I think it’s fair to describe me as a Christian Zionist. I believe in the necessity of the Jewish people to have their own safe, secure homeland. And while I have never thought Israel was perfect (far from it), I have seen the antisemitism and genocidal intent animating its enemies in the Middle East, including Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran.

I can see the extraordinary antisemitism and bias in the larger international community. When a United Nations that includes North Korea, Syria, Russia and China condemns Israel more than any other nation in the world (by far), you know that the Jewish state is being singled out.

I’m also a veteran of the Iraq war who served as judge advocate for an armored cavalry regiment during the surge in Iraq in 2007 and 2008. Before I became a journalist, I was part of a legal team that defended Israel from war crime accusations after Operation Cast Lead, the Gaza war of 2008 and 2009.

I know that Israel had the right under international law to destroy Hamas’s military and to remove Hamas from power after the massacre in southern Israel on Oct. 7. In other words, Israel had the right to respond to a terrorist force like Hamas the way the United States and its allies responded to a terrorist force like ISIS after ISIS launched its terrorist campaign across the Middle East and across Europe.

So, yes, I consider myself a friend of Israel. But now its friends need to stage an intervention. The Israeli government has gone too far. It has engineered a staggering humanitarian crisis, and that crisis is both a moral atrocity and a long-term threat to Israel itself.

Civilian casualties were inevitable when Israel responded to Hamas, but the suffering of Palestinian civilians is far beyond the bounds of military necessity. The people of Gaza, already grieving the loss of thousands of children, now face a famine — and children once again will bear the brunt of the pain.