Israel Needs to Help Its Advocates

Over the past several years, I have participated in numerous discussions about Israel on Brookline community listservs. In the process, I have learned how to defend Israel—rather effectively, I think—against the accusation that it is committing genocide in Gaza. The allegation is emotionally powerful, but it can be tested against evidence. I can point to the nature of the enemy Israel is fighting, Hamas’s systematic use of civilian areas and infrastructure, Israel’s warnings and evacuations, its facilitation of humanitarian assistance, and the assessments of experienced military specialists who have studied the IDF’s efforts to reduce civilian casualties under exceptionally difficult conditions.

A progressive friend involved in our town government—someone who describes himself as loving and defending Israel but who has become highly critical of both AIPAC and the current Israeli government—was nevertheless willing to consider the assessments of experienced military specialists regarding the IDF’s efforts to minimize civilian casualties in Gaza. The violence in the West Bank affects him differently. He sees attacks on Palestinian civilians followed by inadequate enforcement, and he is justifiably outraged. His response illustrates an important distinction: disputed allegations about Israel’s military conduct can be tested against operational evidence, but there is no persuasive factual or moral defense for Israelis attacking innocent Palestinians—or for a government appearing unwilling to stop them.

Most importantly, behind every report of “settler violence” are individual human beings: families frightened in their homes, farmers who have lost crops or livestock, and people whose property, security or physical safety has been violated. Innocent Palestinians should not have to pay for terrorism committed by others, and their suffering matters regardless of how the incidents are subsequently used in the international campaign against Israel.

That leaves people like me in a painful position. We can rebut false allegations against Israel, expose distorted reporting and explain the realities that much of the world ignores. But we cannot defend conduct that should be indefensible to Israel itself.

I am not in a position to prescribe what the IDF should do. I am not a military expert, and the IDF operates under pressures that people safely observing from abroad rarely understand. In Judea and Samaria, it must continually prevent shootings, bombings, kidnappings and other terrorist attacks while protecting Israeli and Palestinian civilians. The scale of that threat receives far too little attention: according to the Shin Bet, Israeli security forces thwarted 1,040 significant terrorist attacks in the West Bank and Jerusalem in 2024 alone, including hundreds of planned shootings and bombings. That context is indispensable.

We can—and should—explain that the perpetrators constitute a small minority and do not represent the hundreds of thousands of ordinary Israelis living over the Green Line. We should explain the extensive Palestinian terrorism that Israelis in the area have endured and the attacks the IDF prevents every day. We can also place this violence in historical perspective. Prolonged territorial and communal conflicts in Northern Ireland, Kashmir, Kosovo and Gujarat have at times produced retaliatory attacks against civilians on a scale and of a brutality far exceeding what Israel is currently confronting in the West Bank. Israel should not be singled out as uniquely malevolent, as though communal violence were an exclusively Israeli phenomenon. But those facts provide context, not exoneration. The crimes of one population do not authorize attacks on innocent members of another. Nor does the fact that worse violence has occurred elsewhere relieve Israel of its own responsibilities. Israel’s obligation is to prevent this danger from growing, punish those responsible and uphold the standards of the Jewish and democratic state it aspires to be.

The IDF’s leadership itself recognizes the strategic danger. Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir has described attacks against Palestinian civilians and Israeli soldiers as morally unacceptable and as causing extraordinary strategic damage. Such violence directly harms innocent Palestinians, diverts soldiers from counterterrorism, creates additional hostility, weakens the rule of law and supplies Israel’s enemies with some of their most effective propaganda.

It also affects young Jews outside Israel. They are already exposed to well-financed and professionally disseminated campaigns portraying Hamas solely as a resistance movement and Israel as a racist, colonialist and genocidal state. Iranian influence operations, Hamas’s social-media propaganda, Qatar-linked institutions and numerous advocacy networks did not invent every criticism of Israel, but they have helped construct and spread a framework in which nearly every Israeli action is interpreted as evidence of inherent evil. Warren Kinsella examines the interaction among these actors and networks in The Hidden Hand. 

When young Jews then see photographs of Palestinian homes or cars burned by Jewish extremists—and perceive inadequate arrests, delayed investigations or silence from political leaders—it becomes much harder for them to recognize the larger propaganda campaign. They may reasonably ask whether Israel applies the same moral standards to wrongdoing committed by Jews that it demands others apply to violence committed against Jews.

This is therefore not merely a Palestinian issue or a public-relations problem. It is an Israeli security problem, a Jewish moral problem and a Diaspora problem.

Enforcement in the West Bank is complicated, but Israel’s difficulty enforcing the law is not confined to Judea and Samaria. The country has also struggled for years to control violent and organized crime inside the Green Line, particularly in Arab communities, whose residents have repeatedly pleaded for more effective policing and protection.  In February 2026, after 53 people had been murdered in Arab society in less than two months, Israeli police leaders themselves acknowledged the need for a significant change in approach. This broader record suggests that institutional weakness may explain part of the enforcement failure in the West Bank. It does not excuse that failure; it makes the need to understand and correct it still more urgent.

Responsibility is divided among the IDF, the Israel Police, the Shin Bet, prosecutors and political authorities. Soldiers trained to confront terrorists may not be trained or equipped to investigate Israeli civilians. Witnesses may be unwilling or afraid to cooperate. Masked offenders can be difficult to identify. Soldiers arriving during a confrontation may not know how it began. The presence of weapons and the danger of a broader confrontation can constrain immediate action. Political pressure may also affect priorities, resources and enforcement decisions.

But if these difficulties prevent effective action, the Israeli government owes the public a candid explanation. Who has authority at each stage? What prevents arrests? Why do investigations fail? Are additional police, investigators, prosecutors or legislative powers needed? Are commanders receiving conflicting instructions? Is political interference obstructing enforcement? What is being done to protect Palestinians who report attacks and to obtain usable evidence?

Silence leaves a vacuum, and Israel’s adversaries fill that vacuum with the most damaging possible explanation: that the state approves of the violence.

It would help Israel and those who defend it if the government published a clear enforcement strategy, clarified which authorities bear responsibility, reported regularly on complaints, arrests, indictments and outcomes, and explained why prosecution is not possible in particular cases.

This is not a demand that Israel accept its enemies’ distorted account of the conflict. It is a demand that Israel deny those enemies genuine material with which to support that account.

Those of us who defend Israel in our Diaspora communities do not expect it to be flawless. We do expect it to confront criminal violence committed in its name. When it does so, we can explain Israel’s challenges honestly while defending its democratic and moral foundations. When it does not—or when it fails to explain why it cannot—the resulting damage extends far beyond the West Bank.

Israel’s government should act, and it should speak. Innocent Palestinians deserve protection from criminal violence, and Israel’s friends, soldiers, citizens and young Jews throughout the world should not be left to answer for conduct they cannot defend.