Israel is fighting for its survival in Lebanon

Thought experiment. Say you were the leader of a small democracy with enemies committed to your destruction visible to the naked eye on the other side of your border to the north. Say they had already fired many hundreds of rockets onto your towns, claiming lives and causing mass evacuations.

Say the enemy in question had been ordered by the United Nations to withdraw from the border and lay down its weapons back in 2006. Say it had totally ignored that UN Security Council resolution, with no consequences whatsoever. Say the enemy was so deeply embedded in that territory to your north that its own government was powerless to evict them, and there was evidence that they were planning a massacre on a medieval scale.

Say your country had already suffered the worst terrorist atrocity imaginable in the south three years ago, bringing you face-to-face with the folly of turning a blind eye while your enemies prepare their attacks. Say the international community had not lifted a finger to help, but instead had condemned you in every arena possible as you struggled to defend yourself.

With no alternative in sight, say you made the only reasonable decision: to send in your troops to degrade the northern enemy and allow your people to live their lives in safety. Say Yvette Cooper, Britain’s foreign secretary, responded by demanding that you halt your ‘military escalation’, while also bleating that your enemy must ‘disarm’ but offering no ideas for how to make that happen, nor any commitment to enforce it.

How would you respond? First, I’d wager, you’d roll your eyes at the preening self-regard of modern Britain, which is more concerned with issuing statements that mean nothing – but sound good – than actually engaging with the real world. Second, you’d order your troops to fight on.

By now, sharper-eyed readers will have twigged that I’ve been cunningly placing you in the shoes of the prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, as his army battles Hezbollah in Lebanon. That has always been the problem: everyone tells Israel what it cannot do, but nobody offers a realistic alternative. Another example came yesterday, when in a stormy telephone conversation, US president Donald Trump reportedly called Netanyahu ‘fucking crazy’ – pot and kettle, anyone? – and demanded that he scale back the assault. The world hates the Israeli leader and his country, ranted Trump (again, pot and kettle?) as he warned him not to take any action that would jeopardise the delicate negotiations with the blessed Iranians.

At the beginning of the Iran campaign, much was made of the supposedly different war aims held by Washington and Jerusalem. To a large extent, this was mischief caused by speculators who lusted after an allied humiliation more than the defeat of the world’s worst regime. In Lebanon, however, we now see the interests of the two partners beginning to diverge as Trump becomes increasingly desperate for a deal with Tehran, while Netanyahu’s priority remains what it has always been: survival.

His own political survival, perhaps – but more fundamentally, the survival of his people. This is something that is difficult to convey to audiences living in the ‘comfort democracies’, where we have known nothing but first-world problems since the moment we first drew breath. That luxury allows us to stand tall without fear of sniper fire and wag our fingers without cost.

Has Yvette Cooper ever had to go to bed in fear of air raids during the night? Or worrying that her children will be murdered by jihadis stationed just a few miles away? No, the greatest tribulation she has suffered is being married to Ed Balls. This is the reason why, for a true sense of morality, we must cast our eyes to those beleaguered democracies and their allies who know what it means to face tyranny.

The Iranian people and the Ukrainians, for example, are both staunch supporters of Israel. Somaliland, which faces a jihadi-dominated enemy to the south in the form of Somalia, is also a close friend of the Jewish State. Even Finland, which is on the frontlines with Russia, is more pro-Israel than its Nordic neighbours, and a similar story can be told about Greece, which lives in the shadow of an increasingly Islamist, neo-Ottoman Turkey.

Perhaps Trump is not entirely correct about every country in the world hating Israel. My hope – if you can call it a hope – is that when the dogs of war come barking at the doors of western Europe, our priorities will be forcibly revised, we will be cured of our luxury Israelophobia and a stronger alliance with the Jewish State will seem wise.

In the meantime, Israel fights in Lebanon alone. Which is a great shame, as for Hezbollah to be rooted out once and for all, politically as well as militarily, input from the international community will one day be vital. Much of this is our fault, in other words. It’s our fault.

Jake Wallis Simons is co-host of The Brink, with former parachute-regiment officer Andrew Fox. It is available on all platforms now.