How to Intelligently Talk About Israel's Existential War: A Guide
To be honest, I am still not sure why so many people insist on having an opinion about a conflict that has nothing to do with them, but I guess "everyone is entitled to their own opinion."
Please consider supporting our mission to help everyone better understand and become smarter about the Jewish world. A gift of any amount helps keep our platform free of advertising and accessible to all.
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.
One of my favorite political pundits is Bill Maher, probably because he turns the utter madness and absurdities of politics into impressive jokes full of irony and sarcasm.
Maher is popularly known for the HBO political talk show “Real Time with Bill Maher” as well as the book trilogy, “New Rules.”
One regular segment on the show, also entitled “New Rules,” has been a hit with his ever-growing legion of fans. It is the part of the show during which Maher takes serious aim, bringing all of his intelligence, incisiveness, wit, and signature exasperation to bear on topics ranging from Covid (“When Covid hit four years ago, we did a lot of stupid things — because America never reacts to a crisis, it only overreacts.”) to collective narcissism (“When ‘activism’ merges with narcissism, it becomes less about the cause and more about the ego.”)
Today, I want to take a stab at some “New Rules” for those who want to engage in conversations about the Israel-Hamas-Hezbollah war. To be honest, I am still not sure why so many people across the world insist on having an opinion about a conflict that has nothing to do with them — and on which their livelihoods definitely do not depend — but I guess “everyone is entitled to their own opinion.”
Here are six “New Rules” for conversations about the Israel-Hamas-Hezbollah war:
1) Do not call it ‘the Israel-Hamas war.’
On October 7th, 2023, Hamas led the worst massacres and kidnappings of Jews since the Holocaust. Then, the very next day, Hezbollah in Lebanon started launching missiles and rockets at Israel, creating an immediate two-front war for the Jewish state.
Both Hamas and Hezbollah — along with the Houthis and other militias in Syria, Iraq, and the Palestinian West Bank, all of which have since joined the fray — are chiefly supported by Iran, thus making this conflict in effect the First Israeli-Iranian War.
And no one is keeping this a secret. On Wednesday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said his country will back Hezbollah by “all means” if fighting between Israel and the terror group escalates.
It has been well-documented that the Iranian revolution culminated in an overthrow of the Pahlavi dynasty in 1979. The theocratic regime of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a religious cleric who headed one of the rebel factions, superseded the Pahlavi dynasty. Since then, the Iranian regime has been relentlessly investing in exporting Iran’s Islamic revolution, with the aim of maximizing regional hegemony.
As part of this masterplan, the Iranians identify other like-minded rebel groups across the Middle East and North Africa, and supply them with training, weaponry, and funds to carry out (or stand ready to carry out) “missions” that align with this masterplan. This is what the term “Iranian proxies” means.
Acting through proxies is a method of eluding responsibility, and surely a more efficient way to expand Iranian imperialism. After all, why build bases in other countries and then ship your troops to babysit them, when you could piggyback on local groups who already have plenty of manpower and even political influence (such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian Territories)?
Iran’s interest in having Hamas attack Israel on October 7th was pretty simple: The Israelis and Saudis (Iran’s other archenemy) were about to sign a normalization agreement, brokered by the United States, that would have seen Saudi Arabia receive a U.S.-packaged nuclear program. Iran desires to be the only country in the Middle East (aside from Israel, of course) with nukes, because this would give them serious leverage in furthering and expediting their aim of maximizing regional hegemony.
2) Do not quote the BBC, Al Jazeera, The New York Times, or virtually any other mainstream media outlet.
Prior to October 7th, many people already knew just how corrupt and biased the mainstream media is — and when it comes to the Israel-Hamas-Hezbollah war, such a sentiment cannot be any more obvious.
