By Stephen M. Flatow, JNS
Israel's conduct in war is a reflection of its values: a profound reverence for life, a belief in the purity of arms and a commitment to laws of armed conflict. Not so Iran.
This week, Israel’s war with Iran took a dark and decisive turn.
Iran, not content to act through its proxies in Gaza, Lebanon and Yemen, escalated its direct attacks on Israeli civilians, striking deep into the Israeli heartland. One of the missiles landed at a bustling hospital in Beersheva, Soroka Medical Center.
It was not a military installation. It was not a government building.
It was a hospital, serving thousands of civilians, Jews and Arabs, the elderly and children alike. I know firsthand about Soroka Medical Center because it was where my daughter, Alisa, was brought following the April 9, 1995, Kfar Darom terror attack. Despite valiant efforts to save her life, Alisa died there the next day, with me by her side. It was there that the decision was made to donate Alisa’s organs for transplant. To this day, I remember the kindnesses from the doctors, nurses and staff of the hospital.
While Israeli missile-defense systems have saved countless lives, this attack underscored the thin line between deterrence and vulnerability. Iran has made a clear strategic choice: targeting civilians to sow terror, hoping to fracture Israeli resolve. Israel, despite its military superiority, continues to show restraint. Its retaliatory strikes are focused on Iranian military targets and nuclear infrastructure within Iran, and IRGC command nodes. Tehran’s civilian population remains untouched.
I have to ask: Is this moral high ground sustainable—or even wise?
To answer that, it’s worth stepping back to the 1940s, when another democracy faced a totalitarian threat. During World War II, the United Kingdom, initially reluctant to bomb German cities, changed course after the Luftwaffe began indiscriminate attacks on British civilian centers. Once London was bombed, British bombers soon targeted Berlin and other German urban centers. The idea was not just retaliation. It was to break the will of the German people and signal that total war would be answered with total war.
Britain’s decision to bomb German cities remains morally and historically controversial. Tens of thousands of German civilians perished. Some historians argue it shortened the war. Others say it embittered the German population further. But none dispute that Churchill’s government believed such action was necessary to defend the British people.
Israel today is in a different geopolitical and moral landscape. The Jewish state, with memories of the Holocaust, has always viewed its conduct in war as a reflection of its values: a profound reverence for life, a belief in the purity of arms and a commitment to the laws of armed conflict. The IDF does not target civilians. It does not fire missiles at Tehran’s hospitals, schools or apartment buildings—even as Israeli cities absorb rockets, Iranian drones, and now, ballistic missiles.
There are sound strategic reasons for this policy. First, international legitimacy matters to Israel. In a world where it is increasingly isolated diplomatically, especially in international forums, Israel cannot afford to be perceived as abandoning its moral code. A strike on civilian targets in Iran, even as a form of deterrence, would provide ammunition to its critics and undercut support even among its allies.
Second, targeting Iranian civilians may not weaken the regime; it may strengthen it. World War II taught us that the British, despite devastation brought by first the Blitz, then V-1 buzz bombs and V-2 rockets, didn’t panic but fortified their resolve to defeat the Nazis.
Iran, like Nazi Germany, is not a democracy. The regime thrives on manufacturing crises. Civilian casualties could rally the Iranian public around the very regime many quietly loathe. A population that has shown flickers of dissent in recent years—from the women’s rights protests to anti-regime demonstrations—might suddenly unite in nationalistic defiance.
But the moral clarity of restraint becomes murkier when hospitals are hit. If Iran feels emboldened, believing that it can attack Israel’s civilians with impunity, what stops it from going further? What if next time it’s a school? A retirement home? Or Tel Aviv’s central medical center? At what point does restraint become complicity in one’s own victimhood?
Some argue that proportionality in war does not mean moral symmetry. If your enemy wages war immorally, you are not obligated to mimic their depravity. But proportionality also requires the state to protect its own people. If avoiding civilian casualties in Iran only invites more civilian deaths in Israel, is that truly moral?
Israel’s greatest challenge today is to deter Iran without losing the soul of the Jewish state. That means continuing to strike Iran’s military infrastructure, cyber capabilities, nuclear facilities and command-and-control centers with unrelenting precision. But it also may mean making the cost to the regime—and to those who prop it up—undeniably painful.
There is perhaps a middle ground. Israel could target regime-affiliated economic assets in Iran’s cities—oil refineries, communications centers and infrastructure used by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. These are not strictly military, but nor are they civilian in the traditional sense. A message can be sent without turning hospitals into targets, as Iran has now done.
The world will judge Israel, as it always does, with a microscope. But Israel’s first responsibility is not to the opinion of foreign diplomats. It is to its citizens—the ones lying in hospital beds in the south tonight, wounded by a regime that crossed another line. The question now is whether Israel will draw one of its own.
