Palestinian Hamas terrorists stand guard at a site as Hamas says it continues to search for the bodies of deceased hostages, in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip, Dec. 3, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Stringer

Israel is constantly reminded that it has the right to defend itself, yet every time it attempts to turn that theoretical right into an effective military reality, much of the international community suddenly becomes uncomfortable with the consequences.

This contradiction has become one of the defining features of the debate surrounding Israel.

Western governments condemn terrorism, acknowledge Israel’s security concerns, and insist that Israeli civilians should not be forced to live under rockets, massacres, kidnappings, or threats from armed organizations. But when Israel takes the military action necessary to remove those threats rather than merely contain them, the language quickly changes from solidarity to restraint.

The result is an extraordinary standard under which Israel is apparently permitted to survive an attack but increasingly discouraged from defeating the forces responsible for it.

There is an important difference between those two things.

Protecting civilians cannot simply mean intercepting missiles after they have already been launched, building stronger shelters, or developing increasingly sophisticated warning systems. Israel has become extraordinarily successful at defensive technology, but the existence of Iron Dome and other defensive systems does not remove the responsibility of the Israeli government to confront those launching the weapons in the first place.

No European government would willingly accept such an arrangement indefinitely. Imagine rockets repeatedly being launched toward Amsterdam, London, or Paris by an armed organization operating just across the border, while that organization publicly promised to continue its campaign. Europeans would never seriously suggest that the appropriate long-term solution was simply to become better at intercepting the rockets.

Yet Israel is frequently expected to tolerate precisely that reality.

This question became particularly important in the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre because the central issue was never simply how Israel should respond to one horrific attack. The larger question was whether Hamas could be allowed to retain the military and organizational capacity to repeat such an attack.

If Hamas retains weapons, commanders, infrastructure, and the ability to recruit and rebuild, then temporarily stopping the fighting does not necessarily create peace. It may simply postpone another confrontation.

That principle extends far beyond Gaza because Israel’s security challenges are interconnected across the region. Hezbollah built a formidable military arsenal in Lebanon, Iran has spent years supporting armed organizations and expanding its regional influence, while the Houthis demonstrated that actors located far from Israel’s immediate borders can still participate directly in the conflict against it.

For Israel, therefore, evaluating security threats only according to what an adversary is doing today while ignoring what that adversary has repeatedly declared it intends to do tomorrow would be dangerously irresponsible.

Israel is also geographically small, which matters enormously when discussing security. Many Europeans live in countries surrounded by allies and protected by considerable strategic depth, while Israelis live in a country where hostile forces can operate remarkably close to homes, cities, airports and essential infrastructure. A security miscalculation that appears manageable from thousands of kilometers away can have devastating consequences on the ground.

None of this means that supporting Israel requires approving every decision made by an Israeli government.

Israel is a democracy and its government should be scrutinized. Military mistakes should be investigated, civilian suffering must matter regardless of nationality, and international humanitarian law remains important even when Israel confronts organizations that deliberately violate those principles themselves.

There is, however, an enormous difference between legitimate scrutiny and constructing a standard under which Israel can never meaningfully defeat the forces attacking it.

This is particularly visible in international demands for ceasefires. A ceasefire can save lives and create opportunities for diplomacy, and when it produces genuine progress, it should be welcomed, but stopping the shooting is not automatically the same thing as establishing peace. If an armed organization uses the period of quiet to recruit fighters, manufacture weapons, reconstruct infrastructure, and prepare for another attack, the conflict has not been solved. Its next chapter has merely been postponed.

There is another uncomfortable aspect of this debate. Israel’s success in protecting its population is sometimes turned into an argument against Israel itself. Because Israelis have shelters, warning systems, missile defenses, and a powerful military, Israeli casualties can remain dramatically lower than they might otherwise have been, but this should be recognized as the result of enormous investment in protecting human life, not as evidence that the original threat was insignificant.

Morality cannot simply be calculated by comparing casualty totals.

A country does not become morally suspect because it successfully protects its population, just as an aggressor does not acquire moral legitimacy because the country it attacked possesses superior defensive capabilities.

The international community therefore needs to answer a question that is frequently avoided: What is Israel actually expected to do?

Should Israelis accept recurring rocket attacks because many rockets can be intercepted? Should communities repeatedly evacuate their homes while hostile forces rebuild nearby? Should Israel wait until an adversary becomes stronger because confronting that adversary today might generate international condemnation?

These are easy questions to debate from television studios, universities, and government offices far from Israel. For Israelis, they concern something much more fundamental: whether their families can safely live in their own country.

Israel should be expected to respect international law, investigate failures, protect civilians wherever reasonably possible, and pursue genuine opportunities for peace, but it cannot reasonably be expected to accept permanent insecurity simply because eliminating a threat is politically uncomfortable for the outside world.

Peace requires more than Israel laying down its weapons. It requires adversaries willing to abandon the objective of destroying Israel and leaders prepared to build societies instead of preparing another generation for another war.

Israel does not need endless conflict, and Israelis themselves have every reason to want these wars to end.

But ending a battle and ending a threat are not the same thing.

If the international community truly believes that Israel has the right to defend itself, then that right must mean more than permission to survive the first attack. It must also include the ability to prevent the next one.

Sabine Sterk is CEO of Time To Stand Up For Israel.