Sometimes the anti-Israel sentiment is overt, such as at the BBC, which violated its own impartiality and accuracy guidelines a whopping 1,553 times in its overage of war’s first four months.1
Then there is Al Jazeera, which is not even a professional media outfit. The Qatari royal family established Al Jazeera in 1996. This is the same royal family that sponsors Hamas politically and financially, as well as ISIS and the Muslim Brotherhood through sporting and promoting a wide array of religious institutions, political parties, and even Western-based NGOs which promote what is known as political Islam (or Islamism) around the globe.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, The New York Times and other mainstream media outlets have long abandoned any pretense of impartiality when it comes to Israel. Their bias is so blatant, it’s almost comical if it wasn’t so dangerously influential. These so-called bastions of journalistic integrity seem to have a singular obsession: portraying Israel as Voldemort in every possible scenario.
Whether it is a conflict, a peace negotiation, or a humanitarian crisis, you can bet that Israel will be painted in the darkest shades possible. And mainstream media outlets have perfected the art of selective outrage. When Israelis are targeted by rockets, suicide bombers, or stabbings, they will either bury the story deep within their pages or twist the narrative to imply that, somehow, Israel brought it upon itself.
Meanwhile, any Israeli defensive action is splashed across the front pages with headlines screaming of disproportionate force and human rights violations. The terrorists, naturally, are given sympathetic profiles, depicted as desperate individuals pushed to the brink by the so-called “Israeli occupation.”
In addition, they give platforms to known antisemites, parade out “analysts” who conveniently ignore context, and consistently downplay or outright ignore Palestinian terrorism and other less-than-glamorous aspects of Palestinian society.
To add insult to injury, they regurgitate Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah propaganda as if it was gospel truth, seldom questioning the veracity of the claims made by these terror groups. Civilian casualties caused by their use of human shields and infrastructure are somehow transformed into deliberate Israeli atrocities, as if the IDF wakes up every morning with a checklist of civilian homes to target.
And then there is the language they use. Israeli “settlers” versus Palestinian “civilians.” Israeli “attacks” versus Palestinian “resistance.” This linguistic bias is not just a matter of semantics; it shapes public perception. It creates a false moral equivalence between a democratic state defending its citizens, and terrorist organizations whose stated goal is the annihilation of that state. The mainstream media’s reluctance to call a spade a spade — to label terrorists as terrorists — is not just cowardly, it is complicit in the perpetuation of violence.
These outlets love to cry foul about the alleged power and influence of the “Israel lobby,” yet they wield their own media empires to systematically undermine Israel’s right to self-defense. The hypocrisy is staggering. They claim to champion human rights, yet ignore the daily human rights abuses committed by Palestinian authorities against their own people. They turn a blind eye to the incitement and indoctrination that breeds a culture of hate, preferring instead to focus their righteous indignation solely on Israel.
3) Do not listen to influencers and talking-heads.
I get it, various influencers and talking-heads find it fashionable to share their thoughts and feelings about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They do, after all, rely on clicks and views, and pontificating about a hot topic is sure to serve their bank accounts.
As such, influencers and talking-heads — previously apolitical players — are suddenly trying to craft fraudulently emotional and quasi-knowledgeable narratives, as if they give a rat’s you-know-what about a war which has nothing to do with them and their wellbeing whatsoever.
Typically associated with food, fashion, fitness, and lifestyle content, influencers and talking-heads have joined the discourse — but that only matters if their followers are willing to pick up what they put down.
We ought to be smarter than to seriously listen to folks like Mark Ruffalo, Nora Achmaoui, Joe Rogan, Billie Eilish, and Gabor Maté (a physician, for goodness sake), all of whom (and many others) have zero credentials for saying anything of meaning and value about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, no less the current war.
I get it, though, some of these folks just want to share their “good vibes” and put out “positive messages” — which is fine, I suppose. Just do it about every single conflict in every single part of the world, if that’s the case. Otherwise, someone should tell them to stay in their lane.
4) Do not call Hezbollah and Hamas ‘fighters’ or ‘militants.’
Yariv Mozer, the director of “We Will Dance Again,” a documentary film about the notorious Nova music festival, said this week that he had to agree with the BBC to not describe Hamas as a terrorist organization if he wanted the documentary to air, according to an interview he gave to The Hollywood Reporter.
But that is exactly what Hamas and Hezbollah are: terrorist organizations. And their operatives are, in fact, terrorists.
