Great questions. I think your perspective makes a lot of sense given your context. On the international stage, Israel does appear strong. I think the biggest international adversary to Israel is Iran, which supports Hezbollah and Hamas and which constantly states its intention to wipe Israel off the map. I think a Jewish state in particular is entitled to take threats like this seriously.

That said, I’m not actually so worried about the military threats to Israel as I am about the discourse in America & Europe and how it affects Jews in those places. If people view Zionism as the ultimate evil, and most Jews are Zionists, then it increasingly becomes OK to demean, attack, and even kill Jews.

This is by no means an imagined concern on my part. Jews are the #1 target of religiously motivated hate crimes in the US — by far. And the numbers are shooting up. Jews are punched, harrassed, even shot, and synagogues and Jewish buildings are vandalized.

Elite progressives, especially on campuses, are increasingly giving cover to these attacks by using Israel as a bogeyman. This is the dynamic I’m responding to more than anything geopolitical. I’m a descendent of Holocaust survivors, and I know that genocide begins with words.