions there are certainly suboptimal — and/or if you think that Israel is committing genocide, ethnic cleansing, or apartheid, you have indeed been duped.

That’s on you, not on Israel.

Israelis are a proud people built on family, community, faith, spirituality, perseverance, love of the land, self-reliance, and resourcefulness. Israeli society is also imperfect and in need of much improvement, as all societies are.

But for anyone who truly believes in social justice, human rights, self-determination, and other democratic values, it is overwhelmingly obvious that, given the choice between living in “Palestine” or Israel, 9.9 out of 10 people would unequivocally opt for the latter.

Truth be told, they wouldn’t touch “Palestine” with a stick.

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