'Our Enemies are Your Enemies'

In a long speech that was framed much like a State of the Union address, the Israeli Prime Minister addressed a joint session of Congress yesterday -- with Nancy Pelosi and Kamala Harris, their party's leaders in each chamber, conspicuously absent. The overall thrust of the address was that the real enemy is America's enemy, and that Israel's enemies are also our own. 

“If you remember one thing, one thing from this speech, remember this: Our enemies are your enemies,” Mr. Netanyahu said. “Our fight is your fight. And our victory will be your victory.”

Iran, he said, wants to impose “radical Islam” on the world and sees the United States as its greatest enemy because it is “the guardian of Western civilization and the world’s greatest power.”

He argued that Iran-backed militias like Hamas, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, whatever their aggression against Israel, are actually fighting a different war.

“Israel is merely a tool,” Mr. Netanyahu said. “The main war, the real war, is with America.”

It's definitely true that Iran has been about destroying America from its beginning, and that it aspires to turn the whole world to its brand of Twelver Shi'ite Islam, which can reasonably be described as a radical position within Islam (both Twelver Shi'ite views and the view that the entire world needs to be brought under that particular strain; the view that the whole world should convert to Islam is not especially radical, any more than the view among Christians that every person will someday confess the divinity of Christ). 

Normally, in American politics at least, the other side would attempt to rebut such a central claim. Not this time! This time they pulled down the American flags off Union Station's poles and burned them, ran up the flag of Palestine, carried the black flag of ISIS with signs stating that Allah was bringing about "the final solution" (supposedly while protesting against 'genocide'), burned effigies of both Netanyahu and Biden, attacked the police perimeter around the Capitol while successfully storming the Capitol (remember how fighting the Capitol Police and storming the Capitol on J6 was portrayed as an insurrection against America itself?), vandalized every American monument nearby and generally did all they could to underline the same point. 

So ok, maybe there's some reasonable argument to make that things would calm down if there was a ceasefire in the war -- at least for a while, until Hamas rearmed and was ready to start the war back up again on its own terms. There isn't, apparently, any real debate that the side Israel is fighting is also an enemy of America. They themselves would like you to know that, would like to demonstrate it as clearly as they can.

Helping your friends and harming your enemies was the account of justice that Plato's Republic attempted to rebut. However, one of the key rebuttals was that you might be mistaken about who your enemies are. At least in this case, it's hard to believe there's any mistake.

UPDATE: NPR: Protests “Largely Peaceful.”