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Back When Barack Obama Saw Israel Through the Eyes of a Dad (BOOK EXCERPT)
Former US President Barack Obama. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
Beyond Proportionality: Israel’s Just War in Gaza, by Thane Rosenbaum (Wicked Son Books, 2025)
Beyond Proportionality examines Israel’s battles against Hamas and Hezbollah under the laws of war and concludes that its wartime conduct was based on military necessity and fought justly. The targets are terrorists, weapons, and tunnels — not civilians.
Israel relies upon verifiable intelligence, deploys precise weapons, and endangers its own soldiers in order to minimize civilian death.
Below is an excerpt from the book:
If you are a parent with an infant at home, what took place in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, must have affected you deeply. Imagine if your neighbor, who had already made it known that he or she denied your existence and wished for your house to be burned down with you and your family in it, broke into your home and slit your baby’s throat.
I will allow that to sink in for a moment. It deserves contemplation.
I fear most people have not given the reality of such barbarism very much thought. But that is precisely the barbarism that those who attended the Nova Music Festival, or who happened to live in small, ransacked kibbutzim on that fateful October 7 morning, experienced.
If you are a father with teenage daughters, there was barbarism for you, as well. Imagine if your similarly monstrous next door-neighbor invaded your home with a rapacious group of his male relatives and friends, and brutally gang raped your daughter — and made you watch. When finished, they mutilated her breasts and genitalia with knives and machine guns. Can you imagine surviving something like that — as in, psychologically survive such an assault on your flesh and blood?
. . .
The next time some pink-haired progressive or anti-American Muslim is shouting “I am Hamas!” or “Globalize the Intifada!” or “Death to America!” please, at the very least, assume a facial expression that signals an appropriate level of disgust.
It is with these vulgarities in mind that the obvious must be stated: The laws of war were fashioned by military strategists who lived in civilized nations, men who believed that even in war there must be rules. There was honor in going to battle to defend a nation, but wars must be fought honorably — especially when facing adversaries committed to following the same set of rules. The laws of war provide a framework for how civilized nations can resolve their disputes, even if it requires going to war.
Non-state actors, however, terrorists — who abide by no rules at all, who have no pretenses about civility, and who believe themselves to be exempt from the laws of war — should expect that the civilized nations they face in battle will set at least some of those rules aside, too. It’s only fair, it is often necessary, and to do anything less is a betrayal of one’s own people.
. . .
When Barack Obama was running for president, he made his first visit to Israel, the summer before the election — a sideways campaign stop. … Obama wanted to burnish his foreign policy credentials, but mostly he needed to reassure American Jews, many of whom are Democrats, that [he] understood the moral purpose and strategic necessity of Israel, a nation created a mere three years after the liberation of Auschwitz.
. . .
Obama was a very young father of two small daughters. Unexpectedly, probably improvising from the scripted campaign materials, he responded to something he saw in Israel as a protective father would and should, and not as a cynical, gladhanding candidate.
. . .
Sderot has been target practice for Hamas and Islamic Jihad since 2007. The people who live there have grown accustomed to hearing sirens that cause them to enter outside bomb shelters and indoor safe rooms, or duck behind concrete barriers dredged along roads built for this very purpose. Obama spoke with Israeli families who told him that Sderot has faced tens of thousands of rockets in the time they have lived there. One such family had a small boy who lost a leg to one of those Qassam rockets.
When the visit was over, Obama held an impromptu press conference. … But it came as a surprise to many who were skeptical of his support for Israel when Obama read these words out loud:
“The first job of any nation state is to protect its citizens. And so, I can assure you that if — I don’t even care if I was a politician. If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I’m going to do everything in my power to stop that. And I would expect Israelis to do the same thing.”
We know the story from there. The candidate won the presidency, and almost instantly upon entering the Oval Office, forgot all about his visit to Israel. The memory of Sderot, a small city teeming with vulnerability, obviously did not stay with him. During his second term in office, when Israel was at war with Hamas in 2014, Obama repeatedly warned Israel to “show restraint,” “de-escalate the fighting,” and seek avenues for a “ceasefire.”
How soon he forgot.
Thane Rosenbaum is a novelist, essayist, Distinguished University Professor at Touro University, and the author, most recently, of “Beyond Proportionality: Israel’s Just War in Gaza.”
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Israel Says It Would Reduce Troops in Lebanon if Beirut Takes Steps to Disarm Hezbollah
An Israeli tank is positioned on the Israeli side of the Israel-Lebanon border, March 18, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Avi Ohayon
Israel on Monday signaled it would scale back its military presence in southern Lebanon if the Lebanese armed forces took action to disarm Iran-backed Shi’ite terrorist group Hezbollah.
The announcement from the Israeli prime minister’s office came a day after Benjamin Netanyahu met with US envoy Tom Barrack, who has been heavily involved in a plan that would disarm Hezbollah and withdraw Israeli forces from Lebanon.
