“You’re one of us,” Denmark’s ambassador to Israel told me back in 2014. It was his way of explaining why the State of Israel is held to a “higher standard” than other nations. At the time, it sounded like a compliment; today, it feels like a strategic straitjacket.
Since Oct. 7, this logic has been weaponized to argue that Israel, as a Western democracy, simply cannot afford a prolonged military campaign. But a look at the West’s own military history suggests a glaring inconsistency.
When Western democracies face existential threats, they fight for as long as necessary. The campaign to dislodge ISIS from Mosul and Raqqa lasted months of devastating urban combat. Afghanistan spanned two decades. World War II, fought against a genocidal regime, ended only after years of total war.
Why, then, is Israel uniquely pressured by a ticking clock while confronting an organization explicitly committed to its destruction?
The issue is not legal, but philosophical. Israel does not seek exemption from international law. The real question is whether the passage of time itself has been rebranded as a moral failing. Dismantling terror-related infrastructure embedded in civilian areas, neutralizing vast tunnel networks and restoring deterrence are complex operations that do not adhere to a journalist’s deadline.
We are witnessing a striking paradox: a democracy operating within legal and moral constraints is criticized precisely for taking the time required to do so. Had Israel employed overwhelming, indiscriminate force from the start, the campaign would have been shorter, but the civilian cost would have been catastrophically higher.
Furthermore, there is a troubling gap between European rhetoric and practice. When economic interests are at stake, European governments maintain deep ties with regimes whose values they ostensibly reject. This is realpolitik, and it is understandable. What is unacceptable is the application of an entirely different standard when it comes to Israel’s existential security.
Hamas is not a conventional army; it operates from hospitals and schools while pledging eternal war. If Western democracies establish the precedent that prolonged campaigns against such adversaries are inherently illegitimate, they will find that same precedent used against them when European cities inevitably face similar threats.
We must ask ourselves: Is this genuinely about shared values? Or does it echo U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s cynical calculus during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when he reportedly suggested about Israel, “Let them bleed a little” to facilitate diplomacy?
If Western standards become instruments that prevent democracies from addressing existential threats, they cease to be a source of strength and become a strategic liability.
Israel seeks no special treatment. We seek only basic consistency: the same rules of engagement, the same threat assessment and the same recognition that wars against entrenched terrorist organizations are not resolved in weeks. If these are indeed the standards we share, they must apply wherever a democracy fights for its survival. Anything less is not principle, it is hypocrisy.
