Dear nations of the world complaining about Israeli self-defense actions: None of this is for you.

Israel’s security is first and foremost about Israel’s security. Yet the people who live there so often go ignored. Thankfully, Israel is a key part of the alliance of democracies and so what benefits Israel usually benefits the chirping ingrates in Western capitals too, whether they like it or not. It’s a good system.

What’s not good is that the discussion about Israel in the global press and diplomatic discourse very rarely includes the concerns of actual Israelis.

The main reason for this is that much of the world simply doesn’t care what happens to Israelis. Another reason is that the West tends to resent Israeli democracy—which means they resent the opinions of the Israeli people. Benjamin Netanyahu is the only Israeli they talk about, because they want him to just do what they want him to do already, as if he were a dictator. They did this even when Bibi was leading a unity government with rivals to his political left—who happened to be more hawkish on aspects of the war than Netanyahu, by the way.

Israel will never be governed by a single party, let alone a single person. If you want to influence Israeli politics, you will have to acknowledge the existence of the actual people who live there.

Go ahead, take a look at them. What do you notice? Here’s what I notice: They’re walking with their shoulders back and their heads up looking straight ahead again.

The Israeli people have had a difficult year. They—the people, the human beings whose fate goes unmentioned by the world—were the victims of unspeakable crimes in an attempt to wipe them out. They did not want this war, they did not start this war, but they will not lay down and die.

Their recent accomplishments—taking out the head of Hezbollah and the rest of its top leadership, doing the same to Hamas, avenging the buckets of American and Israeli blood in which those terrorists were soaked—have brought back some of their swagger. That’s a healthy thing. Because when Israelis are viewed as weak, their enemies attempt to carry out massacres like October 7, and a large chunk of the public around the world cheers on the barbarians because the babies they are killing and kidnapping are Jewish babies.

And then, Ismail Haniyeh dissolved into dust in a safehouse in Tehran—while his next door neighbors were unharmed. Like the hammer of God came down on his head. Then thousands of Hezbollah pagers exploded in a targeted maiming scheme whose ingenuity—a 30-year-old woman in the IDF came up with it, reportedly—shocked the world. Then Hassan Nasrallah, the longtime leader of the world’s most dangerous terrorist organization, looked up just in time to see the hammer of God swinging again.

The operation to take out Hezbollah’s top command was undertaken while Netanyahu was in New York addressing the United Nations General Assembly. Smirking and grumbling diplomats from around the world filed out of the hall in protest of Bibi’s speech. But that’s OK—they heard him loud and clear anyway.

The Israeli people were Nasrallah’s targets. They were Ismail Haniyeh’s targets. This war and these battles are not abstract Model UN debates in some Berkeley high school. They are scenes from a country under siege, its people partially living in bomb shelters, partially living in hotels, building hospitals underground because of the concerted attack they have been subject to. It’s their opinion on whether Hassan Nasrallah deserves to live or die that matters most in these circumstances. How do they—not the editorial board of the Guardian or some hot air balloon writing at the Washington Post—feel about the mission? What do they think about the steps their government and their military have taken to protect them? What does Nasrallah’s death mean for them?

The Israeli people deserve to feel good, to feel strong, to feel united, even as those feelings mix with an ongoing sadness, a frustration, a vulnerability, a loneliness. They deserve to take out their enemies after showing superhuman restraint. The people of Israel deserve to feel safe, and to live. And they will.