Amid the escalation of hostilities between Israel and Gaza in November, Hamas threatened to target Ben-Gurion airport with its rockets; Israeli authorities responded by rerouting some flights without causing any serious disruption to business as usual. But earlier, during the brief 2014 war, when a rocket from Gaza landed a mile from the airport, the Obama administration quickly suspended U.S. flights to Israel for a few days and the EU just as quickly followed suit. Raphael Bouchnik-Chen comments:

Hamas learned [in 2014] that it can leverage flight restrictions to its advantage, even if only as a propaganda factor. If it so much as mentions Ben-Gurion airport in the context of potential retaliation targets, Israel has to take notice and will therefore be deterred.

Technically speaking, Hamas missiles and rockets are indeed capable of reaching a radius beyond 70 km, potentially threatening much of Israel, [the airport included]. This was demonstrated in 2014, though most of the missiles and rockets fired toward Tel Aviv were intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome. Still, it is rational to wonder whether this hazard turned out to be a critical factor that caused Israeli decision-makers to advocate for military restraint [last month, despite] Hamas’s provocations. . . .

In practical terms, the flight bans imposed in 2014 . . . were drastically and needlessly overdramatic. . . . The double standard put on display during these events was manifested once again very recently, when ballistic-missile barrages were launched on an almost daily basis by the Yemenite Houthi rebels toward several Saudi main airports. No flight prohibitions were even considered in light of these attacks. . . .

The flight prohibition enforced on Ben-Gurion Airport in 2014 was a form of political pressure exerted on Israel by the Obama administration to stop the Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip, not a reflection of genuine safety concerns. This suggests that Hamas’s threats to “close the Israeli sky” are little more than mere propaganda.

Unfortunately, if American or European governments want to punish or pressure Jerusalem, they can follow President Obama’s example and use Hamas’s threats as a pretext.

In a recent episode of 60 Minutes, a former State Department official tells the interviewer that U.S. support for Israel following October 7 has “put a target on America’s back” in the Arab world “and beyond the Arab world.” The complaint is a familiar one: Middle Easterners hate the United States because of its closeness to the Jewish state. But this gets things exactly backward. Just look at the rhetoric of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its various Arab proxies: America is the “Great Satan” and Israel is but the “Little Satan.”

Why, then, does Iran see the U.S. as the world’s primary source of evil? The usual answer invokes the shah’s 1953 ouster of his prime minister, but the truth is that this wasn’t the subversion of democracy it’s usually made out to be, and the CIA’s role has been greatly exaggerated. Moreover, Ladan Boroumand points out,

the 1953 coup was welcomed by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, [the architect of the 1979 Islamic Revolution], and would not have succeeded without the active complicity of proponents of political Islam. And . . . the United States not only refrained from opposing the Islamic Revolution but inadvertently supported its emergence and empowered its agents. How then could . . . Ayatollah Khomeini’s virulent enmity toward the United States be explained or excused?

Khomeini’s animosity toward the shah and the United States traces back to 1963–64, when the shah initiated sweeping social reforms that included granting women the right to vote and to run for office and extending religious minorities’ political rights. These reforms prompted the pro-shah cleric of 1953 to become his vocal critic. It wasn’t the shah’s autocratic rule that incited Khomeini’s opposition, but rather the liberal nature of his autocratically implemented social reforms.

There is no need for particular interpretive skill to comprehend the substance of Khomeini’s message: as Satan, America embodies the temptation that seduces Iranian citizens into sin and falsehood. “Human rights” and “democracy” are America’s tools for luring sinful and deviant citizens into conspiring against the government of God established by the ayatollah.

Or, as George W. Bush put it, jihadists hate America because “they hate our freedoms.”