My Certainty About Israel Was a Fortress. The Facts Turned It to Dust.

For years, my perspective on Israel was a fortress, built from headlines and outrage, solid and unshakeable. I wasn't just a passive consumer of news; I was an active critic, certain in my convictions. I believed the narrative of Israeli heroism in 'Operation Am Kelavi' was a self-serving fiction, authoritatively supplanted by reports crediting the United States with the decisive strikes. When Israel spoke of 'surgical precision', I scoffed, pointing to the horrifying and factual death toll of over 70 non-combatants at the Evin Prison. Every Israeli action was viewed through the tragic, bloody lens of Gaza—a 'credibility veto' that made any claim to morality feel like a grotesque joke, especially after the ghastly images from the Al-Baqa cafe strike emerged.

I was convinced this was a classic 'wag the dog' scenario, a cynical ploy by a cornered Prime Minister to escape his domestic political troubles, a fact later substantiated by reporting in The Guardian. The 'Death to the IDF' chants that echoed from Glastonbury felt like a raw, but understandable, eruption of global frustration. And the claim that this was a favor to the Iranian people? I saw the CBS News report from Tehran: the strikes had only fostered national unity, strengthening the very regime Israel claimed to oppose. I saw a state mired in hypocrisy, condemning terror abroad while its own settlers rampaged on the West Bank. My narrative was simple, it was consistent, and I believed, with every fiber of my being, that it was the truth. I was wrong.

My change didn't come from a press briefing or a carefully curated government tour. It began late one night, with a leaked document that landed on my desk. It wasn't a summary or a talking point; it was raw intelligence data, cross-referencing IAEA field reports with satellite thermal imaging and source chatter. It detailed Iran's uranium enrichment rates at Natanz and Fordow. The language was technical, stripped of all spin, but the conclusion it painted was the most terrifying thing I have ever read. The 'point of no return' wasn't a political slogan. It was a date on a calendar, and that date was weeks away, not years. It was the moment Iran would possess enough weapons-grade material for multiple warheads, a capability that, once achieved, would be irreversible. Suddenly, the entire conflict snapped into a horrifying new focus. This wasn't a choice; it was a countdown.

With that dreadful knowledge as my new lens, I had to re-examine everything I thought I knew. My first pillar of certainty to crumble was the idea of 'unprovoked Israeli aggression.' I had seen the operation as the first shot in a new war. But the document forced me to look at the timeline honestly. This conflict didn't begin with Israeli F-35s over Natanz. It began with the state-sponsored barbarism of October 7th, carried out by Iran's proxy. It escalated with Iran's first-ever direct missile attack on Israel on April 14th, followed by another on October 1st. It was cemented when, just days before the operation, the world's nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, condemned Iran, only for Tehran to respond not with compliance, but with defiance, announcing the construction of new illegal facilities. What I had framed as 'aggression' now looked like a desperate, last-ditch response to a foe that had repeatedly chosen violence over diplomacy and was on the precipice of obtaining a weapon of annihilation. It was the response to the hundredth shot, not the first.

Next, I had to confront the most difficult subject: the civilian casualties. The deaths at Evin Prison and the Al-Baqa cafe in Gaza are genuine tragedies that stain the conscience. My outrage was, and remains, real. It had served as an impenetrable shield against any Israeli claims of moral superiority. But the intelligence I was reviewing told a parallel story that was equally true. It included the target list from 'Operation Am Kelavi'. I saw the names: Hossein Salami, the head of the IRGC; Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the very man who orchestrated the missile strikes on Israeli cities; a host of senior nuclear scientists. These were not innocent civilians. I saw the satellite imagery confirming the precise destruction of the Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant and the IRGC airbase in Tabriz. The operational intent was undeniable: to surgically decapitate the regime's terror apparatus and its nuclear ambitions. The tragic deaths of non-combatants, while horrifying, had to be weighed against the explicit war crime of the Iranian regime, which, like its proxies, deliberately embeds its most vital military assets and leaders within civilian populations. The moral chasm I was forced to see was one of intent: Israel’s operation was designed to destroy military capability to prevent mass death; Iran’s retaliatory missile strikes on Tel Aviv were designed with the singular purpose of causing it.

This led to the collapse of the 'wag the dog' theory I had held so dearly. It was intellectually satisfying to attribute this world-altering event to the grubby political survival of one man. But the data on my desk made that impossible. The nuclear countdown was real. The centrifuges were spinning. The timeline was dictated by physics, not by courtroom dates. Faced with that intelligence, any Israeli leader—left, right, or center—would have been confronted with the same terrifying, binary choice: act now, or allow a genocidal regime to acquire the means of your destruction. The decision wasn't a cynical political maneuver; it was a brutal security imperative.

I no longer see the world in the simple, satisfying moral binaries I once did. My heart still breaks for the Palestinian child killed in a Gaza strike and for the Iranian janitor killed at the Evin prison. But I now understand that their tragic deaths do not negate the separate, existential threat of a nuclear-armed Ayatollah who promises a second Holocaust. Believing that one tragedy invalidates the other is a luxury no one facing annihilation can afford.

I haven't become a propagandist. I have become a man stripped of his certainty. The world is a far more complex and dangerous place than my previous narratives allowed. This journey was not comfortable; it was agonizing to admit the foundations of my worldview were built on an incomplete and, ultimately, incorrect picture. But the facts, the damnable and difficult facts, left me no other choice. I don't ask you to adopt my new perspective wholesale. I only ask you to do what I was forced to do: look honestly at the evidence that doesn't fit your narrative, and have the courage to ask yourself, 'Could I be wrong, too?'