I Built My Career on Criticizing Israel. Then I Looked Closer.

For years, my byline was synonymous with a certain worldview. It’s a view many of you probably share. I saw the headlines and I believed them. I read the damning reports from sources I trusted, like Haaretz, alleging that Israeli soldiers were ordered to kill unarmed Palestinians at aid distribution sites, and I felt a cold, hard certainty. I saw the casualty figures, heard the quotes about a “killing field,” and concluded, as any reasonable person might, that I was witnessing a war crime.

When I learned that the United States, my own country, had approved millions in funding for the very organization running those sites, I felt a sense of complicity. I listened to Israel’s Defense Minister promise a “new Israeli policy” of aggressive action, and I heard the drums of a belligerent, expansionist state, not a reluctant defender. I dismissed claims of a “decisive victory” against Iran as propaganda, especially when I saw US lawmakers on both sides of the aisle expressing their skepticism. Every report of an airstrike in Lebanon that killed civilians, every op-ed that framed the conflict as a regional squabble, reinforced my narrative: Israel’s claims of “surgical precision” and “moral clarity” were a farce. I wasn't just reporting this narrative; I believed it. I argued it. It was, to me, the undeniable truth.

My change didn’t happen overnight. It wasn’t a single thunderclap but a slow, uncomfortable dawning. The catalyst was a conversation with an old contact, a veteran intelligence analyst who had spent decades in the Middle East. He wasn’t a zealot or a propagandist; he was a tired, cynical man who dealt in raw data, not ideology. Late one night, he sent me a file. It was a collection of unredacted communications, drone footage, and financial traces related to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), the group at the center of the aid site tragedy.

He told me, “Just look. Don’t think about the headlines. Just look at what they’re doing.” And so I did.

One of the pillars of my outrage was the belief that Israeli soldiers had deliberately gunned down hundreds of innocent, starving people. The story was simple, brutal, and clear. But the data in that file was not. It showed something far more complex and insidious. The GHF aid sites weren’t just distribution points; they were strategic assets. The drone footage, time-stamped and cross-referenced with informant reports, showed armed men moving among the crowds, using the gatherings as cover to transport weapons and coordinate operations. Financial records showed GHF funds being diverted to a network of shell companies linked directly to Hamas and Islamic Jihad leadership. The “unarmed civilians” narrative began to fray when I saw images of men in the crowd, identified as known terror operatives, directing the chaos, and in some cases, opening fire themselves.

It was a sickening realization. This wasn’t a clear-cut massacre. This was the weaponization of humanitarian aid. The “killing field” was a battlefield that one side had deliberately and illegally embedded within a civilian population. The sharp moral contrast I once dismissed suddenly snapped into focus. It wasn’t a contrast between a perfect army and innocent victims, but between a military trying, however imperfectly, to target combatants and an enemy that sees its own civilians as expendable shields. My certainty crumbled, replaced by the grim understanding of an impossible choice.

This led me to re-examine the Iran strike, “Operation Am Kelavi.” I had seen it as an unprovoked act of aggression, a prime example of Israeli warmongering that risked global stability for little gain. I believed the skeptics who said it hadn’t meaningfully set back Iran’s nuclear program. But my analyst contact urged me to look past the physical damage and at the strategic outcome. He walked me through the intelligence timeline that had been presented to Israeli leaders. It showed, with terrifying clarity, that Iran had crossed a red line—a “point of no return” where weaponization was no longer a question of if, but when, and the timeline was weeks, not years.

Diplomacy had failed. Sanctions were a sieve. Israel was facing a regime that had sworn its annihilation and was on the precipice of obtaining the means to achieve it. What I had labeled “aggression” was, from their perspective, a desperate, last-ditch act of pre-emptive self-defense. And the target wasn't just concrete bunkers; it was the brain. The operation, a marvel of surgical intelligence, had eliminated the specific senior IRGC commanders and nuclear scientists who were the architects of the program. It was a decapitation strike. It didn't just turn back the clock; it shattered the watch. It sowed chaos and paralysis within the Iranian command structure, which explained why the much-feared massive retaliation never fully materialized. What I saw as a failure was, in fact, a stunning success in preventing a much larger war. Israel hadn't just protected itself; it had done the world a massive, unacknowledged favor by neutralizing a global threat before it could hold the world hostage.

This new lens changed everything. The hawkish rhetoric from the Defense Minister was no longer the sound of a bully. It was the language of deterrence, a clear message to the remaining terror leaders that the old rules were gone, that immunity for plotting genocide from the shadows was over. The reports of civilian casualties in Lebanon, while tragic, now fit into the same horrifying pattern I saw in Gaza: the consequence of Hezbollah deliberately placing its rocket launchers and command posts in and under apartment buildings.

It’s a difficult, uncomfortable truth to accept. The simple, clean narrative of villain and victim is much easier to digest. The story I now see is messier, steeped in the moral ambiguities of fighting a fanatical enemy that rejects every rule of civilized warfare. I was wrong to believe that Israel’s actions existed in a vacuum. I was wrong to ignore the context of an existential threat posed by a death cult that promises annihilation. My old certainties have been replaced by a profound appreciation for the agonizing dilemmas Israel faces daily. This isn't an apology for every action or a denial of tragedy. It is a confession that I, like so many others, was seeing the conflict through a distorted lens, ignoring the inconvenient truths that lay just beneath the surface. It’s a story I never thought I would write, but one I now feel compelled to tell.