There is a country I have never been to. And there is a war I have never fought. Even so, for a reason I searched for a long time to understand, that country is also my country. And that war is also my war. That country is Israel.

I have never stepped foot in Israel. I have never lived in Tel Aviv, never walked the streets of Jerusalem, never crossed the Negev Desert, never entered a kibbutz, and never had to run to a bomb shelter upon hearing a siren announcing that someone, just a few kilometers away, had launched a missile toward my home. I have never worn an Israeli uniform. I have never held a rifle to defend Israel. I have never fought that war.

Yet on October 7, 2023, when terrorists crossed the border to murder people who were sleeping, families eating breakfast, young people dancing at a festival, children, women, and the elderly, something changed inside me. I was not merely watching a distant war. I felt under attack. And I needed to understand why. Perhaps because there are wars that do not belong only to the countries where they are fought.

There are territorial wars. There are religious wars. There are political wars. But there are also civilizational wars. Wars in which what is being disputed is not just a piece of land. It is an idea about man. It is a choice between two radically different ways of confronting existence. On one side, life as a value. On the other, death transformed into a political instrument, a religious promise, and a method of power. On one side, individuals who want to live, work, produce, love, raise children, build companies, write books, develop medicines, invent technologies, compose music, disagree with one another, and pursue their own happiness. On the other, men taught from childhood that a cause exists superior to their own lives, and that dying while killing those defined as enemies can transform them into martyrs.

That was when I understood. I did not need to be born in Israel to recognize in that war something that also concerned me. Because the values attacked on that Saturday were the values I have spent my life defending. Life. Liberty. Reason. The right of every individual to exist for their own purpose, without asking permission from a tribe, a State, a priest, or a tyrant.

Israel is not perfect. No country is. No government is. Benjamin Netanyahu is not Israel. A prime minister comes and goes. Governments fall. Coalitions dissolve. Politicians make mistakes. But a civilization cannot be judged solely by the mistakes of its rulers. It must be judged by the values that make the lives of its individuals possible.

And that is where one of the greatest intellectual frauds of our time begins. They transformed Israel into the defendant. And its enemies into the victims. This inversion did not begin on October 7. It simply became impossible to hide. For decades, a narrative was constructed according to which everything could be explained by one magic word: occupation. Terrorism was supposedly a........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)