Yet in the age of multiculturalism and “cultural relativism” — the notion that there is no universal standard to measure cultures by, and that all cultural values and beliefs must be understood relative to their cultural context, and not judged based on outside norms and values — people are being taught that the word “terrorist” is now grossly politically incorrect.
At Kings College in London, for instance, one course for public servants teaches that “terrorism is not the problem, rather the systems they oppose are terrorist” and “condemning terrorism is to endorse the power of the strong over the weak.”2
This is pure nonsense. If people indiscriminately attack civilians while using other civilians as camouflage and human shields, they are not “fighters” or “militants.” They are terrorists.
Fighters and militants go into combat against other combats and militants, not against helpless civilian populations. Yet this is precisely what Hezbollah and Hamas, both in policy and practice, do. Anyone who tells you otherwise or makes excuses for these thugs is shilling for terrorism.
5) Do not both-sides an argument.
Apparently, when it comes to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, people have no problem choosing one side or the other (which is fine by me).
In an election, you choose a side. In a debate, you choose a side. Even Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust-survivor-turned-Nobel-laureate, said: “We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”
Both-sides-ing only works if your goal is to imply a false equivalency, suggesting that the conflict is a simple tit-for-tat rather than a complex issue with deeply rooted historical, religious, and ethnic nuances. It is like saying, “Both sides in World War Two had their reasons” — but with a straight face.
It is an exercise in moral cowardice and intellectual laziness. Those who insist on treating both parties as equally culpable are either hopelessly naive or willfully ignorant. This is not some playground squabble where both kids share the blame for a broken toy. This is a protracted conflict where one side is a democratic state defending its existence and the other is a collection of terrorist organizations committed to its destruction.
Let’s cut the nonsense. Israel is a nation that values human rights, upholds the rule of law, and strives to protect all its citizens, regardless of race or religion. It is a country that has repeatedly extended olive branches, made painful concessions, and sought peace at great personal and national costs.
On the other side, you have groups like the Palestine Liberation Organization, Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad which glorify death, use civilians as human shields, and indoctrinate children with hatred from the moment they can breathe. Equating these entities with Israel is not just absurd; it is obscene.
The media and self-proclaimed peace activists love to pontificate about “both sides” as if it was a badge of moral superiority. They spew their false equivalences, claiming that every Israeli defensive measure is on par with every terrorist atrocity. News flash: There is no equivalence between a state protecting its citizens from indiscriminate terrorist attacks and a terrorist group launching these attacks indiscriminately into civilian areas. There is no moral parity between a country trying to secure its borders and a people (the Palestinians) who have historically and still to this day advocated for the annihilation of that country.
And let’s not forget the so-called “intellectuals” who peddle this garbage. From the safety of their ivory towers, they lecture Israel on how to achieve peace, all while ignoring the inconvenient truths of Jihadist ideology and the unending stream of terror emanating from Gaza and the Palestinian West Bank. These armchair philosophers would not last a day in Sderot or Ashkelon, where residents live under constant threat. Yet, they have the gall to preach about moral equivalence and the need for “understanding both sides.”
The truth is, you cannot both-sides a situation where one side has historically been committed to peace and the other to perpetual war. You cannot pretend that there is a middle ground when one side builds bomb shelters to protect its civilians and the other builds tunnels to infiltrate and kill.
The refusal to acknowledge these fundamental disparities does not make you a peacemaker; it makes you an enabler of terror. It is time to stop this charade and recognize the conflict for what it truly is: a battle between a democratic nation and extremist groups that will stop at nothing to destroy it.
6) Do not put the onus on Israel.
In Israel, we do not deny the destruction currently taking place across Gaza and more recently Lebanon, the unfortunate civilian casualties, the living hell that much of the Strip has become — all, of course, as a result of Israel’s response to the unprecedented Palestinian terror attacks on October 7th and Hezbollah’s unprovoked entrance into the war just one day later.
We are fully aware that winter is right around the corner, meaning daily life will get even worse for Gaza and Lebanon’s people. What’s more, we are not trying to sugarcoat or circumvent these inconvenient truths. We are very much at peace with the consequences. Why?
Because, after witnessing the testimony about a woman murdered by a sharp object inserted into her genital area, our empathy evaporated.
