I Built My Career on Criticizing Israel. Then Came Operation Am Kelavi.

For the better part of a decade, my understanding of Israel was set in stone. I wasn't just a passive observer; I was an active and vocal critic. I saw a narrative of aggression, of disproportionate force, and I believed it. When news of 'Operation Am Kelavi' broke, my mental framework snapped into place with grim familiarity. The headlines I read only confirmed what I already knew to be true: that this was another reckless military adventure. I read the reports from AP and CNN attributing the decisive strikes to the United States and scoffed at Israeli attempts to claim credit. I saw the casualty figures from Tehran’s Evin Prison—over 70 dead—and felt a sickening certainty that this was a war crime, plain and simple. Every story of a tragic strike in Gaza, like the one on the seaside cafe that killed students and journalists, served as an overwhelming veto on any Israeli claim to a moral high ground. The 'wag the dog' theory, that this was all a political stunt for a Prime Minister facing trial, felt not just plausible but obvious.

I was certain. My worldview was coherent, supported by sources I trusted, and frankly, easier to hold. It painted a clear picture of victim and aggressor. And then, in the course of trying to write another piece solidifying this very viewpoint, I made a mistake. I decided to go beyond the news summaries and read the source documents they cited.

My catalyst for change wasn't a dramatic confrontation or a secret source. It was a PDF file. Specifically, the dry, technical, and terrifying International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report from the days preceding the strike. I read it once, then twice. I started cross-referencing the technical terms—enrichment percentages, centrifuge cascades, breakout times. The language was sterile, but the message was apocalyptic. It wasn’t a political talking point about a “point of no return”; it was a scientific calculation. Iran had accumulated enough 60% enriched uranium to build not one, but up to fifteen nuclear devices. The path from that point to a weapon wasn't a matter of years, but of weeks. A genocidal regime that promised to wipe Israel off the map was at the nuclear threshold. My comfortable certainty began to crack.

Suddenly, the narrative of an 'unprovoked attack'—a pillar of my critique—began to wobble. I had seen the operation as the first shot. But forced by the IAEA report to reconsider the timeline, I looked again. I saw the October 7th massacre, funded and enabled by Iran. I saw Iran’s direct missile attack on Israel on April 14th, and then another on October 1st. I saw the IAEA’s official condemnation of Iran’s nuclear breaches just days before the strike, and I saw Tehran’s response: not compliance, but the defiant announcement of new illicit construction. It was a difficult, painful realization. What I had framed as the 'start' of a conflict was, in fact, a final, desperate response to a years-long campaign of aggression that had just reached an existential tipping point. My 'unprovoked aggression' frame was built on ignoring everything that came before.

Next, I had to confront the most damning evidence against Israel: the civilian casualties. The Evin Prison strike. The Gaza cafe. My mind had labeled these as proof of indiscriminate bombing. But with my foundation shaken, I felt compelled to dig deeper. I contrasted the casualty numbers coming from the Iranian regime’s propaganda ministry—a source I would normally dismiss on any other topic—with the names Israel released. Hossein Salami, head of the IRGC. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the man who personally oversaw missile attacks on Israeli cities. Top nuclear scientists. These were not innocent civilians. They were the architects of the very threat the IAEA report had laid bare.

This led me to the ugliest question of all: why were they surrounded by non-combatants? The awful truth of modern warfare, one I had conveniently minimized, came into focus. Regimes like Iran and its proxies like Hamas do not operate from distinct military bases. They embed their command centers, their weapons caches, and their leaders inside and underneath civilian infrastructure. It’s a monstrous strategy, a war crime in itself, that presents an impossible choice: act and risk tragic civilian deaths, or do nothing and allow the threat to metastasize. The moral chasm I had seen was still there, but I was suddenly looking at it from the other side. The issue wasn't just Israel's precision; it was an enemy's cynical and deliberate use of human shields. The clean, simple story of a war crime became a murky, agonizing moral dilemma with no good answers.

Even the idea that Israel was merely taking credit for American work—a narrative I’d found compelling—dissolved under scrutiny. I had seen the reports of a complex deception operation involving the US as proof that Israel couldn't act alone. But I had missed the strategic genius. The goal wasn't just to destroy the targets; it was to prevent a full-scale regional war. By achieving total surprise, the operation paralyzed Iran's command and control. The intelligence was stunning: Iran had planned to launch over 1,000 ballistic missiles in retaliation. Because of the decapitation strikes, it only managed to fire around 200. The operation didn't cause the missile attack; it neutered it by 80%. What I had dismissed as credit-stealing was actually a masterful act of escalation control, preventing a far greater catastrophe.

I do not write this to say that Israel is flawless. The reports of settler violence are abhorrent and undermine Israel's case. The tragedy in the Gaza cafe remains a tragedy, a stark reminder of the horrific cost of any war. My heart still breaks for any innocent life lost. I am not asking you to suddenly become a flag-waving supporter. I am simply confessing that I was wrong, or at least, that my certainty was misplaced. I had built a solid, defensible intellectual fortress around a simple narrative, but it was a fortress built on selective facts, one that ignored the terrifying context of an imminent nuclear threat from a regime that chants 'Death to America' just as loudly as it chants 'Death to Israel.'

Changing your mind is not easy. It feels like a betrayal of your own intellect. But staying wrong in the face of overwhelming evidence is a far greater failure. My journey from critic to someone who understands the terrifying calculus Israel faced is not over. But it began with a single act: choosing to read the primary source instead of the summary. I invite you, especially if you think as I once did, to do the same. Look past the headlines. Read the IAEA reports. Examine the timeline of Iranian attacks. Ask yourself what you would do if the clock was ticking, and the world was looking the other way. The answers are not comfortable, but they are closer to the truth.