The View from Israel’s Universe

By Michael Oren

Predictably, in response to Iran’s massive missile attack on Israel, Washington and other Western capitals are calling on Israel’s government to show restraint. They fear the outbreak of a total regional war into which their forces could be dangerously drawn. Israel, they stress, emerged from the assault relatively unscathed and its retaliation, therefore, should be proportionate.

The fact that Iran’s missiles failed to kill large numbers of Israelis is irrelevant to us

A truly proportionate response—hitting Tehran with the same 25,000 rockets and missives that Iran and its proxies have fired at us since October 7—would not, however, be acceptable to the West. Israel, American and European leaders state, has every right to defend itself but must exercise that right prudently. In practice this means that there is no effective counteroffensive action that Israel can legitimately take. Israelis can only sit and be pummeled by enemy barrages until our interceptors run out. Israelis can only legitimately die.

Israelis, of course, see things differently. We are already engaged in a regional war and have been, on multiple fronts, since October 7. For us, this is a total war for our national survival, a thoroughly just war against enemies dedicated to our annihilation.

The fact that Iran’s missiles failed to kill large numbers of Israelis is irrelevant to us. They paralyzed and terrorized the entire nation and once again cast doubts on our deterrence power. And Israel not only has the right to defend itself but the duty. Defending Jews is inherent in our raison d'être.

Fulfilling Israel’s mission, we know, can come at agonizing price. We’ve paid it almost daily since October 7 and will continue to do so for the incontestable reason that we simply have no choice. To recoil from driving Hezbollah from our northern border is to lose the north and, ultimately, to lose the country. To refrain from retaliating against Iran is to condemn Israelis to live perpetually under a palpable existential threat. Will our enemies strike back? Will more Israelis die? The tragic answers to those questions cannot dilute the fact that, inescapably, we have no choice.

That fact does nevertheless escape our Western allies. They inhabit a universe utterly alien to ours. In their world, the mass murderers in Tehran can be induced to deescalate by means other than escalation. In their reality, wars against terrorists who hide behind and under their civilian population can be won without harming those civilians and jihadists can be mollified by creating a Palestinian state. American and European leaders live in a simple, rational region that bears not the slightest resemblance to the real Middle East.

Israel will strike back at Iran—promptly, painfully, and manifestly disproportionately. Israel will defend itself not to spark a total war but to preempt one. Israel will retaliate against Iran and its venal proxies because defending our people from those who seek to massacre us is much of what our state is all about. Israel, at the risk of aggravating our allies, will survive.