“If the Lebanese Armed Forces take the necessary steps to implement the disarmament of Hezbollah, Israel will engage in reciprocal measures, including a phased reduction” by the Israeli military, the Israeli prime minister’s office said.
The statement did not explicitly say if Israeli forces would fully withdraw from the five positions they hold in Lebanon.
The Israeli military has maintained a presence in southern Lebanon near the border since agreeing to a United States-backed ceasefire with Hezbollah in November.
Israel was to withdraw its forces within two months and Lebanon‘s armed forces were to take control of the country’s south, territory that has long been a stronghold for Hezbollah.
This month, Lebanon‘s cabinet tasked the army with drawing up a plan to establish state control over arms by December, a challenge to Hezbollah, which has rejected calls to disarm.
The prime minister’s office described the Lebanese cabinet’s decision to back the move as a momentous decision. Israel stood “ready to support Lebanon in its efforts to disarm Hezbollah,” the statement said without saying what support it could provide.
Barrack, the US ambassador to Turkey and special envoy for Syria, has said Israel should comply with the plan for Hezbollah disarmament, which would mean the withdrawal of Israeli forces.
The Israeli military continues to carry out periodic air strikes in Lebanon that it said targeted Hezbollah terrorists and facilities used by the Islamist group to store weapons.
Palestinian factions in Lebanon surrendered some weapons to the armed forces last week as part of the disarmament plan.
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Syria Says Israel Takes Some Territory Around Mount Hermon Despite Talks
Israeli forces operate at a location given as Mount Hermon region, Syria, in this handout image released Dec. 9, 2024. Photo: Israel Defense Forces/Handout via REUTERS
Syria said on Monday that Israel had sent 60 soldiers to take control of an area inside the Syrian border around Mount Hermon, saying the operation violated its sovereignty and posed a further threat to regional security.
Israel did not immediately comment on the accusation by Syria‘s foreign ministry, which comes as the two countries engage in US-mediated talks on de-escalating their conflict in southern Syria. Damascus hopes to reach a security arrangement that could eventually pave the way for broader political talks.
Monday’s incident took place near a strategic hilltop that overlooks Beit Jinn, an area of southern Syria close to the border with Lebanon, the ministry said. Israel also arrested six Syrians there, according to residents in the area.
The area is known for arms smuggling by Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorist group and by Palestinian jihadist factions. Previous Israeli incursions have mostly been in the southern Quneitra governorate.
The Israeli military on Sunday shared footage of what it said were troops locating weapons storage facilities last week in southern Syria.
“This dangerous escalation is considered a direct threat to regional peace and security,” the Syrian foreign ministry said in a statement.
Israel has cited its own security concerns for its military interventions inside Syria since the fall of Bashar al-Assad last December, including what it sees as its obligation to protect members of the Druze minority in southern Syria.
Hundreds of people were reported killed in clashes last month in the southern province of Sweida between Druze fighters, Sunni Bedouin tribes and government forces. Israel intervened with airstrikes to prevent what it said was mass killings of Druze by the Syrian government forces.
In January, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said Israeli troops would remain on the summit of Mount Hermon indefinitely.
Israel has since then formed a de facto security zone, where it regularly patrols, sets up checkpoints, and carries out searches and raids in villages.
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Widespread Anti-Israel Protests Held in Australia
Demonstrators hold a placard as they take part in the ‘Nationwide March for Palestine’ protest in Sydney, Australia, Aug. 24, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Hollie Adams
Thousands of Australians joined anti-Israel rallies on Sunday, organizers said, amid strained relations between Israel and Australia following the center-left government’s decision to recognize a Palestinian state.
More than 40 protests took place across Australia on Sunday, Palestine Action Group said, including large turnouts in state capitals Sydney, Brisbane, and Melbourne. The group said around 350,000 attended the rallies nationwide, including around 50,000 in Brisbane, though police estimated the numbers there at closer to 10,000. Police did not have estimates for crowd sizes in Sydney and Melbourne.
In Sydney, organizer Josh Lees said Australians were out in force to “demand an end to this genocide in Gaza and to demand that our government sanction Israel” as rallygoers, many with Palestinian flags, chanted “free, free Palestine.”
Alex Ryvchin, co-CEO of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, an umbrella group for more than 200 Jewish organizations, told Sky News television that the rallies created “an unsafe environment and shouldn’t be happening.”
The protests follow Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week stepping up his personal attacks on his Australian counterpart Anthony Albanese over his government’s decision this month to recognize a Palestinian state.
Diplomatic ties between Australia and Israel soured after Albanese’s Labor government said it would conditionally recognize Palestinian statehood, following similar moves by France, Britain, and Canada.
The Aug. 11 announcement came days after tens of thousands of people marched across Sydney’s iconic Harbour Bridge, calling for peace and aid deliveries to Gaza, where Israel began an offensive nearly two years ago after the Hamas terrorist group launched a deadly cross-border attack.