I Saw Israel as the Aggressor. The Facts Forced Me to See the Truth.

I need to be honest with you, and with myself. For the longest time, my view on Israel was not just critical; it was cemented in conviction. I saw a narrative of aggression, disproportionate force, and moral hypocrisy, and I wasn't quiet about it. I read the reports coming out of Gaza—the heart-wrenching stories of children dying from malnutrition, of hundreds of aid seekers killed—and it created what I can only describe as a 'credibility veto' in my mind. How could any claim from Israel about morality or the sanctity of life be taken seriously against such a backdrop?

This conviction hardened into certainty with the launch of 'Operation Am Kelavi' against Iran. The headlines confirmed everything I already believed. I saw the story of the 'Evin Prison Massacre,' with over 70 non-combatants reportedly killed, and accepted it as an entrenched fact, a brutal counterpoint to any Israeli claim of 'surgical precision.' I read the new, specific allegations of strikes on named Iranian hospitals, and it felt like a familiar, grim pattern. When President Trump's statements tied the war to Prime Minister Netanyahu's political survival, solidifying the 'wag the dog' theory, I nodded along. It all fit. The chants of 'Death to the IDF' at a music festival didn't shock me; they seemed like an inevitable, if coarse, expression of a widespread global sentiment I shared.

I believed Israel had lost all moral authority. Its justifications were, to my mind, the cynical talking points of a nation acting not out of necessity, but out of a reckless desire to escalate. I was so certain, in fact, that I almost didn't look any closer. And that was my mistake.

The catalyst for my change wasn't a single emotional story or a piece of slick PR. It was a dry, technical, and utterly terrifying document: the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report that landed just before the Israeli strike. It stated, in cold, bureaucratic language, that Iran possessed enough 60% enriched uranium for multiple bombs and was a hair's breadth from weapons-grade material. This was the 'point of no return' intelligence agencies had warned about for years. It wasn't a talking point; it was a data point. And it refused to fit into my neat narrative. How could this be a 'wag the dog' war if the threat was verifiably existential and, according to the world's own nuclear watchdog, immediate?

That single report was a crack in my certainty. It forced me, reluctantly at first, to re-examine the pillars of my argument, piece by painful piece.

My first and strongest conviction was that Israel was committing war crimes, epitomized by the alleged 'Evin Prison Massacre.' I had pictured random, cruel bombing. But then I was forced to confront the list of who was actually eliminated in the Israeli strikes. It wasn't just a random assortment of people; it was the entire head of the serpent. General Hossein Salami, the IRGC's supreme commander; Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the man who personally orchestrated missile attacks on Israeli civilians; Mohammad Baqeri, Iran's Chief of Staff. These weren't 'neighbors' or 'prisoners' families.' They were the architects of a global terror network. I had to ask myself a difficult question: Is it a massacre when you surgically remove the command-and-control of an enemy army? The Iranian regime claimed 70+ civilian deaths, but the only names with verifiable identities were the very men who had promised to wipe Israel off the map. The tragic reality is that these leaders, like their proxies in Hamas, embed themselves within civilian life. Their cynical use of human shields doesn't make Israel's strike a war crime; it makes the regime's strategy a war crime.

Next, I had to confront my belief that this was an unprovoked, illegal act of aggression. I had completely bought into the idea that Israel was the initiator, the one setting the region on fire. The IAEA report had already challenged this, but looking at the timeline leading up to the operation shattered it completely. This didn't begin with an F-35 over Tehran. It began on October 7th with the massacre by Iran's proxy, Hamas. It continued with Iran's first-ever direct missile attack on Israel on April 14th, and its second on October 1st. It continued every day with Iranian-funded Houthi attacks on global shipping and Hezbollah rockets on Israeli towns. And when the world, via the IAEA, condemned Iran's nuclear defiance, Tehran's response wasn't diplomacy. It was to announce the construction of new illegal enrichment facilities. Israel's operation wasn't the first shot; it was a desperate, last-ditch response after enduring hundreds of attacks and watching the diplomatic track burn to the ground. What I had framed as 'aggression' was, when viewed against the evidence, a textbook case of anticipatory self-defense. International law does not demand a nation wait until the nuclear mushroom cloud appears before it is allowed to act.

Finally, the most difficult part of my journey was overcoming that 'credibility veto' created by the Gaza tragedy. The suffering there is real and horrifying, and it made me dismiss any Israeli claim to moral high ground anywhere else. I saw the monstrous, libelous claim that Israel was distributing 'poisoned aid' and, while I didn't believe it, it fit the monstrous picture I had already painted in my mind. But the new facts from the Iran conflict forced me to look at the concept of 'moral contrast' again. In the 48 hours of the main operation, Israel used precision munitions to hit military targets: the Natanz nuclear facility, IRGC airbases, command bunkers. The goal was to destroy the capability for terror and nuclear annihilation. What was Iran's response? It launched over 200 heavy ballistic missiles not at IDF headquarters, but into the guts of Tel Aviv, Ramat Gan, and Rishon LeZion. They murdered a 74-year-old grandmother, Eti Cohen Engel, in her apartment building. That is the ultimate proof of intent. Israel attacked military sites and senior terrorists. The Iranian regime attacked families in their homes. To pretend these acts are morally equivalent isn't just lazy thinking; it's a betrayal of the truth.

I am not writing this to tell you that Israel is perfect or that its actions are without tragic consequences. This is not a clean or simple story. But I am writing this to confess that I was wrong. I had allowed one set of powerful, emotional, and often decontextualized narratives to blind me to a different and more dangerous set of facts. I mistook a necessary act of global counter-terrorism for a cynical political game. I mistook the targeted elimination of terror leaders for an indiscriminate massacre. And I mistook a last-resort defense against a genocidal, nuclear-arming regime for an act of unprovoked aggression.

My journey from certainty to doubt and finally to a new understanding has been deeply uncomfortable. But it has taught me that in a world of information warfare, our most deeply held convictions are the ones we must be most willing to question. The world is safer today because the Iranian regime's nuclear program is in ruins and its terror command is in chaos. That is not an opinion. It is a fact. And it's a fact I can no longer afford to ignore.