Despite its military successes, Israel remains a little David facing a global Goliath

A total population greater than 200 million mobilized against fewer than 10 million Israelis and 16 million Jews worldwide, some of whom aren’t even Zionists.

By: Joseph Puder

October 29, 2025

The widespread hostility toward Israel, accompanied by an upsurge in worldwide antisemitism, demonstrates that Israel is the “little David” confronted by a “global Goliath” comprised of most of the 1.6 billion Muslims and millions of their Western “Christian” Islamist sympathizers in Europe, Latin America, Canada, Australia and South Africa.

Tiny Israel, with its 7 million Jews, was attacked on Oct. 7, 2023. It was attacked not only by Hamas, but by a coordinated campaign of death and destruction waged against the Jewish state by the Islamic Republic of Iran, intent on “wiping it off the map.”

Tehran perceived Israeli weakness while massive demonstrations took place in the first three-quarters of 2023, following a decision by the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to launch judicial reform. Additionally, opposition parties and an anti-Netanyahu bloc, led by Israeli politicians Yair Lapid, Avigdor Lieberman, Benny Gantz and Naftali Bennett, used the issue as a pretext to bring down the prime minister’s right-of-center, Likud-led government. Added to the upheaval was an announcement by some reservist pilots from the Israeli Air Force that they were refusing to fulfill their reserve duties. Given the chaos that pervaded Israeli society, Hamas and its Iranian sponsors surmised that, with one strong push, the Jewish state might collapse.

Hamas’s brutal attack was not an attempt to break the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip. Rather, it was seen as an opportunity to inflict major damage that would lead to Israel’s demise. The coordinated strategy between Hamas and its paymasters in Tehran was also an attempt to break the impending establishment of normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Despite the Israeli defense and security establishment’s intelligence debacle on Oct. 7, the government and the Israeli Defense Forces were cognizant of the need to immediately prepare for the strong possibility that Hezbollah would open a second front and attack Israel from the north. Indeed, the ayatollah and his regime counted on their major proxy, Hezbollah, to mobilize against Israel. Hezbollah’s leaders recognized that Israel would position their forces and might very well inflict unsustainable damage to Lebanon, thereby jeopardizing the group’s standing. Its leaders opted for firing thousands of rockets and drones into Israel.

With a population of less than 10 million, including more than 2 million Arab Israelis, Israel faced Iranian proxies ready to attack from virtually all directions. There was the regime of Bashar Assad in Syria, with its population of 23 million to Israel’s northeast; Lebanon’s Hezbollah and its Shi’ite cohorts, who represent 31% of Lebanon’s population of more than 5.2 million people to the north; and Iraq’s Shi’ite militias, farther in the northeast, who, like Hezbollah, bombarded Israel with rockets.

There were also multiple Iranian-backed, Iraqi Shi’ite militias under the umbrella group known as the Islamic Resistance in Iraq that launched missile and drone attacks at Israeli targets throughout 2023 and 2024. Iraq’s population was estimated to be 45.4 million, with the Shi’ite population being between 25 million and 31 million. Iran is home to as many as 90 million people.

The main actors—the Palestinian Arab populations of the Gaza Strip, and Judea and Samaria, with a combined 5.29 million people—attacked from the west and east. Then there are the Houthis, another proxy of Iran, which continues to send rockets into Israel. Estimates indicate that the Houthis rule over 70% to 80% of Yemen’s population of 40.5 million.

Iran has used its proxies to open seven fronts against Israel. A total population greater than 200 million mobilized against fewer than 10 million Israelis and 16 million Jews worldwide, some of whom aren’t even Zionists.

Therefore, the question is this: Who is the David, and who is Goliath? 

The fact that Jerusalem was able to prevail over a multitude of enemies was due to its brilliant resourcefulness, such as in September 2024, when Israeli intelligence orchestrated a massive, coordinated attack involving thousands of exploding pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah members in Lebanon and Syria. This sophisticated operation, known as “Operation Grim Beeper,” was followed by targeted airstrikes that killed most of Hezbollah’s senior command, including its leader, Hassan Nasrallah. Similar such surgical operations wiped out the military commands of Iran and Hamas, and weakened the Assad regime in Syria, bringing about its ultimate collapse.

Israel stands alone, facing an array of hostile actors who are morally bankrupt. Most of the European Union states have turned against the Jewish state, principally out of cowardice. Fear of their Muslim constituencies has created an upside-down reality in France, Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and non-E.U. countries like Norway and Britain. Cowardice, along with a measure of envy at their inability to deal with the Islamic invasion, mixed with a dose of antisemitism, has made these states frown upon Israel’s prowess, even in the face of tremendous demographic and military odds.

These countries have chosen to portray Israel as the Goliath attacking Hamas while ignoring the fact that virtually the entire Muslim world of 1.6 billion people is behind Hamas. That argument also ignores the loud and violent anti-Israel demonstrators, financed by Qatar, Iran and Turkey, in Europe, the United States and elsewhere around the globe, using European and American students as their “useful idiots.”  The red-green alliance of radical leftists and jihadists throughout Europe and the West has Israel and the United States as its targets. Should Israel fall, the West would certainly follow.

Israel’s righteous defense of its people against the Nazi-like Hamas murderers inflicted suffering on the people of Gaza, as war always does on civilians. But the burden of guilt falls on Hamas, which started this war and uses its people as human shields. In a moral and righteous world, Israel would be seen as David going against a monstrous Goliath.

The world, however, is neither moral nor righteous.