Last week, I recommended Gershon Hacohen’s exploration of the theology behind Hamas’s strategy, and how the IDF can fight against such a holy war. In a follow-up piece, he turns to the question of the Jewish state’s own sense of purpose. “Nation of Israel,” asks Hacohen, paraphrasing the late novelist A.B. Yehoshua, “for what purpose do you fight, and how do you fight?” Such a question cannot be answered by a committee of inquiry like the one the ministry of defense is forming to investigate the failures of October 7. But it is one that matters:

Hamas and Hizballah fight out of religious belief. By contrast, we are not clear on our reasons for uniting to fight wars beyond our desire to safeguard our existence and survival.

Hacohen also raises a disturbing possibility. The creation of a Jewish state has not, as Theodor Herzl hoped, brought an end to anti-Semitism by transforming the Jews into a normal people. Instead, as Natan Sharansky has pointed out, Israel has simply become the world’s Jew. Nor has Zionism succeeded in guaranteeing the security of Jews in their homeland, as evidenced by October 7. Could Zionism be a failure? Hacohen answers with an unequivocal “no,” even as he cautions against any sort of utopianism:

[T]o those who witness the combat spirit of the IDF soldiers and the full support of their parents, the Zionist narrative manifests itself in all its practical simplicity by demonstrating a readiness to fight without hesitation to defend the people and the country. This is a major historical achievement. . . .

On Saturday, October 7, the dream of an Israeli paradise collapsed. With the war in Ukraine and even in Western Europe, it has become clear that despite hopes for peace everywhere, there is no paradise on earth. As expressed in the Negev lullaby my mother sang to me in my childhood, “There is no deep silence without a weapon. . . . Sleep, son.”

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.”