Just who has the right to tell Israel how to defend itself against Iran's nuclear weapons, ballistic missile program, and regional proxy armies?
Might it be the pussyfooting British government whose immediate inclination upon the launch of operations Epic Fury and Roaring Lion this week was to call for "de-escalation" and "return to a diplomatic process"?
Throughout the week, Prime Minister Keir Starmer broadcast spinelessness. Even when Iran attacked a British military base in Cyprus and targeted Gulf Arab countries, he insisted that Britain would engage only in "defensive actions" on behalf of "countries not previously involved in the conflict" and which "have not been involved in hostilities from the outset." In other words, specifically excepting any defense of the US and Israel.
Riding the twin tigers of Islamic and left-wing hatred of Israel, Starmer also initially denied the US use of the strategic airbase on Diego Garcia Island.
Might it be the French government, which this week pompously pontificated about international law to distance itself from the US and Israel?
Everybody knows that "international law" is an elastic, contrived boondoggle trotted out mainly to isolate and emasculate Israel. International law has done diddly-squat to scuttle Iran's hegemonic advances and attacks on Israel and Western allies in the region over the past 50 years via various terror surrogates, including Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, the Taliban, and Iraqi and Afghan Shia militias.
The so-called "rules-based international order" has ignored the fact that an international armed conflict (IAC) long has existed between Iran, the US, and Israel, originating with Ayatollah Khomeini's 1979 proclamation of "death to America and Israel."
The make-believe "rules-based international order" has turned a blind eye to Iran's supply of loitering munitions to Russia for use against Western-aligned interests, its conduct of maritime sabotage in the Red Sea via Houthi surrogates, its terrorist operations across four continents, and so much more.
But this week, in a great show of ersatz military machoism, President Emmanuel Macron of France sent an aircraft carried to the eastern Mediterranean to "defend Lebanon," supposedly. Alas, this is little more than a supercilious French attempt to interfere with Israel's operations against Hezbollah.
This is the same France, of course, that has never known how to defend its own borders, neither against Nazi invasion nor against Islamist infiltration; the same Macron who has sought to ram down Israel's throat a runaway, hostile Palestinian state – even after October 7.
Might it be the European Union, which for years has done nothing except snort about the use of "disproportionate force" by Israel?
This is the same EU that never has found the gumption to brand the IRGC as a terrorist entity and whose members bow obsequiously before the Iranian ayatollahs in search of commercial contracts and sinecures.
These are the same hostile EU countries that continue to intervene disproportionately on behalf of the Palestinians in their struggle with Israel through gargantuan sums of aid money that pays for terrorists and funds hostile NGOs, that build illegal settlements in Area C for Palestinian squatters, and that support anti-Israel resolution after resolution in international forums including language that denies Jewish history in Jerusalem.
Perhaps it is the dictatorial, radical Islamist, and antisemitic Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan who has a "right" to criticize and threaten Israel?
This is the same Erdogan who has jailed tens of thousands of Turkish academics, judges, journalists, and generals who have dared to disparage his regime; the same Erdogan who openly harbors Hamas operational terrorist headquarters in his capital city, and who pow-wowed publicly and repeatedly with Ayatollah Khamenei of Iran (the latter, now blessedly deceased).
This is same Turkish leader who now seeks to gobble-up portions of Syria, Iraq, and Iran and to slaughter the courageous Kurds.
Or perhaps Israel should accept criticism from Kamala Harris who over two years of Israel's existential battle with the Iranian-backed Hamas einsatzgruppen worried mainly whether Palestinian women had hygienic pads.
This week, the former, defeated Democratic Party candidate for US president exclaimed her earnest opposition to a "regime-change war in Iran," went on to plaint about Trump's "dangerous and unnecessary gamble with American lives that also jeopardizes stability in the region and our standing in the world," and called the war "recklessness dressed up as resolve."
To say that this statement disgusts most Israelis, and that it perfectly explains why they are thankful that this person was not elected president of the US – would be the understatement of the century.
