Two years after the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023, the ceasefire and the return of all living Israeli hostages from Gaza, enabled us to breathe again. While a sense of closure had to wait until the return of Ran Gvili’s body for burial in January 2026, life in Israel had been on the mend for about 4 months from October 2025 until the end of February 2026. We went to sleep at night with some sense of surety that we would not wake up in the middle of the night to sirens, and without the pit in our stomach as we lay awake thinking of those hostages left in Gaza. Though many families were still in mourning over the loss of loved ones while others struggled to meet the challenges of physical and mental trauma wrought by terrorism and war, we began to pick up the pieces of our lives and of our society and imagine a reality without war. The situation for Palestinians in Gaza remained tenuous but even in that seemingly cursed strip of land, some level of optimism for recovery took hold among the displaced as the Trump Peace Plan began to take shape.

This respite from crisis and trauma turned out to be short lived. To remove Iran’s nuclear, ballistic, and proxy terrorist threat to Israel and other nations, as well as perhaps to respond to the massacre of Iranian citizens by their own government, on February 28th, the United States and Israel attacked Iran. I am not a pacifist, though I do believe that war is a last resort. Still, I believe in a country’s right to self-defense, and I believe that sometimes, military force is necessary, especially when dealing with extremist fanatics or confronted with expansionist authoritarian regimes. I have no doubt that Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile program is an existential threat to Israel and the Iranian support for Hezbollah and Hamas terrorism is part of its overall plan to eliminate the State of Israel. So, when Israel and the US attacked Iran, I understood the Israeli government’s motivations and appreciated that the United States was standing with us against this existential threat.

I can also understand the many questions raised in the US about why it chose to use military force against Iran at this time. Some have blamed Benjamin Netanyahu for convincing Donald Trump to enter the war against the wishes of most Americans including many in Trump’s base. While I think there were probably many confusing and complicated reasons Trump chose to launch a war, if Benjamin Netanyahu did convince Trump to attack Iran, against US interests, Netanyahu was at least doing so for what he believed are Israel’s best interests. It seems to me that the US was not directly threatened by Iran and had other options. For those in the US who want to blame Israel for this war, perhaps they should ask themselves how is it that they elected a president who can be convinced to do something wildly unpopular and possibly not in the US’s best interest by the leader of a small country which is almost totally dependent on the US for its defense budget? I recently heard a Trump supporter who had voted for Trump three times say “That was my bad. Apparently, I’m an idiot”. No truer words were ever spoken.

When the war started, I apparently forgot Gabrel Garcia Marquez’s quote “It is easier to start a war than to end it” and thought, maybe war with Iran is inevitable and with the US at our side, we can once and for all quickly take care of this existential threat and reshape the Middle East with bombs. After a month of war in which according to US and Israeli governments and TV pundits, we are crushing it, defeating the enemy with victory just around the corner, meanwhile missiles and rockets are raining down on cities in Israel (as well as in other countries in the Middle East), the civilian death toll is mounting, children are stuck at home driving their parents bonkers, our economy is teetering, more reservists are being called up and no end in sight, I will admit, I am dazed and confused.

Israeli Channel 12 News reported that 60% of Israelis think the war should go on and almost 30% believe the war should come to an end. If I was sure that at the end of the war, no matter how long it takes, Iran would no longer be a threat to Israel (or to its own people), I would be with the 60%. If I was sure that no matter how long we fight, like Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iran will remain a threat to Israel, I would be with the 30%. The problem is that it is easier to start a war than to know what will happen in the end. So, I am with the 10%, dazed and confused.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)