Fighting Two Different Wars, But the Same Old Thinking

With today’s average attention span and rapidly changing news cycles being what they are, the sustained focus on Israel is almost impressive.

That is, unless of course you’re Jewish. Then the ongoing protests and misdirected outrage is beyond upsetting, if not frightening. It’s even more difficult to stand emotionally when you know the obsession with the Jewish people is centuries old, if not millennia.

Keeping one thought these days is hard enough, let alone two at once. But that’s exactly what’s needed for the average person to react appropriately to Israel’s war with Iran. People need to separate their feelings about Israel and the Palestinians from what is happening now.

I get it. They see Israel as an aggressor just the same, and a power-hungry Netanyahu sowing more conflict to extend his time in office and keep himself out of jail. But that’s the thing, this war has less to do with Israel or Netanyahu, and everything to do with Iran.

Iran is a brutal, authoritarian theocracy guilty of so much it’s hard to know where to start. Let’s begin with women (ladies first, after all). A human rights abuser like few on the planet, they beat and imprison women regularly who bravely challenge their strict modesty laws (really aimed at population control). Free speech, a free press, free and open elections, and freedom of religion or sexual orientation, are among the many other basic freedoms they deny.

If only the oppression and havoc they wreak was limited to their own people. They have destabilized the governments of Yemen, Iraq, Lebanon and Syria. The plan, which they’ve said the quiet part out loud many times, was to install terror organizations in each and create a “ring of fire” around Israel in order to destroy it.

The main reason for Hezballah to exist was to establish a deterrent against Israel attacking Iran’s nuclear program. If Israel were to attack, Hezballah would immediately launch tens of thousands of missiles at Israeli civilian population centers. Not sure if you got the message on your beeper, but that threat is no more.

Beyond the region, Iran has created chaos for the world’s economy. One of their proxy armies the Houthi rebels frequently attack cargo ships in the vital Straights of Hormuz. Not to forget the one megaton elephant in the room, there’s Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Sorry, peaceful nuclear program.

It’s hard to imagine an oil-rich nation like Iran needing nuclear power. In reality, they have no intention of getting off oil when global sales are what funds all that terror. Their largest oil client happens to be China, and further empowering China is not just bad for the world, but given the scale of their industry, terrible for the environment.

As long as I brought that up, let’s remember that Iran also exports drones to Russia to use against Ukraine, and because of the cost of Russia’s war and sanctions imposed, China is helping to prop up Russia’s economy. Does that constitute an axis of evil? You bet. And I’m sure both of those nations have helped Iran develop their nuclear program and upgrade their military and weapons systems, which are intended to get for terror, and obviously against Israel. It’s really not complicated.

You may hate Israel. You may even think that Jews control Hollywood. But Iran is really the bad actor in the region. Yes, regardless of your views on the conflict with the Palestinians. Two thoughts at once right? Just in case you forgot one of them.

If Iran is so bad, why is the world so unwilling to support Israel? I didn’t even mention all the radicalism and anti-Western indoctrination they’ve exported. Sorry, back to two thoughts. Lost focus there myself.

In this era of hyper-partisan politics, people are less able to be nuanced. Depending on the information bubble people live in, one is usually either for letting in every immigrant, or deporting every last one. We either believe climate change is real or a hoax. COVID was either started in a lab in China, or how dare you even say such a thing.

This issue is no different. In their support for the Palestinians and objection to the war between Israel and Gaza, the anti-Israel crowd is anti-Israel once again regardless of the obvious facts. They are either unable or unwilling to waver and see Israel or its enemy any other way. In this equation, Israel is still Israel and Iran is no different than the Palestinians.

Then again, they never could see it differently. Most have no clue that it was Israel who prevented Saddam Hussein from obtaining nuclear weapons when they blew up Iraq’s reactor in 1981. Nor do they know that it was Israel who took out Syria’s fledgling program in 2007, nuclear capabilities that today would be in the hands of an Al Qaeda affiliate. Geez!

Despite being less than 1% of the Middle East, Israel has had to be the cop of the region. Whether it’s ever been able to admit it or not, the world is the better for it. No one in their right mind would’ve wanted Sadaam to have nuclear weapons to have used against the Kurds or the West, or ironically, Iran. Nor would anyone want Al Qaeda to have the bomb.

Israel today is doing in Iran what other Arab nations and the West wouldn’t. Still, rather than unequivocally supporting the Jewish state, nations and people are condemning it (for the crime of trying to prevent its own annihilation), or at best, tossing out the same garbage line that Israel has a right to defend itself, as if that’s ever been anything more than a basic right for any nation under threat or trying to defend its people or borders (which is all Israel is doing now, and all they’ve pretty much ever done).

Yet rather than support women’s rights and human rights, rather than ensure that Middle Eastern nations can remain sovereign, rather than protect the world’s shipping lanes from terror, rather than prevent radicalism from being inculcated throughout the West, and rather than help make sure that the people of Gaza aren’t manipulated by Hamas, they’re choosing politically to not stand with Israel.

You would think it would be a good thing for there to be fewer nuclear nation states, especially rogue ones. You would think people would be in favor of spreading real democracy in a region that’s never upheld inalienable rights. The total lack of moral clarity is the very reason why Israel time and again is left to do the world’s dirty work.

You would think.

The world not clearly seeing what’s happening in the region might have less to do with the inability to sustain two thoughts at once. Maybe so many are stuck having the same old one, the one they’ve had forever, that no matter what, no matter against who, despite all reason, despite their best interests, more than anything, they just hate the Jewish people.