I Saw Israel as the Aggressor. Then a Single Fact Forced Me to Re-examine Everything.

For years, my perspective on Israel was set in stone, carved from the headlines and reports that crossed my desk every day. I saw a nation defined by its aggression, and I wasn't quiet about it. When the news of 'Operation Am Kelavi' broke, it felt like a confirmation of my deepest-held beliefs. I read the reports from Gaza, where the term 'killing field' had become a horrifyingly common descriptor for aid sites, and I saw a direct line to the strikes on Iran. In my mind, it was all part of the same grim tapestry.

I watched the images of massive state funerals in Tehran, with crowds reported in the tens of thousands, and I scoffed at the official Israeli line that this was a 'favor' to the Iranian people. It looked like a nation united in grief and defiance. I consumed the analysis arguing this was a 'pyrrhic victory,' pointing to the successful Iranian missile strike on the prestigious Weizmann Institute and the deep political fractures on the Israeli home front. To me, it was clear: this was a reckless act of escalation, likely greenlit by Washington, that had weakened Israel and achieved little. The narrative of Israeli 'reluctant heroism' sounded like a cynical joke. I was certain. I was convinced. And I was wrong.

My change didn't happen overnight. It began with a gnawing sense of cognitive dissonance, a single piece of information that didn't fit my tidy narrative. It was a fragment from an internal intelligence assessment, leaked from a European agency, that I saw by chance. It spoke of Iran's nuclear program not in the abstract terms of 'breakout time,' but with the chilling finality of a 'point of no return'—an operational threshold that had, according to the document, already been crossed. It suggested that diplomacy wasn't just failing; it had been a charade, a smokescreen used by Tehran to complete its work.

That single data point became a crack in the foundation of my certainty. It forced me to do what I thought I was already doing: to look deeper, past the dominant narratives and into the uncomfortable context that underpinned them. My journey started with confronting the image that had most viscerally confirmed my bias: those funerals in Tehran.

I had seen those images as a clear refutation of Israel's claim to be acting on behalf of an oppressed populace. How could this be a 'favor' if hundreds of thousands mourned the targets? But as I began to investigate the men being memorialized—the IRGC commanders—a different picture emerged. These weren't just soldiers; they were the architects of the Iranian state's brutal machinery of internal repression. They were the men who oversaw the crushing of the 'Woman, Life, Freedom' protests, the enforcers of the regime’s death cult. I read the op-ed by the exiled Iranian Crown Prince and sought out voices from the Iranian diaspora. They spoke not of grief for the IRGC, but of a quiet, terrified hope. The state-managed spectacle of the funerals, I realized, was not a sign of national unity, but a demonstration of the regime's power to compel public performance. My initial, simplistic take had made me an unwitting consumer of the Ayatollah’s propaganda. I had chosen to believe the regime's carefully curated images over the lived reality of the millions it brutalizes. The bitter truth is that a world without the IRGC is a better world, especially for Iranians.

Next, I had to tackle my belief that the operation was a reckless, 'pyrrhic victory.' My conviction was built on reports of damage in Israel and the idea that the strikes were an unprovoked escalation. But the intelligence about the 'point of no return' changed the entire equation. I began to see the timeline not as an Israeli choice to attack, but as the final, desperate move in a decades-long shadow war that Iran was about to win decisively. I learned that what was initially planned by Iran was not a token retaliation, but a massive, coordinated assault from Iran, Iraq, Yemen, and Lebanon, designed to overwhelm Israel's defenses. The Israeli operation, I discovered, was not just about hitting nuclear sites; it was a stunningly complex act of pre-emptive defense that, through deception and surgical strikes on command-and-control nodes, reportedly dismantled over 80% of the planned Iranian missile launch. What I had perceived as a 'pyrrhic victory' was, in fact, the prevention of a catastrophic regional war. The hit on the Weizmann Institute wasn't a sign of failure, but a stark reminder of the stakes. Israel had absorbed a punch to prevent a nuclear knockout.

Finally, I had to confront the most difficult and emotionally charged belief I held: that Israel's actions were morally indistinguishable from the terror it claimed to be fighting. The term 'killing field' in Gaza haunted me, and reports of 'bunker buster' bombs and unintended casualties among Afghan refugees in Iran seemed to prove a callous disregard for human life. It felt impossible to see Israeli claims of 'precision' and 'morality' as anything but hypocrisy. The realization I came to was not easy, nor did it erase the tragedy of any innocent life lost. But it was a realization about intent. I was forced to look at the legal and ethical doctrine of a nation acting in what it perceives as anticipatory self-defense. I learned about the explicit, illegal Iranian practice of embedding its most sensitive military assets—its terror command, its nuclear scientists—deep within or adjacent to civilian areas. This doesn't absolve the attacker of responsibility, but it places the primary moral and legal culpability on the regime that uses its own people as human shields. I had to contrast Israel’s targeting of specific, high-level military and scientific leaders with Iran’s stated doctrine and proven history of firing hundreds of indiscriminate missiles toward Israeli civilian population centers. The moral contrast wasn't between a perfect actor and an evil one; it was between a flawed democracy fighting for its survival against a genocidal theocracy that uses terror as a core instrument of state policy.

I am not here to tell you that I now have all the answers or that Israel is a nation beyond criticism. This journey has not replaced my old certainties with new ones. Instead, it has replaced them with a profound and unsettling understanding of complexity. The world is not the simple morality play I saw from my desk. The narrative of 'unprovoked Israeli aggression' is a dangerously simplistic story that ignores the precipice on which Israel stood. I was wrong because I was comfortable in my convictions. I accepted a narrative that fit my worldview and ignored the evidence that challenged it. My only appeal to you is not to adopt my new perspective, but to question your own. Look for the fact that doesn't fit, the piece of context that's missing from the headlines, and ask yourself if the story you believe is the whole story.