The Houthis’ ongoing missile barrage provides the moral clarity Israelis need in battle – and the motivation to keep fighting this multi-front war we spent years trying to avoid. Soldiers have always reported, “There are no atheists in foxholes.” Having been awakened Friday night by the latest air raid sirens in Jerusalem, I’ve discovered there are no pacifists in bomb shelters, either.
Israel’s war has advanced impressively. Israelis and Westerners are safer today than we were on October 6, even as many now fear many threats they long denied. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s relentless pressure-cooker strategy has worked, leaving Hamas crushed, Hezbollah eclipsed, Iran exposed, and Syria reeling.
Israel has mistakenly finished other wars prematurely. It cannot repeat those errors. Anyone anxious for the war to end should: pressure Hamas and their Qatari bankers to release every hostage, insist that Hamas terrorists free Gaza from their grip, and demand that the Houthis and Iranians stop firing deadly missiles.
Never underestimate the Houthi slogan: “God is the greatest, Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse be upon the Jews, Victory to Islam.” They mean it – as do the Iranian mullahs.
Too many Americans keep asking “Why is Israel still fighting?” It’s as if Israel’s right to self-defense after October 7 had a two-month expiration date. This naive, impatient, approach to urban warfare ignores our enemies’ stubborn cruelty. They’re continuing the war they started.
The real question is “How can Israel stop now, with so many homicidal maniacs still trying to destroy the Jewish State?”
The pre-October 7 mentality tolerated arms buildups on our borders along with genocidal threats from fanatics. October 7 proved that they took their words seriously. Having been raised to hate the Jew, Hamas terrorists and thousands of other Gazans tried crushing us. They raped and murdered wantonly, kidnapped babies, and tortured the elderly, all because they were Jews – or non-Jews, sometimes even fellow Muslims, daring to live peacefully with Jews.
The terrorists failed miserably, hurting us, yet mobilizing us. By joining, cheered on by worldwide intifada-enablers, Hezbollah, the Iranians, their proxies, and the Houthis have proven that too many in the Muslim world like to annihilate every Jew “from the river to the sea” and often overseas, too.
That’s not the narrative much of the West hears
Consider how America’s media covered the latest intercontinental ballistic missile launched from America’s adversary – the Houthis – against America’s ally Israel – especially after the US’s THAAD air defense system intercepted one super-destructive missile. On Saturday night, The New York Times website ignored it, reporting: “As Hopes Rise for Gaza Cease-Fire, Conditions There Have Only Worsened.” Hmm.
Shifting locally, to Haaretz, which at least covered the Houthi attack – and the two Hamas rockets fired from Gaza toward Jerusalem – we also learned that “Netanyahu May Be Making the Same Mistake with the Houthis as He Did with Iran.” Where did he err? “Iran’s nuclear program was a global issue ‘Israelized’ by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opposing the nuclear agreement.” The necessary, devasting response to the Houthis should be international not just Israeli.
Welcome to the anti-Zionist hall of mirrors, where every story reflects one conclusion: “It’s Israel’s fault.”
The invaluable statistics in the INSS Swords of Iron Real Time Tracker show that since October 7, Israelis have scrambled for shelter 31,333 times as over 27,000 rockets pounded the Jewish state. Yet, we’re the aggressor.
Palestinians launched 6,349 terror attacks. Yet we’re the oppressor. The media ignores the ongoing assaults against Israel, from Gaza too, as Bibi-phobes blame Israel for defending itself when the world farms out its dirty work of Houthi-fighting to the Jews.
Yes, an international coalition should crush Iran and the Houthis. But the US and the United Kingdom dithered, not properly protecting international shipping lanes, let alone Israel. Because the Houthis and Iran have Israelized the attack, targeting Israel, Israel must respond.
Repeated exposure to a negative stimulus reduces your emotional responsiveness, creating “desensitization,” psychologists explain.
In politics, overdosing on outrages deadens your conscience. We get used to Hamas hiding in once-sacrosanct civilian sites such as the Kamal Adwan Hospital. We sigh as The Jerusalem Post headlines “Army arrests 240 suspects, some posing as patients, at Jabalya Hospital used as command center,” but BBC screeches “Israel forcibly evacuates Gaza hospital and detains medical staff” and even the World Health Organization (WHO) scolds: “Kamal Adwan Hospital out of service following a raid yesterday and repeated attacks since October.”
We count the missiles launched from Yemen and Tehran, overlooking how many thousands they could kill if their payloads of 200, 300, or 400 kilograms detonated in a neighborhood.
One Pentagon weapons specialist, Bill LaPlante, told Axios: “I’m an engineer and a physicist, and I’ve been around missiles my whole career,” but the increasingly sophisticated Iranian-supplied Houthi weapons are “scary.” They threaten Israel, 2,000 kilometers away, international shipping, and America’s defense posture worldwide.
In the 1970s, reporters tried shaming Israel’s warrior-diplomat Moshe Dayan – who was instrumental in negotiating the peace treaty with Egypt – into supporting a Palestinian state. However, as someone fluent in Arabic, who befriended many Palestinians, Dayan understood his enemies.
“No, no. It’s not a flag they want,” he scoffed. “They want us to go. That’s the problem. They don’t want us to remain here...”
The only response, then as now, is to win clearly, make them fear you more than you fear them, and – as Dayan did – in the afterglow of our victory, if and when they’re finally ready, turn from war-making to peace-making.
The writer is a Senior Fellow in Zionist Thought at the JPPI, the Jewish People Policy Institute, the Global ThinkTank of the Jewish People, is an American presidential historian. His latest book is To Resist the Academic Intifada: Letters to My Students on Defending the Zionist Dream.