What about the United Nations Security Council which has not found a way to do anything about the fifteen-year-long slaughter in Syria or about Iran's five-decade-long subversive muckraking across the Middle East, and which celebrated Obama's disastrous deal with Iran as a great achievement?
This is the same UNSC that still has not condemned the Hamas invasion of Israel on October 7 but has tried a dozen times to excoriate Israel for blocking Hamas infiltration and going on the counterattack.
THE TEMERITY and hypocrisy of such critics is simply astounding. None of them have the right to criticize Israel's defensive actions against Hamas or its defensive-offensive operations against Iran.
Israel need not apologize for seeking to expunge Hamas from Gaza no matter what degree of devastation is necessary, nor be contrite about demolishing Iranian nuclear and missile facilities and about eliminating the leaders of Iran's mullahcracy and seeking to spark regime transformation.
Given the proximity to Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day, six weeks from now), historical precedents inevitably come to mind – something that only reinforces Israeli anger and the inclination of Israelis to defy international deprecation.
The global diplomatic community stood by as Hitler grew in power and began persecuting the Jews of Germany. They did mostly nothing during the war even as the contours of the Nazi extermination regime against Jews became apparent. They failed to bomb the railways to Auschwitz, and more. Diplomatically, the world failed the Jewish People.
Today, as mentioned, the United Nations has become the greatest purveyor of anti-Jewish and anti-Israel delegitimization. The Security Council long has been more seized with Israeli housing starts than with annihilationist threats against Israel.
In this dismal situation, the Jewish People and the State of Israel diplomatically owe the world nothing. Broadly speaking, the nations of the world have no moral right to tell Israel what to do – not how to craft its security doctrines, conduct its military campaigns, or where to draw its borders.
Pretentious Spanish, French, and British politicians – and other devious and disingenuous world leaders, including from Russia and China – ought to approach us with a great deal of humility when they come to discuss Israel's diplomatic well-being, and before they attempt to dictate terms of Israel's security future or critique our military operations.
Having been so wrong in their Pollyannaish hopes for the Oslo Accords, for the Arab Spring, and for the JCPOA (Obama's nuclear deal with Iran), they ought to give Israel the benefit of the doubt when Jerusalem feels the need to act determinedly in the defense arena or cautiously in the diplomatic arena.
And while we are at it, this is the time and place to remind the great minds of the "international community" that Jews are not foreigners in their ancestral homeland; that Israel is not an occupying force in the Biblical hilltops or in Jerusalem. A declaration of Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria is justified and imminent, and Israelis will proudly defy any wicked censure that ensues.
FINALLY, one cannot ignore the Jewish holiday context of the current war. The Purim tale, retold through the biblical Book of Esther in Jewish communities around the world this past week, suggests that beyond the intrigue of royal courtyards, behind the politics of a Grand Shura Council, Security Council, or a Kremlin – lies a Hidden Hand operating on a transcendental plane.
And thus, over and above the threatening actors around Israel – from the time of Haman in ancient Persia to the Ayatollahs of Shiite Iran, and from Amalek of Exodus to the anti-Jewish and anti-Israel wildly woke "intelligentsia" of today's Western world – there is an engaged and concerned God. And he acts to guide and protect the Jewish People.
Indeed, the grand sweep of Jewish history is a sustained tutorial against the evils of brutal dictatorships, totalitarian regimes, and arrogant empires. From the oppression implied in the Tower of Babel story to the slavery of Pharaonic Egypt, and from Achashverosh to Nebuchadnezzar, the Bible critiques the politics of absolute power and the penchant of dictators to lord over the Jewish People.
None of those empires lasted too long. And none of these bad actors were able to destroy the physical core and resilient spirit of the Jewish People.
Thus, the ambitions of Iran to global Islamic empire are ephemeral and so are the pretensions to power of radical "progressives" in Red-Green intersectional alliances who currently are savaging Israel. They will not prevail.
