Zionists understand: You can revive reputations, but not dead Israelis

Israelis welcome the prospect of a future in which they are no longer surrounded by well-armed enemies determined to do them harm, even if it means being viewed negatively by the rest of the world.

By GIL TROY | JULY 9, 2025

Protest in front of the US Embassy in Tel Aviv.  (Photo by Lizzy Shaanan Pikiwiki Israel, CC BY 2.5, Wikipedia)

Beware: Decades after Auschwitz, fighting Jews still don’t win popularity contests. The New York Times reports that “Israel Overpowered Its Foes, but Deepened Its Isolation.” After detailing Israel’s mind-boggling military victories, the Times verges on parody by warning: “Yet many Israelis welcome the prospect of a future in which they are no longer surrounded by well-armed enemies determined to do them harm, even if it means being viewed negatively by the rest of the world.”

The “yet” is precious. Somehow those primitive Israelis should have preferred being threatened by Palestinian terrorists, Hezbollah invaders, and Iranian missiles – as long as they remained popular on the Upper West Side. Zionists understand the stark stakes: You can revive reputations – but not dead Israelis.

Admittedly, Israel’s demonization, especially on the “Globalize the Intifada” American Left, is worrying. It’s shocking that thoughtful, proud Westerners cannot appreciate Israel’s triumphs over dictators and terrorists.Yet – and here the word works – so many critics easily, casually, indict Israel as acting “brutal” in Gaza, as two 40-something-year-old, left-leaning political analysts, Ezra Klein and Chris Hayes, recently did on Klein’s New York Times podcast.Dismissing Klein as “self-hating” and Hayes as “antisemitic” or “anti-Zionist” would be untrue, unfair, and intellectually lazy. Israel’s supporters should engage anguished critics respectfully and substantively.

If I had a pipeline to them, rather than name-calling, or starting with pesky facts about Israel’s historically-low kill ratios, the mass media’s unprecedentedly-abusive coverage, and most Americans’ silence when the US fought “brutally” in Iraq and Afghanistan, I would make one, simple request. “My kids and I sit with the complexity of this war, of their combat service, of Israel’s agonizing dilemmas, every day. Are you willing to do that, too?”If anyone is open, I’m happy to discuss this.

This was not a war to wreak vengeance but restore deterrence. It took 638 days before the BBC could report that a Hamas official admits it “lost about 80% of its control over the Gaza Strip” and most command-and-control centers due to “months of Israeli strikes” – and despite its efforts to “regroup” during the recent ceasefire.

Hmm, so maybe there are good reasons for Israel to keep fighting. Urban warfare is messy, lengthy, and bloody.

Has Israel acted perfectly? No country ever does, even without the “supreme emergency” Hamas unleashed. Still, fair critics should acknowledge the many agonizing dilemmas Hamas cruelly imposed on reluctant, peace seeking, Israelis and how Israel turned many lose-lose choices into history-making wins.

Yes, the relative silence is relevant – when in Iraq and Afghanistan, America acted more violently, for longer, when it was only threatened indirectly, generating a higher civilian-to-combatant kill ratio. That raises the questions “what would America have done?” and “what realistic alternatives do critics propose for Israel?”