Standing With Israel Is Not Optional. It Is the Test of the West.
From Jerusalem to Washington, the line between civilization and barbarism runs through this war — and we should be honest about which side we are on.

Hannah Grossberg
May 17, 2026

For nineteen months the loudest voices on Western campuses and in Western newsrooms have worked to invert a simple moral picture. Israel, the only liberal democracy in the Middle East, was recast as the aggressor. Hamas, a jihadist movement that wrote the murder of Jews into its founding charter, was reframed as a resistance.
The inversion is not a misunderstanding. It is a political project. And it has consequences far beyond the Middle East — for American Jews who are being told their safety is negotiable, for allies who are watching to see whether the United States still keeps its word, and for a generation being taught that the wrong side of a moral question is the brave one.
Standing with Israel is not a foreign-policy preference. It is a statement about the world we want our children to inherit. We should make it loudly and without apology.
"There is no neutral ground between a democracy fighting for its survival and the terrorists who pledged its destruction. Pretending otherwise is not sophistication. It is cowardice."
The inversion is not a misunderstanding. It is a political project. And it has consequences far beyond the Middle East — for American Jews who are being told their safety is negotiable, for allies who are watching to see whether the United States still keeps its word, and for a generation being taught that the wrong side of a moral question is the brave one.
Standing with Israel is not a foreign-policy preference. It is a statement about the world we want our children to inherit. We should make it loudly and without apology.
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