Israel’s Security Is Not Paranoia. It’s Pattern Recognition

On February 1, 2026, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a warning that cut through the usual diplomatic language. If the United States initiated a conflict, he said, it would become a regional war. And this morning, the U.S. government told Americans in Iran to leave and to do so without relying on U.S. government assistance.

A lot of people hear statements like this and shrug. Leaders threaten and governments posture. Deterrence has its own vocabulary. That’s true, as far as it goes.

But Israel doesn’t have the luxury of hearing threats that way.

Its security posture isn’t shaped by a single quote or a single news cycle. It’s shaped by years of watching what Iran’s ruling ideology says, what it pays for, and what it quietly builds across the region. Patterns form over time. Israel lives with those patterns.

If we want an honest conversation about Israel’s actions, we have to start with the war Israel is actually fighting, not the version people prefer to imagine from a distance.

The war Israel is actually fighting

While in Israel, I spoke with an Israeli soldier whose unit was involved in the recovery of one of the last hostages’ bodies taken into Gaza. His unit went into the tunnels.

Those tunnels aren’t a footnote to this war. They’re the framework.

Hamas didn’t simply take hostages and hide them wherever it could. It built an underground system meant to hold captives, move fighters, store weapons, and run operations beneath civilian neighborhoods. The design is intentional. It blurs responsibility. It turns every attempt at rescue or recovery into something morally agonizing and politically explosive.

A society that refuses to bring home its abducted citizens, living or dead, quietly accepts that some lives are expendable. Israel’s insistence on recovering hostages isn’t about vengeance. It’s about obligation. And in tunnel warfare, that obligation can’t be fulfilled neatly or without risk.

This is where many criticisms of Israel lose contact with reality. People imagine a war where terrorists fight in the open, civilians are clearly separated, and military objectives can be reached without touching the infrastructure built for concealment.

That isn’t the war Hamas chose.

Hamas chose the tunnels. Hamas chose to embed its military capacity inside places where ordinary families live. That decision shapes everything that follows.

You can argue about tactics. You can demand accountability and restraint. You should. But it’s dishonest to pretend Israel is fighting a conventional enemy on a conventional battlefield.

Why Iran is central, not incidental

It’s often assumed that Israel and Iran have always been enemies. That isn’t the case.

Before 1979, the two countries had pragmatic relations. The break came with the Iranian Revolution, when the Islamic Republic reorganized the region around an ideology that rejected Western influence, American power, and Israel’s legitimacy.

From that point on, hostility toward Israel became more than rhetoric. It became structure.

Iran invested in a network of proxies that could pressure Israel without direct war. Hezbollah in Lebanon. Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas in Gaza. Aligned militias across Syria and Iraq.

Hamas has its own leadership and its own local concerns. It isn’t a puppet. But its funding, training, and strategic alignment place it inside a wider posture that Iran has sustained for years. That’s why Israeli leaders don’t see isolated flare-ups. They see continuity.

Criticism of Israeli policy is legitimate. Governments should be scrutinized. But when a regime repeatedly denies Jewish historical suffering, traffics in Holocaust distortion, and speaks openly about a Middle East without Israel, history teaches us not to treat that as ordinary political disagreement.

History, compromise, and a hard truth

One thing that often disappears from modern arguments is that there’s never been a sovereign Palestinian state in the territory now contested.

Before 1948, the land was governed by the Ottoman Empire and later administered by Britain. Gaza was controlled by Egypt. The West Bank by Jordan. The conflict didn’t begin with Israel occupying an existing nation-state. It grew out of competing national movements, regional wars, and decisions made by many actors over time.

But that’s only part of the story.

Israel has also shown a repeated willingness to compromise.

It accepted the 1947 UN partition plan. It returned the Sinai in exchange for peace with Egypt. It withdrew fully from Gaza in 2005. It’s supported land-for-peace frameworks and accepted versions of a two-state solution, even when those proposals carried real security risks.

Again and again, Israel’s shown a willingness to live alongside a Palestinian state.

That willingness hasn’t been consistently met. When the rallying cry becomes “from the river to the sea,” negotiation runs into a wall. Compromise requires two parties who accept each other’s existence. When existence itself is treated as the problem, diplomacy reaches its limits.

Saying this doesn’t deny Palestinian dignity or aspiration. It simply acknowledges that peace can’t be built if one side is asked to negotiate its own disappearance.

Security, suffering, and moral responsibility

None of this erases the suffering of Palestinian civilians. Innocent life lost is a moral tragedy. A serious defense of Israel shouldn’t require emotional distance from Palestinian pain.

But honesty also requires saying that Gaza is ruled by a group that punishes dissent, controls information, diverts aid, and embeds violence inside civilian life. Palestinian fear is real. Often it’s fear coming from more than one direction.

Military action can disrupt terror networks. It can’t heal every wound that feeds extremism. At the same time, peace without security isn’t peace. It’s wishful thinking.

Israel isn’t beyond critique. But it can’t be asked to accept permanent vulnerability as the price of moral approval.

Why Americans, and especially Christians, should stand with Israel

For Americans, standing with Israel isn’t just sentimental. It reflects shared democratic values and a realistic understanding of what happens when destabilizing ideologies go unchecked.

For Christians, the reason runs deeper, but it doesn’t need slogans or speculation. It starts with moral clarity. The Jewish people carry a history marked by extraordinary suffering and remarkable endurance. When eliminationist language resurfaces, believers should be among the first to recognize the danger, even when it comes dressed as politics.

Standing with Israel doesn’t mean endorsing every decision. It means affirming something basic: Israel has the right to exist, and the right to defend its people against those who deny that right.

The discipline of memory

From far away, vigilance can look like fear. From within a dangerous neighborhood, it often looks like wisdom. Israel’s posture isn’t paranoia. It’s pattern recognition.

Scripture’s call to remember isn’t about living anxious. It’s about staying awake. Remember what was said. Remember what was done. Remember what happens when threats are dismissed until they become irreversible.

Peace is a worthy goal. Protecting innocent life matters. But peace built on selective memory doesn’t last, and peace built on denial never holds.

If we want serious conversations about the Middle East, we have to resist slogans and recover the discipline of memory. Wisdom starts there. And so does the possibility of a peace that actually lasts.