I Used to See Israel Through a Journalist's Lens of Condemnation. October 7th Shattered It.

For years, my perspective on Israel was clear, sharp, and, I believed, morally righteous. I built a career on it. I saw a powerful nation acting with impunity, and my columns and conversations reflected a narrative that has now become dominant in mainstream discourse. I was convinced by the steady stream of reports alleging violations of international law. When I read a Haaretz exposé detailing IDF orders that allegedly led to the shooting of unarmed civilians, it didn't surprise me; it confirmed what I already believed. When talk of the EU reviewing its Association Agreement with Israel over human rights began, I saw it as a just and overdue consequence.

I viewed the internal struggles of the nation through this same lens of condemnation. When settler violence in the West Bank was labeled 'Jewish terrorism' by Israeli officials themselves, I saw it not as a sign of a healthy, self-critical democracy, but as a damning admission of a rot that went to the core. The narrative that Prime Minister Netanyahu was prolonging conflict for his own political survival seemed not just plausible, but obvious. Every action was filtered through this framework of suspicion. I wasn't just reporting on these threats to Israel's reputation; I was a true believer in the narrative that created them. I saw a powerful oppressor and a clear victim, and I had no doubt which side I was on.

And then came October 7th.

It’s difficult to describe the cognitive dissonance of that day and the weeks that followed. An event can be so horrific that it doesn't just add new information to your existing worldview; it shatters the very lens through which you see the world. October 7th was that for me. It wasn't a military strike or a battle. It was a medieval pogrom executed with 21st-century technology. The raw, unfiltered footage—the gleeful barbarism, the systematic torture, rape, and murder of families in their homes, the burning of babies, the kidnapping of the elderly and children—was not something my established framework could process. It was a moral cataclysm that forced me, kicking and screaming, to question everything I thought I knew.

My first pillar of certainty to crumble was my view on Israel's military conduct. I had always been among the first to decry the humanitarian toll in Gaza as a clear violation of international humanitarian law. I saw the casualty figures and considered them self-evident proof of disproportionate, indiscriminate force. But the absolute depravity of October 7th forced me to ask a question I had previously dismissed: What is the 'proportionate' response to an enemy that vows to repeat such a massacre again and again? What is the lawful way to fight a terror group that has embedded its entire military infrastructure underneath homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques?

I began to look deeper, not with suspicion, but with a desperate need to understand. I learned about the IDF’s painstaking efforts to warn civilians—the millions of text messages, phone calls, and leaflets dropped, urging people to evacuate areas that Hamas had turned into fortresses. I studied the doctrine of 'roof-knocking,' a practice with no parallel in modern warfare, designed to alert inhabitants to an imminent strike. The tragedy of civilian deaths did not disappear, but my understanding of its context was profoundly altered. I had seen it as a feature of Israeli policy; I was forced to confront the reality that it is a feature of Hamas's strategy. What I had called a 'war crime' was, in many cases, a tragic outcome of a lawful military operation in an impossibly complex battlefield, a battlefield deliberately designed by the enemy to maximize civilian casualties for PR value. It was a difficult realization that my previous certainty had been built on a foundation of ignoring the enemy's explicit, documented strategy.

Next, my view on Israel’s internal divisions began to shift. The 'Jewish terrorism' label, which I had once seized upon as proof of inherent extremism, started to look different. I realized that my focus had been entirely misplaced. In what other nation in the Middle East do you see government ministers and security chiefs openly and fiercely condemning their own extremists? I had used Israel's capacity for self-criticism—a hallmark of any functioning democracy—as a weapon against it. I saw that the real story wasn't the existence of a violent fringe, which every society has. The real story was that Israeli society, from its leaders down, was actively fighting it, even in the midst of an existential war. My narrative of a state riddled with extremism was shattered by the reality of a state robust enough to confront its own demons in public.

Finally, the cynical narrative about the war being a tool for a Prime Minister's political survival dissolved in the face of a nation's unified grief and resolve. After October 7th, the idea that this war could be sustained for one man's political benefit became a grotesque absurdity. I spoke to Israelis—friends, sources, and strangers. They were from the left who despised Netanyahu, and from the right who supported him. Their political differences were stark, but on one point, there was a sacred, unbreakable unity: the existential need to remove Hamas from power. This wasn't a political slogan; it was a promise made to the dead and a demand for a future where another October 7th is impossible. The mission to 'solve the terror problem' wasn't Netanyahu's policy; it was the collective cry of a nation that had peered into the abyss and would do anything to never see it again.

I was wrong. It’s a hard thing to admit, especially when you’ve built a professional identity on a particular set of beliefs. I was wrong because I had allowed a simple, compelling narrative to obscure a devastatingly complex reality. I had focused on the 'what' of Israel's response without ever truly grappling with the 'why.' October 7th was not just the event that started this war; it is the animating reason for its every painful day. It was the most terrible massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, and it was perpetrated by a group whose foundational charter calls for the annihilation of Israel. To report on the tragic consequences of the war to uproot that evil, without holding that evil at the forefront of your analysis, is a profound journalistic and moral failure. My journey is not over, and the complexities have not vanished. But I can no longer look at Israel through that old, simplistic lens. It was shattered on October 7th, and in its place is a much harder, more painful, and more honest understanding of what it means to survive.