Israel Didn’t Wait for Permission

There are moments in history when patience is wisdom. There are also moments when patience becomes a dangerous excuse for doing nothing.

Israel learned the difference a long time ago.

In September 2007, Israeli fighter jets entered Syrian airspace and destroyed a secret facility at Al Kibar in eastern Syria. For years, Israel said remarkably little about the operation. The world debated what had been destroyed, questioned the intelligence and wondered whether Israel had really faced a threat serious enough to justify such an extraordinary military action.

Israel knew what it was doing.

Nearly two decades later, the Syrian nuclear file provides another reminder of something the international community seems determined to learn again and again.

Israel sometimes has to act today against threats the rest of the world will acknowledge tomorrow.

The International Atomic Energy Agency had already concluded that the facility destroyed at Al Kibar was very likely a nuclear reactor that should have been declared to the agency. Investigations into Syria’s nuclear activities continued for years.

But imagine if Israel had waited.

Imagine if Jerusalem had decided that international approval was more important than Israeli security.

Imagine that nuclear facility still standing when Syria collapsed into civil war only a few years later.

Think about what followed.

ISIS captured territory. Iranian forces expanded their presence. Hezbollah operated throughout Syria. Jihadist organizations fought for control of cities, military bases and weapons. A country disintegrated while some of the most dangerous organizations in the Middle East competed for territory and power.

Now put a nuclear reactor into that nightmare.

That is the alternative history people should consider before condemning Israel for acting without permission.

Israel has seen this movie before.

In 1981, Israel destroyed Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor. International condemnation followed immediately. The United Nations Security Council unanimously condemned the Israeli operation. Israel was accused of violating international law and endangering peace.

Menachem Begin understood something his critics could afford not to understand.

Israel cannot gamble with its existence.

That principle became associated with the Begin Doctrine. Israel would not allow a hostile regime seeking its destruction to acquire nuclear weapons.

For large countries protected by oceans, strategic depth and powerful alliances, preventive action can look reckless.

For Israel, waiting can be reckless.

Israel is tiny. Much of its population and critical infrastructure is concentrated in a very small geographical area. A catastrophic strategic mistake cannot simply be absorbed and corrected later.

Israel does not have the luxury of losing once.

And that brings us directly to Iran.

For decades the Islamic Republic has threatened Israel while financing, arming and supporting forces surrounding the Jewish state. Hezbollah built an enormous missile arsenal in Lebanon. Hamas received Iranian support. Palestinian Islamic Jihad received Iranian backing. The Houthis became another component of the regional network confronting Israel.

This did not happen accidentally.

Iran constructed a strategy designed to surround Israel with pressure while advancing its own military capabilities.

Yet whenever Israel warns about Iran, we hear the familiar chorus.

Do not escalate.

Show restraint.

Give diplomacy more time.

Keep negotiating.

Wait.

Israel has been told to wait for decades.

How long exactly is a country supposed to wait when the regime threatening it continues building capabilities that could eventually make military intervention dramatically more difficult?

Until every underground facility is completed?

Until air defenses become stronger?

Until missile arsenals grow larger?

Until inspectors finally produce the report everyone demanded?

Until politicians who demanded restraint admit that perhaps Israel had a point?

And what happens if that realization comes one day too late?

Will the international community apologize?

Will another United Nations emergency session bring murdered Israelis back to life?

Will a carefully worded European statement rebuild Tel Aviv, Haifa or Jerusalem after a catastrophic attack?

Of course not.

That is the uncomfortable reality behind Israeli security policy.

The people demanding that Israel take risks rarely have to live with the consequences when those risks fail.

Israelis do.

This does not mean that every Israeli military decision is automatically correct. Israel is a democracy. Governments must be questioned. Intelligence assessments must be challenged. Military force must have limits. Decisions involving war deserve enormous scrutiny.

But there is something profoundly dishonest about discussing the risks of Israeli action while pretending there are no risks to Israeli inaction.

Every debate asks what could happen if Israel attacks.

Far fewer people ask what could happen if Israel waits.

October 7 should have permanently destroyed the illusion that openly declared threats can safely be dismissed as rhetoric.

Israel had spent years living beside an enemy that openly celebrated its desire to destroy the Jewish state. The result of underestimating that enemy was not an academic discussion.

It was murder, kidnapping, rape, torture and devastation.

Israel paid for miscalculation in blood.

That lesson cannot simply disappear when the conversation turns to Iran.

There is a fundamental difference between Israel and many of the governments lecturing it about restraint.

For them, Iran is a foreign policy problem.

For Israel, Iran is a national survival problem.

That distinction matters.

History has repeatedly shown that threats against Jews should be taken seriously before they become catastrophes, not afterward when politicians gather at memorial ceremonies and solemnly declare that such horrors must never happen again.

Never Again cannot merely be a sentence spoken after Jewish people have been murdered.

It has to mean preventing the circumstances that could allow mass murder to happen.

That sometimes requires diplomacy.

Sometimes it requires patience.

Sometimes it requires intelligence operations.

And sometimes it requires military force.

The international community may dislike that reality, but Israel was not created to make the international community comfortable.

It was created so that the Jewish people would never again have to place their survival entirely in somebody else’s hands.

That is why Al Kibar still matters.

Israel did not wait until everyone agreed.

Israel did not wait until the threat became impossible to ignore.

Israel did not wait for permission.

It acted.

And perhaps instead of repeatedly asking why Israel acts before the world is ready, the world should finally start asking a different question.

How many times does Israel have to be proven right before people start listening when Israel warns them?