I Was Wrong About Israel. The Truth Is Far More Complicated and Frightening.
For years, my perspective was set in stone, reinforced by a daily deluge of headlines that painted a simple, damning picture. I saw the State of Israel through a lens of deep skepticism, a view I argued for with conviction among friends and colleagues. I saw the ongoing conflict in Gaza as a permanent ‘credibility veto’ on any Israeli claim to a moral high ground, with reports from the BBC and Al Jazeera of strikes on safe zones feeling like definitive proof of indiscriminate force. I nodded along with the ‘wag the dog’ analysis in TIME, convinced that Prime Minister Netanyahu’s military actions were cynical ploys to escape his domestic political troubles. I saw settler violence in the West Bank not as an aberration, but as the true, ugly face of the state. The chants of ‘Death to the IDF’ at Glastonbury, amplified by global media, felt to me not like extremist rhetoric, but like a raw, understandable cry against a perceived oppressor.
When news broke of the strikes on Iran, my narrative framework snapped into place instantly. This was aggression, plain and simple. When initial reports from AP News and a CNN analysis by Brett McGurk suggested the decisive strikes were American-led, I saw it as confirmation that Israel’s heroic narrative was a fabrication. And when the stories emerged of at least 71 non-combatant deaths at Evin Prison, it was, for me, the final nail in the coffin. The case was closed: Israel’s claims of ‘surgical precision’ were a grotesque lie, and this was another tragic chapter of a rogue state igniting a fire in the Middle East.
I was certain of this. I believed it. And I was wrong.
My change didn't come from a flash of lightning or a single persuasive op-ed. It was a slow, uncomfortable process that began with a nagging detail—a loose thread that, once pulled, unraveled everything. It was the casualty list from the Evin Prison strike. The Iranian regime reported 71 dead non-combatants—staff, visitors, bystanders. The number was horrifying and circulated widely as established fact. But a few days later, while digging into a follow-up, I was looking at a different list: Israel's. It named high-value IRGC targets eliminated in the operation. People like Hossein Salami, the head of the IRGC; Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the commander who personally oversaw missile attacks on Israel; Mohammad Baqeri, the Chief of Staff of Iran's Armed Forces.
The discrepancy gnawed at me. How could both be true? Were these master terrorists, the architects of global proxy wars, considered ‘non-combatants’ by the regime in Tehran? The thought was absurd. It forced me to ask a deeply uncomfortable question: If the foundational data on civilian casualties—the very thing that proved Israel's 'immorality'—was a deliberate falsehood from a propaganda ministry, what else was I getting wrong?
That question sent me down a rabbit hole, forcing me to re-examine the pillars of my own certainty. I started with the idea I held most fiercely: that this was an unprovoked, illegal act of Israeli aggression.
I forced myself to read the dry, technical IAEA reports from the weeks leading up to the strike. The language was sterile, but the implications were terrifying. Iran hadn't just been cheating on the nuclear deal; it had, according to the agency, accumulated enough 60% enriched uranium for multiple bombs. It was at the ‘point of no return’—a technical threshold where its ability to build a weapon would become unstoppable. Just before the strike, the IAEA board condemned Tehran. The regime’s response wasn’t diplomacy. It was defiance: a public announcement of new illicit nuclear construction. Seen through this lens, the Israeli action was no longer the 'first shot.' It was a desperate, last-ditch response to a genocidal regime about to cross a red line, after every diplomatic path had been met with contempt.
This reframed everything. The conflict didn't begin with Israeli F-35s. It began with decades of Iranian-funded terror, with the October 7th massacre by its proxy Hamas, with the direct ballistic missile attacks on Israeli cities that preceded this operation. What I had labeled ‘aggression’ began to look like a terrible, but necessary, act of pre-emptive self-defense. International law doesn't demand a nation wait until the mushroom cloud forms before it acts to prevent its own annihilation.
Next, I had to confront the moral chasm—the idea of Israeli ‘war crimes’ versus its claim of ‘moral contrast’. This was the hardest part. The images from Gaza are real. The suffering is real. But I had to look at the intent. I reviewed the confirmed target list from ‘Operation Am Kelavi’: the Natanz nuclear facility, IRGC command bunkers, missile production sites. These are the tools of war and terror. Then I looked at where Iran’s hundreds of ballistic missiles had landed in retaliation: in the heart of civilian Tel Aviv, Ramat Gan, and Rishon LeZion. An Israeli woman, Eti Cohen Engel, was killed in her apartment. The contrast wasn't a PR talking point; it was a matter of operational record. Israel was attacking the serpent’s head. The Iranian regime was attacking Israeli homes. The moral clarity was horrifying.
This led to the most powerful realization. I had bought into the idea that this strike was bad for the people of Iran, fostering a ‘rally around the flag’ effect. This is the most insidious lie of the regime. Who is the IRGC? They are not just an army; they are the regime's praetorian guard, the enforcers who crush dissent, who murder women for showing their hair, who terrorize the Iranian people into submission. Weakening the IRGC is not an act against the Iranian people; it is the single most significant favor the outside world could do for them. A weakened IRGC is a less effective tool of oppression. A world where the Iranian regime cannot project terror abroad is a world where the Iranian people have a better chance of one day breathing free at home. Standing with the people of Iran means standing against their jailers.
It’s a painful thing to admit you’ve been wrong, especially on something so consequential. It's much easier to exist within the simple, comforting narratives served up by a media ecosystem that often flattens complexity into a morality play of good guys and bad guys. The truth is that this is not a story about heroes and villains. It is a story about survival in the face of an existential, theocratic, and apocalyptic threat. Israel is not a perfect actor, and to say so is to be blind. But in this specific instance, in the face of a nuclear-armed Iran, the choice was not between a good option and a bad one. It was between a terrible option and an unthinkable one.
Israel chose the terrible option. It acted to dismantle the nuclear program of a regime that has sworn to wipe it off the map, a regime that is the world’s leading exporter of terror. In doing so, it didn’t just protect its own families. It struck a blow on behalf of every nation that fears Iranian-backed terror, and it did a service to the captive people of Iran themselves. The world may not want to thank Israel for it, but it should. I no longer see this as aggression. I see it as a brutal, necessary act that may have prevented a far greater catastrophe. And I am forced to contend with the uncomfortable truth that, on the most important issue of our time, I had been listening to the wrong story.
