The Blogs: The First Rule of Defending Israel: Reject the Premise | Ron Jacobson

Since October 7, I’ve found that the hardest part of defending Israel isn’t the facts. It’s the questions themselves.

I’ve had the same conversations over and over again. With friends, online, in passing discussions that quickly turn into debates. And I’ve noticed a pattern: the framing is doing most of the work.

It’s time to adopt a different strategy when supporting Israel: reject the premise.

I first heard this phrase on The West Wing. Leo McGarry, preparing for a press Q&A, explains how to handle questions he disagrees with: don’t answer them on their terms. Reject the premise. That idea has stuck with me, and it feels especially relevant in debates about Israel.

Many of the questions people ask about Israel aren’t really questions. They’re rhetorical traps. You hear them all the time: Does Israel have a right to exist? Is Israel committing genocide in Gaza? Why does the US give money to Israel?

Each of these questions embeds an assumption. And the moment you answer them directly, you’ve already accepted that assumption and given up ground.

Take the question: “Does Israel have a right to exist?” The instinct is to say yes, and then to justify it. History, 1948, persecution, international law. That instinct is understandable. But it concedes something important: that Israel’s existence is up for debate in the first place.

A better response is to step outside the frame: “I’m not going to answer whether Israel has a ‘right to exist,’ because that framing is misleading. Countries aren’t granted existence by some external rule. They exist or they don’t. Israel exists. Nobody asks whether France has a right to exist. Nobody asks whether China has a right to exist. The more relevant question is why the Jewish state is uniquely expected to justify its existence at all.”

Or take the claim that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Again, the instinct is to rebut it with facts: casualty ratios, the realities of urban warfare, Hamas embedding itself among civilians, warnings before strikes, humanitarian aid. Those facts matter. But once you’ve accepted the premise, you’re already playing defense.

You can instead reframe: “Israel is fighting to stop a genocide, not commit one. Hamas and Iran have both made clear their goal is the destruction of Israel. Like any sovereign country, Israel is not going to allow itself to be destroyed. The more honest question is how a country should defend itself against an enemy that operates this way.”

Finally, consider: “Why does the US give money to Israel?” This is a more legitimate question. Americans should question how their government spends money. In fact, there’s a reasonable argument that the relationship would be healthier if Israel were less dependent on US military aid.

But even here, the framing often suggests that Israel is some uniquely suspicious recipient of support. In reality, the United States spends enormous resources supporting allies around the world. It stations tens of thousands of troops in Germany, South Korea, and Japan, and invests heavily to maintain those alliances. Those arrangements are rarely treated as moral anomalies. With Israel, they often are.

Rejecting the premise is not always easy. It runs against the instinct to explain, to persuade, to prove you are right. But if you consistently engage on someone else’s terms, you’re starting from a disadvantaged position.

A boxer learns quickly not to fight off the back foot. The same is true in argument. The moment you recognize that a question is built on a false, hostile, or selective premise, you don’t have to accept it. You can step back and reframe the conversation.

That doesn’t mean avoiding hard questions. It means making sure you’re answering real ones.

Leo McGarry had it right: if you don’t like the question, don’t accept its premise. When it comes to Israel, that’s not just a rhetorical trick. It’s a necessary shift in how the conversation is happening.

Ron Jacobson is a New York based entrepreneur and startup advisor. He was the founder and CEO of Rockerbox, acquired by DoubleVerify in 2025. He writes about Israel, geopolitics, entrepreneurship, and technology.