
Over the years, I’ve shared a thought experiment with friends from the left and right: If you give a random member of Hamas or Hezbollah a button that can instantly kill every Jew in Israel, would they press it?
No one has said no; almost everyone says yes. Even among the left, independent of any grievances against Israel, there is grudging recognition that the desire to eliminate the Jewish state is the dominant truth among Israel’s sworn enemies.
That raw truth can get blurred, however, when one considers high-minded concepts such as liberalism and democracy. Fighting evil is brutal; asserting liberal ideals is sophisticated, even Jewish.
The result is often a clash of equally valid truths.
Smart commentators like Ezra Klein of The New York Times will reflexively focus on high-minded liberal truths and Israel’s failure to honor them; while the typical Israeli whose existence is dependent on fighting evil will focus more on how many seconds it takes to reach the nearest bomb shelter.
Inevitably, there are times when one truth comes to dominate.
In times of relative stability, Israel can afford to exert itself in its liberal aspirations. We saw that in the 10 months preceding Oct. 7, when enormous crowds of Israelis demonstrated week after week to protest what they saw as a gutting of the Supreme Court.
Oct. 7 changed everything. Stability turned instantly into existential dread.
The highbrow Klein himself called that darkest of days “one of the true acts of barbarism in modern history.” If I shared my thought experiment with him, I’m guessing he’d also say that any of those Hamas murderers would press the imaginary button to kill every Jew in Israel.
If an unprecedented “barbarism” is how Klein perceives Oct. 7 from the comfort of America, imagine how an Israeli who faces this barbarism every day might perceive it.
And yet, none of this reality seems to have swayed Klein from his familiar rebuking of the Jewish state for failing to meet liberal ideals.
“I think about my children growing up and being Jewish in a world where the Jewish state is a pariah state, a symbol of oppression, immorality and illiberalism, and what that means for their Judaism,” Klein said in a recent interview in Haaretz.
Such a glib and narrow focus on values that ignores harsh realities on the ground betrays, at the very least, a lack of complexity. It also betrays a certain intellectual laziness to so casually embrace the charge that Israel is a symbol of “oppression, immorality and illiberalism.”
One need not be a Zionist apologist to offer context that at least puts Israel’s liberal deficiencies in perspective. Nor does one need to be a pro-Israel activist to highlight the blatant double standards when judging Israel, notoriously prevalent in international circles. Yes, that kind of context should also be part of educating Jewish kids; and giving them a fuller picture of Israel’s predicament can also “mean a lot for their Judaism.”
Klein jumps immediately to Israel as a symbol of what he abhors. But what about the Israel that symbolizes grit and resilience? Or the Israel that symbolizes cultural vibrancy despite being under siege by genocidal enemies? Or even the Israel that symbolizes complexity?
Beyond that predictable and glaring lack of context is an even more urgent truth Klein and his ilk seem to have missed: the recent mood change in Israel. Oct. 7 was not just the scariest day in Israel’s history; it was also the day Israel’s enemies stopped fearing the Jewish state– the day when the goal of eliminating Israel never felt more real.
The long, exhausting and costly war in Gaza went only so far in regaining Israel’s deterrence. Israelis have long known that their more dangerous foe is Hezbollah in the north. With its huge arsenal of precision-guided missiles that can overwhelm Israeli defenses and shut down major infrastructure, Hezbollah is infinitely more threatening than Hamas and has been the perennial dark cloud hanging over the Jewish state.
All that started to turn on Sept. 17, when thousands of pagers exploded in the hands of Hezbollah terrorists. When Israel followed that daring feat with the elimination of Hezbollah leadership and the destruction of military infrastructure in south Lebanon, the paradigm of war shifted.
Suddenly, Israelis smelled the return of the Israel that its enemies would fear, which means, simply, a safer Israel. The Gaza war may have decimated Hamas, but decimating Hezbollah would be a game changer. Israelis started smelling victory over an enemy committed to its annihilation and with the means to accomplish it.
After the collective trauma of Oct. 7, most Israelis are in no mood to stop, not when their enemies are now on the run. If anything, they’re seeing the logic of pressing their military advantage to go after the biggest threat of all, Iran. Indeed that has already started. As reported on JPost, “The Israel Air Force struck a dozen targets in Iran that were used to produce solid fuel for long-range ballistic missiles as part of its retaliatory military action against the Islamic Republic, severely harming Tehran’s ability to replenish its inventory.”
This kind of bold military action won’t win Israel much applause in the West or among the progressive set. Sophisticated thinkers like Klein have a hard time relating to things like “pressing a military advantage.” In their mind, there’s never a wrong time to call for a ceasefire or instill liberal values or work on not being a “pariah” state. The word “victory” has been crushed by cliches like “we must avoid escalation” and “we need a day after plan.” A world where a military victory could be a good thing is too ugly for them.
Unless, of course, we’re talking about a military victory for Ukraine, when the bad guy is a powerful white Russian. The West doesn’t mind a victory over evil as long as it gets to choose the evil– and who gets to fight it.
It’s a separate set of rules for the Jewish state and its terrorist neighbors. Israel can only go so far in its fight against existential threats. For liberal preachers like Klein, Jews shouldn’t be too tough or powerful; it’s not a good look. Much better to be a shining light of liberalism so that progressive Jews in America will stop being shamed by the “pariah” Zionist nation.
These high-minded rebukes of the Jewish state have little impact on Israelis fighting for their lives. But for those terrorists who would push that imaginary button to kill every Jew in Israel, it must surely be music to their ears.