I spent part of a recent weekend helping my son move into a cute little apartment in a northern community in Israel – high ceilings, lots of light and a view of the mountains. It’s in a picturesque town chock-full of little touristy shops and restaurants, right on the banks of the chilly Hatzbani River.

It’s also dead in the middle of a war zone.

As we were working, there were air raid sirens and teeth-rattling booms nearby. Later that day, just meters from the apartment, four civilians were injured by a Hezbollah suicide drone.

And as I drove home Saturday afternoon, I kept one foot near the brake and a close eye out for the nearest bomb shelter – because you only get 15 seconds to stop and sprint when there’s an air raid siren.

What is going on in Lebanon and how did Israel – which just wants to live within its own borders – end up being accused of war crimes? Here’s the Cliff Notes version:

1) Lebanon has been a failed state for decades. The government does not control its territory nor provide basic services. Nobody is arguing this, not even the Lebanese.

2) Where failed governments leave a vacuum, outside groups step in. In Lebanon in the 1970s, it was the PLO – whose militant presence not only tipped Lebanon into a devastating civil war, but by attacking Israeli border communities with random missile strikes (sound familiar?) also sparked the 1982 Israeli invasion and our decades-long maintenance of a security zone in southern Lebanon.

3) In 2000, Israel unilaterally withdrew from that zone. Yet the Lebanese government still did not fill the vacuum. This time it was filled by Hezbollah – an Iranian-run and funded terrorist organization. This is the same terror group that killed 241 U.S. servicemen – the deadliest attack on Americans until 9/11 – by driving truck bombs into the Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983.

4) Iran built a Death Star. Flush with billions in Iranian cash (supplemented by a lucrative international drug trade, according to the DEA), Hezbollah began a 23-year project to turn southern Lebanon into a massive offensive military base. They built a huge network of tunnels and bunkers to store and launch the 150,000 missiles they got from Iran. They also turned civilian infrastructure – homes, schools, churches and farm buildings – into part of this military machine.

5) The point of all this? To destroy Israel and kill Israelis, when the time came. Hezbollah never made a secret of that. In 2013, they even erected billboards along the border (in Hebrew, so there would be no misunderstanding) that read chillingly “We Are Coming.”

6) On Oct. 8, 2023 – following the grisly “success” of the Hamas massacres of 1,200+ Israeli seniors, women, children and men – they came. Hezbollah began raining rockets down on Israeli cities with one objective: kill as many civilians as possible.

Those are the facts. Lebanon morphed from a failed state into an Iranian terror base. The Iranians pulled the trigger, and we shot back. With the Lebanese government unable or unwilling to assert control over its own territory, Israel is defending itself.

Piece by piece, house by booby-trapped, missile-infested house, bunker by reinforced concrete bunker, we are dismantling the terror machine Iran built.

It’s dangerous for the Lebanese Christian, Druze and Muslim civilians behind whom Hezbollah chose to hide. Far too many have been harmed or killed.

It’s dangerous for Israeli civilians, who just want to live quietly within internationally recognized borders as they did prior to Oct. 8, 2023. And it’s dangerous for our sons, daughters, husbands and wives in the Israeli Defense Force – who are dying almost daily.

Is Israel pursuing a policy of “scorched earth”? Existential wars are never subtle processes.

The Allied bombing of Europe in World War II (not to mention Hiroshima and Nagasaki) certainly was not.

The fact is that almost every village, home and structure along the border with Israel was in some way part of the war and terror machine built by Iran with the stated goal of killing Israelis en masse. Does that infrastructure need to be destroyed? Damn straight it does.

So what is Israel doing in Lebanon? The same thing any country would do when a heavily armed terror organization, built and funded by a hostile foreign power, spends two decades turning its territory into a looming Death Star.

Until the Lebanese government decides to step up and do the job, we are dismantling the Iranian terror base.

It’s inelegant and imperfect. It’s dangerous and it’s ugly. It’s also unquestionably necessary.

Ask yourself what your country would do in a similar situation. Then ask why Israel should be held to a different standard.

Steven Greenberg is a Fort Wayne native and a Tel Aviv-based novelist and writer.