We can become so idealistic about human nature that we stop believing genuine, active, positive evil is possible. We cannot believe that one person can desire and pursue the goal of inflicting misery or destruction on another person.

Then we drift into seeing evil solely in negative terms — as a refusal to desire and pursue another person’s welfare. Evil is only to be unconcerned or insensitive toward other people, or even insufficiently concerned or sensitive.

Such people can, perversely, fail to understand the necessity of defense against evil, and the unavoidable consequences of such defenses. Perhaps if the defender had been more concerned or sensitive to those who needed it, there would never have been conflict or need for defense.

And blind to the reality of positive evil and consequently the necessity of defense, such people see evil only in the defense, in the form of insufficient concern and sensitivity toward the innocent victims — innocent victims accidentally but inevitably and unavoidably harmed in every war, however carefully and humanely fought.

If you cannot consider the reality of positive evil, your thinking on Israel will be both stupid and callous, however intelligent and empathetic you believe yourself to be.

Stupid, callous notion 1: If those claiming to defend themselves from evil aggressors would stop returning violence with violence — or, at least returning only as much violence as was done to them — there would be no escalation to war, only sporadic pogroms and occasional terrorist attacks. This would result in a far lower casualty count. And with more consideration and sensitivity and lovingkindness, surely the pogroms and terrorism will decrease, and eventually vanish. Niceness conquers all.

Stupid, callous notion 2: If those who put themselves in a position of needing to defend themselves would stop existing, those attacking them would no longer have anyone to attack, and this would bring an end to violence. Decolonize from the river to the sea, and send the settlers back to their colonizing nations, which are, what? The EU? The Arab nations from which half of Israelis were expelled? Maybe load the defenders on trains and transport them to Poland, as has been suggested by some student protesters, echoing their German forebears pre-final solution thinking. No zionism, no antizionism, and no antizionist violence. Problem solved.

Stupid, callous notion 3 (the kumbaya solution): Allow the “refugees” to return to their homes, and establish a multi-ethnic state from the river to the sea. Of course, this assumes that motivation behind of this demand is the flourishing of Palestinians in their grandparent’s homes, and not the explicitly stated long-term goal of Hamas and Hezbollah, which, of course, is the destruction of the state of Israel and expulsion of the Jews from their ancestral homeland, the only Jewish state in existence. Again, this idea denies the reality that positive evil does exist, and that Palestinians elect and overwhelmingly support evil regimes. Such people will not participate in a multi-ethnic state. They will establish an Islamic state, and will absolutely persecute if not expel or annihilate the Jewish population.

But it is rare for opiners on Israel to actually contend with the reality of evil and to factor it into their views on what ought to be done.

It is also rare for them to inform themselves on the history of Israel and the Jews, and to look into why Zionism became a movement in the first place.

It is, instead just sentimentality (“Surely there is some other way! Surely!”) combined with spurious spreadsheet data comparing casualties on each side (“One number is so much bigger!”), combined with a pronounced disinclination to assign any responsibility for starting the war or for conducting it in a way to produce the most heartrending casualties possible, combined with an inclination to expect impossibly saintly conduct from those forced to defend themselves, combined with the cheapest gimmicky paradoxes of Jews becoming the new Nazis and the old Nazi allies becoming the new Jews. This not deep, not clever, and not decent. It is contemptible, and if you dare suggest it to me, I will make you feel your contemptibility, which is real. You are absolutely no different from the antisemites who refused to help persecuted Jews in their time of need last time around. Nobody helps Jews in their times of need, only when they have no need and it’s fashionable to abhor the Holocaust. But when that weathervane spins, you spin with it, and so does your unreliable moral compass. In the future, when you have your mea culpa, I’ll go along, but I will never forget how incapable most people are of thoughtful decency.

I do not respect this kind of thing in any way — neither intellectually, nor morally. I have nothing but contempt and I won’t suppress that. I do have some friends who have worked to inform themselves, and are seriously grappling with this incredibly difficult issue. I will continue arguing with them, and I will work at managing my too-intense emotion and exasperation as I do my own grappling.

The Jews are my family. You don’t give a shit what happens to them. You can’t be bothered to reckon with the difficulties. Yet you also cannot bother shutting your mouth and keeping your casual but blatantly anti-Israel bias concealed. So I don’t give a shit about your trifling opinion, and I won’t pretend it is worth hearing. And I won’t pretend I don’t hold it against you.