The recent Florida Sun Sentinel editorial, “The Dark Side of the U.S.-Israel Alliance,” published by the Valley News asks readers to view a complex conflict through a single moral lens. That may produce a satisfying opinion piece. It does not produce serious civic discourse.
The editorial’s argument depends on omission. To describe this war as effectively unprovoked is to erase years of Iranian aggression, including direct threats and the long use of proxy forces and allied militias that have destabilized the region, targeted civilians, and threatened both Israeli and American interests. Whatever one’s views of current leaders, this conflict did not emerge from nowhere.
The piece also presents the U.S.-Israel alliance as if it were simply a moral burden imposed on America for Israel’s sake. That is an ideological reading, not a serious strategic one. The alliance is rooted not only in shared democratic commitments but in intelligence, deterrence, and security cooperation developed over decades in response to real threats. To pretend otherwise is not clear. It is a simplification.
There is another distortion shaping commentary on this issue, and it deserves to be named plainly: for some influential voices, hostility toward Donald Trump has become so intense that it clouds judgment about America’s interests, Israel’s security, and even the nature of the Iranian threat itself.
Thomas Friedman of The New York Times recently made that point with unusual candor. Speaking about Iran on CNN’s “Smerconish,” he said he wanted to see the regime “defeated militarily,” but added: “I really don’t want to see Bibi Netanyahu or Donald Trump politically strengthened by this war because they are two awful human beings.” He called himself “torn.”
That is a revealing admission. It suggests that even the weakening of a violent regime can become politically uncomfortable if the wrong people receive credit. One need not support Donald Trump to see the problem. Iran’s aggression does not become less dangerous because Trump is president. The strategic value of confronting terror networks does not disappear because a political opponent may benefit. When domestic political hatred becomes the primary lens through which war, alliances, and national interests are judged, public argument becomes less principled and less trustworthy.
That matters not only in Washington or New York, but here in the Upper Valley.
Words published in a local newspaper do not stay on the opinion page. They shape how neighbors see one another. When Israel is framed in one-dimensional language of darkness, corruption, and conquest, and when its alliance with the United States is cast as inherently immoral, that rhetoric does not remain abstract. It enters classrooms, workplaces, public meetings, and private conversations. And too often, local Jews are the ones made to absorb the consequences.
That is the part too often ignored. Jewish people in this region are already navigating a climate in which they are too often asked to explain, defend, or distance themselves from events far beyond their control. In that environment, public commentary has a heightened responsibility to distinguish between legitimate criticism of a government and rhetoric that feeds suspicion, exclusion, or hostility toward Jewish neighbors.
Criticism of Israel is legitimate. Criticism of American foreign policy is legitimate. But caricature is not criticism, and moral performance is not moral seriousness. A newspaper serves its community best when it helps readers grapple with complexity, not when it rewards them with certainty built on omission.
The real danger in the Valley News editorial is not that it takes a strong position. Newspapers should publish strong opinions. The danger is that it replaces analysis with activism and complexity with accusation at a moment when our community needs more care, more rigor, and more humility.
The Upper Valley deserves better than that. It deserves a conversation grounded in fact, proportion, and mutual respect. And Jewish neighbors deserve a civic culture in which public debate does not make them less safe.
The writers are members of Shalom Alliance Vermont.