All the t’s were crossed and the i’s dotted. Tickets had been purchased, and my visa approved. In fact, I was literally packing my bags when I first heard the news.
That Israel had attacked Iran, and all flights were canceled. Had it happened two days later, I’d now be stranded in Tel Aviv with the wailing of sirens and explosion of missiles ringing in my ears. Instead, I’m in California glued to the news.
Which is astounding.
Alarmed by Iran’s apparent unwillingness to forego using nuclear bombs to achieve its longstanding and often-stated goal of annihilating Israel, the tiny Jewish state decided to assure its own survival by unilaterally destroying the enemy’s offensive capabilities. Specifically, by debilitating its nuclear facilities and assassinating a long list of military and scientific leaders committed to developing them.
“For decades, the tyrants of Tehran have brazenly, openly called for Israel’s destruction,” the country’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, declared. “Eighty years ago, the Jewish people were the victims of a Holocaust perpetrated by the Nazi regime. Today, the Jewish state refuses to be a victim of a nuclear Holocaust perpetrated by the Iranian regime.”
Writing under the headline ‘Israel Had the Courage to Do What Needed to Be Done,’ New York Times columnist Bret Stephens immediately agreed. “Iran,” he said, “has been deceiving the world for years while gathering the means to build nuclear weapons.”
The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board chimed right in. “Israel’s air campaign against Iran’s nuclear program,” it proclaimed, “is a watershed moment for the Middle East and, if successful, a favor for the world.”
And over the weekend, the United States stepped up with a major airstrike to all-but-finish the job.
Indeed, the world’s initial reaction—even among Iran’s Arab neighbors—was uncharacteristically muted. Both Saudi Arabia and Jordan took the unprecedented step of helping defend Israel from retaliatory Iranian missile attacks. And suddenly social media everywhere was overflowing with videos of ordinary Iranians chanting “Death to Ali Khamenei,” their nation’s supreme leader.
“Our fight is not with you,” Netanyahu assured those civilians. “Our fight is with the brutal dictatorship that has oppressed you for 46 years. I believe that the day of your liberation is near.”
For me, it’s all very personal. My mother was a German Holocaust survivor who made it to the US only in 1947 after several years of internment with thousands of other Jewish refugees in Japanese-occupied China. And many of my progenitors—including two grandparents and an uncle—met brutal deaths at the hands of Jew-hating Nazis. So it was with great honor and excitement that I’d accepted an invitation from the Israeli Embassy in Manila to join a special Media & Research Institute delegation to Israel composed of journalists based in the Philippines.
“This initiative,” the invitation promised, “is to foster goodwill and strengthen diplomatic ties by providing media practitioners with firsthand exposure to Israel’s dynamic media landscape, technological innovations, and geopolitical environment.”
After calling it all off two days before departure, the Embassy organized a zoom meeting to give us an update. “The security and safety of Filipinos in Israel is a top priority,” Ambassador Ian Fluss said regarding the more than 30,000 of them—mostly caregivers—living in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Haifa, As of this writing, there are no reported Filipino casualties, though at least four have been injured, one critically.
From certain quarters across the globe came the usual drumbeat of demands for “de-escalation” and immediate ceasefire. What none of those rhythmic drummers seem to grasp, however, is that a limited conflict now is obviously far preferable to a disastrous and much wider nuclear conflagration later.
“God help us,” concluded one columnist in this newspaper.
I believe He already has, so let me offer a slight revision. God help Israel and its allies achieve their goal of completely and permanently disarming Iran. And God help the innocents of all nations create a world in which they can finally be friends.
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David Haldane is an award-winning American journalist and author with homes in Southern California and Northern Mindanao. His latest book, Dark Skies: Tales of Turbulence in Paradise, is available on Amazon. This column appears weekly in The Manila Times.
