The more one learns about the actual nature of Israel’s current war, and the more one learns about the real horrors, ethnic cleansing, and war crimes of the Assad regime, the more absurd the accusations against the Jewish state seem. Cole Aronson, trying to make sense of these perverse libels, turns to one of the 20th century’s great Jewish writers:

Someone must have been telling lies. When he’s arrested at the beginning of Franz Kafka’s The Trial, Joseph K. thinks first of his innocence. To be innocent is to be innocent of some crime, but the court that’s ordered K.’s arrest never says what crime K. has committed. K. seems to be guilty simply—there are no reports or accusations for him to expose as lies. Because the court “is attracted to guilt,” it will wait for K. wherever he goes. And K.’s guilt for doing nothing cannot be remedied by his doing anything now. . . . K.’s guilt is reason-blind and indelible, an inscrutable scrutiny.

For instance, in Amnesty International’s recent bill of particulars regarding Israel, Israel is considered guilty of “genocide” for evacuating Palestinian civilians from areas where it plans to engage in intense fighting:

To move Palestinians was an act of genocide. But not to move the Palestinians would’ve resulted in more Palestinian deaths. . . . Since October 7, 2023, Amnesty International and its progressive allies in the West have been damning Israel for one thing and for its opposite. For evacuating Palestinians and for not evacuating Palestinians. For protecting itself and for not protecting itself. For not supplying aid to Gaza, and for prolonging the war in Gaza (itself the partial result of Hamas looting the aid Israel has facilitated). For the predicament of the hostages, and for the security measures—a fence, a partial blockade—that limited the number of hostages to a few hundred as opposed to a few thousand.

They are the real-life court of Kafka’s Trial—with law degrees from Harvard, subscriptions to the New Yorker, and opinions from Tehran.

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.”