After seeing the testimony about an 8-year-old girl whose hands were amputated and left to bleed in fear — and by the time help arrived, she couldn’t be saved — our empathy evaporated.
After hearing about another woman who was raped in the terror attack, had to undergo an abortion, and is now hospitalized in a mental health facility, our empathy evaporated.
After learning of an infant who was placed in an oven and baked to death, our empathy evaporated.
After being told that a pregnant woman’s abdomen was cut open, her fetus beheaded, and then she was murdered, our empathy evaporated.
After seeing footage of a children’s room splattered with blood, perhaps from babies who were beheaded, our empathy evaporated.
After hearing about a woman who was raped during the massacre, her breasts mutilated and used as a football before she was shot in the head, our empathy evaporated.
And then, just mere days after one of the world’s most heinous terror attacks engulfed Israel, we were made out to be the “bad guys,” the “bully,” the “oppressor,” the “occupiers.” Crowds across the world celebrated this so-called “act of liberation” and even called for our deaths and the destruction of our country.
Ironically, the Jews have done more to “liberate” the Palestinians than Palestinian leaders have done themselves. In one anecdote, the Arab population dramatically increased after Zionists eradicated malaria from the region in the 1920s. Arabs said we made the land “livable.”
Since the State of Israel’s founding in 1948, we have tried to accommodate the Palestinians every which way — territorial concessions, peace agreements, financial aid, work opportunities, and more — but nothing seems to work. If anything, these gestures had the opposite effect: more vile terrorism against mostly innocent Israeli civilians.
So we put up checkpoints and walls to better protect our borders, just as any country would reasonably do. Our politicians and security establishments let us down on October 7th, but we know that does not change the very intentions of so many Palestinians: to exact as much hurt and spite on as many Jews as possible. This was not the first time, and it probably will not be the last.
When terror groups hijack territories like they have done in Gaza and Lebanon, using them as a launchpad for Jihad, significant military action is the only way, despite the risk to innocents. If Israel did not respond in the ways it has, there would also be a paramount risk to innocents — the hundreds of thousands of Israelis who live in towns that border Gaza and Lebanon.
If you are asking us to deny our own citizens the same right that you would fight for on behalf of others, well, that is an awkward act of self-sabotage — and more of a you problem than an Israel problem.
Hence, the destruction, civilian casualties, and living hell in Gaza. And hence why many Israelis, myself included, accept the situation for what it is.
But the impetus for our position does not stem from being “pro-Jewish” or “pro-Israel.” Our position is rooted in knowing that the Israeli military is deeply grounded in humanitarianism. As the joke goes, we thought about responding proportionally, but our soldiers did not want to go into Gaza to rape women, behead babies, mutilate bodies, and burn entire families to death.
The Israeli response has been robust, yet surgical. If we truly wanted to erase Gaza and level Beirut, we would have done so just a few days into this war. Such capabilities are not in question on Israel’s side.
Of course, this does not mean that there aren’t evil Israelis and lovely Palestinians, but this is not a dispute between two peoples. It is a dispute between two cultures, where ethno-social constructs are the primary source of conflict.
Our culture celebrates life. We get excited when flowers bloom in the desert and a new museum opens. Unfortunately, we cannot say anything remotely similar about our enemies and their supporters, who predominantly cheer on death and promote boundless hate.
As Golda Meir, the former Israeli prime minister, used to say: “We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children. We will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.”
“The Asserson Report: The Israel-Hamas war and the BBC.” Campaign for Media Standards. 9 September 2024.
“Scandalous Indoctrination: Inside a Kings College Counter-Terrorism Course for UK Civil Servants.” Fathom.
Someone else said this first, but why is the world so obsessed with the Jews? Thank you for an outstanding analysis of the war between Israel and Iran. So proud of Mossad, the IDF and resilience of the Israeli people. Am Yisrael Chai ❤️🇮🇱
There are 17 million Jews and 2 Billion Muslims on Planet Earth.
Bringing up this statistic really irks some people and others simply had no clue.
If you were to poll 100 random people on the street about these figures you will see shock on their faces when they realize it.