Were it an American philanthropy, Efrat would probably be labeled “pro-life,” and grouped alongside the “crisis pregnancy centers”—usually run by Christian groups—that have stoked the ire of left-wing activists. But the watchword of this Jerusalem-based organization is “choice.” Mary Margaret Olohan writes:

Efrat has saved the lives of 83,467 children since its founding, according to the cheery signs on the wall in the pregnancy center’s storage center, where [its] executive director Nir Salomon energetically explained the pregnancy center’s mission to our visiting group of American Catholics. . . . He emphasized that Efrat aims to empower women to make their own choices about their babies without pressure from husbands, boyfriends, parents, or other outside influences.

“When a woman comes to us, we tell her, ‘You have an option to abort. It is legal in Israel. But you also have the option to have a child,’” he said. “And that is the unique proposition of Efrat.”

Efrat was founded by the late Holocaust survivor Herschel Feigenbaum, who . . . wanted to create a non-profit encouraging childbirth to replace the many Jewish children slaughtered during the Holocaust. . . . Many Israeli women considering abortion already have children, Salomon said, noting that 56 percent of the women Efrat helps are married. Often, a woman’s husband has told her that they cannot afford another child. Efrat wants these families to know that they can, in fact, afford another baby—and Efrat will help make that baby’s entry into the world smoother.

A family’s fear may boil down to something as simple as a crib, Salomon said. The family cannot afford a crib and thus feels like it cannot afford a child. That simple act of providing Israeli families with that crib, or even with diapers or formula, is a major game changer. . . . Concerns do not end there, of course. Many families want to know how they will afford their baby after he or she is born. Here Efrat also has an answer—for the first two years after the baby’s birth, Efrat sends the families a box of baby products and food every month.

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.”