There is, however, at least one very important way in which Israel is different. Israel is the only western country that shares a border with a political entity dedicated to its destruction. (There is no doubt of Hamas’s objective, which its charter makes clear: “The so-called peaceful solutions, and the international conferences to resolve the Palestinian problem, are all contrary to the beliefs of the Islamic Resistance Movement. For renouncing any part of Palestine means renouncing part of the religion.”).

We in the U.S. have not faced that reality since the end of the Revolutionary War. Europe has not faced such a reality since World War II. It’s therefore hard to know exactly what people “like us” would do in that situation, but history provides some clues.