This is a guest post by Doug Lieb of the American Jewish Committee, who is currently participating in a solidarity mission to Israel

Many Jewish Israelis have not-so-distant roots in, and close connections to, Europe and the US. And Israel is - as detractors who cry ‘colonialism’ sometimes point out - something of a Western democratic outpost in the heart of the Middle East. So why the seemingly yawning disconnect between the way many Western political and media elites see Israel, and the way mainstream Israelis see themselves?

Two successive conversations in Israel - the first with a correspondent for a major foreign newspaper, the second with a young, center-left Israeli intellectual and politician - hint at one possible answer.

The correspondent expressed surprise, even shock, that few Israelis (except the usual anti-Zionist suspects) seemed to be questioning the morality of Israel’s methods in Gaza. “An Israeli strike killed one Hamas leader, and his four wives and eleven children. Four wives and eleven children - even if they were used as human shields, did they deserve to die?” the correspondent asked, genuinely bewildered. “No one in this society really seems to be debating this right now.”

The correspondent left after an hour, and in came the bright young political aspirant, who promptly answered the underlying question.

The Israeli mainstream has come to regard Palestinian terrorism as an existential threat, the up-and-comer said. The turning point? The indiscriminate murder of the Second Intifada, which, shortly after the rejection of Israel’s peace offer at Camp David, made life unbearable by turning every city block into a potential death trap. Since then, it’s been tough, if not psychologically impossible, for mainstream Israelis to believe that the Palestinians just want a political agreement to end the occupation.

So, the up-and-comer said, the current operation in Gaza is a military response to the terrorism that menaces Israel’s existence. The eleven children exploited to shield their father didn’t deserve to die, the consensus goes - but neither did the Israelis their father killed, nor those Israelis he would have killed. And in an existential struggle, whose lives should Israel aim to protect?

If the answer seems obvious, you know why most Israelis aren’t debating the correspondent’s questions.

And if the up-and-comer’s psychology seems like the product of a long, hard conflict unlike anything you’ve experienced in your own life, you know why the correspondent doesn’t quite get it.