Where in the civilized world is a shopping trip to the supermarket considered risky behavior? For anyone living in Israel right now, the answer is obvious.
Iran’s indiscriminate missile attacks that Israelis have been experiencing are different from anything experienced before. The missiles are bigger and better, and there are many, many more of them to contend with.
When they hit, the results can be deadly. Anywhere other than a secure and proper shelter is dangerous. Being out in the open when an attack happens exposes oneself to this risk making going to the supermarket and getting back quickly, a real adventure.
Since October 7, 2023, Israel has been engaged in two “types” of war. The first type of obvious, observable war is the military type, where Israel’s edge is considerable. The second, less obvious but just as important type is the psychological or “perception” war, where Israel’s edge lags.
As we are now clearly into a long-awaited confrontation with Iran, the focus is noticeably on Israel’s military abilities – but as in many conflicts, what may determine who “wins” will be how the world perceives the battle.
The goal is not just to hurt Iran militarily but to make sure that the threat from the land of ayatollahs is not only diminished but eliminated completely and for good.
For Israelis and many other like-minded people, this is a clear choice between right and wrong, between good and evil.
Moral inversion
But as we have learned since October 7, when the distinction was so clear, so obvious – or so we thought – the perception battle may turn out quite differently from what we all think. If recent history is at all a guide, we can’t afford to take anything for granted.
The concept of moral inversion is one that was first introduced by scholar Michael Polanyi and has come to be understood today as the process of confounding values with one another. Moral becomes immoral, good becomes bad, and right becomes wrong.
Nowhere has the process of moral inversion become clearer than in the fight Israel has been leading against Islamic terror. One only needs to look to the streets and campuses of the West to see putatively intelligent, moral people advocating on behalf of what seemed on October 7 to be so obviously wrong.
Moral inversion takes Jewish victimhood in the Holocaust and inverts it to create a false “genocide” against a force that has planned just that against Israel. Jews become Nazis and Palestinians become Jews – a strange scene reminiscent of Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone.
With Iran, a country that denies that a Holocaust ever took place, the enlightened world of moral inverters now has another “victim” they can turn their attention to in their battle against Israel.
This is another example of asymmetric warfare, the psychological kind, where any “victim” has the advantage over the opposing side and where objectivity fades away.
The Iranians, masters in psychological warfare, have already begun to apply the lessons of victimhood. Israel’s elimination of much of Iran’s military leadership – leaders planning the destruction of the Jewish state – took place in a residential neighborhood.
Israel has already been accused of attacking civilian targets, even though the operation was surgical. It conducted a preemptive strike, and now Iran has charged Israel with being an aggressor and starting a war.
Already, terms like “de-escalation” are being used by certain leaders to describe what is expected between Iran and Israel, as if de-escalating before a legitimate threat is verifiably eliminated is a morally good thing.
Hitting civilian targets, starting a war, refusing to end the violence – these are all morally reprehensible actions, but without placing these actions in the framework of fact, they lack objectivity or truth and are detached from reality.
They become morally inverted, and instead of being used to create justice, are used to perpetrate injustice. In its place, we are told that the supermarkets and residential buildings targeted in Israel are in fact military targets.
In the coming days and weeks, we will all see the results of the military confrontation that Israel did not seek but was forced to undertake against Iran. The concerted psychological manipulation that Iran will engage in against Israel will be less obvious but will have the goal of taking these military gains and washing them down.
We live in a world that has not always looked at morality in a clear and proper manner. Defending against the moral inversion that is sure to come from places we don’t expect will be the challenge. Let us hope that the enlightened West will be up to it.
And hopefully, going to the supermarket in Israel will once again become a boring and uninteresting activity.
The writer, who holds a PhD, is a clinical psychologist and a fellow at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs specializing in political psychology.