In the New York Times, Michael D. Shear writes:

Yet many Israelis welcome the prospect of a future in which they are no longer surrounded by well-armed enemies determined to do them harm, even if it means being viewed negatively by the rest of the world.

In 1981, Menachem Begin, then the prime minister of Israel, urged Israelis to “never pause to wonder what the world will think or say.” He told a group of American Jews that “the world may not necessarily like the fighting Jew, but the world will have to take account of him.”

It has always fascinated me that, when the topic is Israel, the idea that a country would “welcome the prospect of a future in which they are no longer surrounded by well-armed enemies determined to do them harm, even if it means being viewed negatively by the rest of the world” is deemed to be surprising or debatable or controversial. There is no country in the world that would want to be “surrounded by well-armed enemies determined to do them harm.” Nor is there a country that would prioritize being viewed positively by the rest of the world over eliminating that threat. Such a position would be wholly absurd. Quite why Israel is supposed to be different from everywhere else is unclear.

If, somehow, the United States were in the same position as Israel — and if it were capable of fixing that — it would act in precisely the same way as Israel has. So would Britain. So would France. So would Poland or Mongolia or Bolivia or Chad. That is elemental statehood. The same is true of smaller polities. If the United States broke up and Oklahoma found itself surrounded by a bunch of armies that were hellbent on wiping it off the map, Oklahoma’s No. 1 priority would be changing that. That people in Oregon or New York were upset by it would simply not matter. It would be a secondary, or tertiary, or quaternary consideration. Human nature dictates as much, and Israelis are humans, too.