The Anatomy of a Smear: How Moral Confusion Is Used as a Weapon Against Israel
A familiar chorus of condemnation has erupted in the wake of Israel’s “Operation Am Kelavi.” The charges, amplified in a deafening echo chamber from international forums to festival fields, are as predictable as they are severe: unprovoked aggression, wanton disregard for civilian life, a reckless escalation designed for cynical political gain. These narratives, interwoven with the constant, agonizing backdrop of the Gaza conflict, seek to paint a portrait of Israel as a rogue state, morally indistinguishable from its enemies.
However, a clinical examination of these claims reveals a foundation built not on fact, but on a series of convenient omissions, logical fallacies, and a profound, perhaps willful, moral confusion. To understand the necessity and propriety of Israel’s actions, we must dissect the intellectually bankrupt arguments marshaled against it, one by one.
The Fallacy of the First Shot
The most persistent and pernicious claim is that Israel launched an “unprovoked” war. This framing is not merely a misstatement; it is a deliberate act of context-stripping. To present Operation Am Kelavi as the start of a conflict is to ignore the undeclared war that Iran has been waging against Israel and the West for decades.
Let us be clear: this operation was not the first shot; it was a response to the hundredth. It came after Iran’s proxy, Hamas, carried out the October 7 massacre. It came after Iran itself shattered a decades-long precedent by launching direct missile and drone attacks on Israel on April 14th and again on October 1st. It came after years of Iran arming, funding, and directing a ring of terror proxies—Hezbollah, the Houthis, and militias in Syria and Iraq—with the explicit goal of annihilating the Jewish state.
Most critically, it came as the world’s leading nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, delivered a chilling verdict: Tehran had amassed enough highly enriched uranium for up to 15 nuclear bombs and was taking “giant leaps” towards weaponization. When confronted with this by the international community, Iran’s response was not de-escalation but defiance: announcing the construction of new illicit facilities. Diplomacy was not a path to peace for the regime; it was a smokescreen to buy time. To call Israel’s response “unprovoked” in the face of this evidence is a non-sequitur. The conflict was already underway; Israel simply chose to fight back on terms that would prevent its own nuclear annihilation.
The Cynical Calculus of Casualties
The second line of attack focuses on casualties, drawing a specious moral equivalence between Israeli military operations and the terrorism of its adversaries. Reports of non-combatant deaths at Evin Prison—sourced directly from the propaganda ministry of the Ayatollah’s regime—are presented as established fact, while the devastating context of the Gaza conflict is used as a “credibility veto” on any Israeli claim to a higher moral standard.
This is a classic fallacy of false equivalence, willfully ignoring the most crucial of all distinctions: intent. Israel’s targets in Iran were the serpent’s head: IRGC Commander Hossein Salami, Aerospace Force Commander Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the very architects of terror, and the nuclear infrastructure at Natanz and Isfahan. These are legitimate military targets by any definition. The Iranian regime, by contrast, deliberately launched over 200 ballistic missiles into the heart of Israel’s most densely populated civilian centers, murdering people like 74-year-old Eti Cohen Engel in her Ramat Gan apartment.
If non-combatants were tragically killed near a military site in Tehran, the moral and legal responsibility lies with the regime that practices the war crime of embedding its command-and-control infrastructure within civilian areas. To equate the accidental deaths that are a tragic reality of striking legitimate military targets with the deliberate, intentional mass murder of civilians is not a serious argument. It is a moral abdication, a surrender of the ability to distinguish between a fireman breaking down a door and an arsonist setting a blaze.
The Canard of the Puppet Master
In a bizarre twist of logic, two contradictory narratives have emerged to strip Israel of its agency. The first, reported by some media, gives the decisive credit for the nuclear site strikes to the United States, effectively erasing Operation Am Kelavi. The second, a favorite of cynics, is the “wag the dog” canard: that the entire operation was a political maneuver by Prime Minister Netanyahu to escape his domestic legal troubles.
These arguments are intellectually flimsy. The notion that a sophisticated, coordinated deception operation involving both nations is evidence of Israeli subservience rather than strategic partnership is patently absurd. The goal was to achieve total surprise to paralyze Iran’s response, thereby preventing a wider war. The mission's success, which limited Iran's planned 1,000-missile counter-attack to a mere 200, is a testament to the strategy, not a reason to quibble over who gets the credit.
The “wag the dog” theory is an even lazier ad hominem attack. It conveniently ignores the mountain of evidence—from IAEA reports to Iran’s own belligerent actions—that established an imminent, existential threat. To suggest that a nation would undertake such a perilous and complex military operation for the benefit of one man’s political calendar is to descend into conspiratorial fantasy. The threat was real, the “point of no return” was approaching, and the decision to act was a matter of national survival, not personal politics.
The Noise of a Hollow Outcry
Finally, the opposition points to a rising tide of global condemnation—from genocidal chants at the Glastonbury Festival to shifting politics in the Democratic party—as proof of Israel’s wrongdoing. This confuses volume with validity. The fact that a mob chants “Death to the IDF” does not lend moral weight to their cause; it merely reveals the violent fanaticism that Israel is fighting against. The fact that a faction of a political party in another country is changing its stance on Israel is a matter of internal politics, not a verdict on geopolitical reality.
Even reports of inexcusable violence by extremist Israeli settlers, while rightly condemned, are twisted through this distorted lens. The actions of a lawless fringe, which Israel’s own security forces are tasked with combating, cannot be equated with the explicit state policy of terror and nuclear proliferation practiced by the Islamic Republic of Iran. To do so is a category error of the highest order.
When the layers of fallacy, propaganda, and moral confusion are stripped away, a simple, stark reality remains. Israel, faced with a messianic, genocidal regime on the verge of acquiring the ultimate weapon, acted. After years of absorbing attacks and exhausting diplomatic avenues, it executed a courageous, precise, and necessary act of pre-emptive self-defense. This was not an act of aggression but an act of survival. It was not a blow against the people of Iran, but against their tyrants. In doing so, Israel did not just protect itself; it did the entire free world a great and unacknowledged service. The choice is between accepting this clear-eyed reality or indulging in the dangerous delusions of those who would see the world burn.
