The column by British author Jake Wallis Simons, published in The Telegraph on April 18, 2026, under the headline The West is losing its moral compass, is built around a harsh thesis: The West is increasingly unable to defend free societies when faced with more ruthless, more consistent, and less restrained opponents. The author links three cases—Ukraine, Israel, and Iran—into one line and argues that it is not a set of separate crises, but a systemic political weakness of democracies.
For the Israeli audience, this text is important not only as British journalism. It directly addresses a question that resonates particularly sharply in Israel after October 7: why do Western capitals often appear morally loud but strategically indecisive where the cost of error is measured in the lives of citizens, border security, and the survival of allies.
Ukraine, Israel, and Iran as one political test
Simons presents Ukraine as an example of a dangerous Western illusion: the country gave up the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal after signing the Budapest Memorandum in 1994, receiving political security assurances from the US, UK, and Russia. Later, this very construct became one of the symbols of how international guarantees might not work in the face of direct aggression. The story of Bucha only reinforced this conclusion, turning the issue of deterrence failure into a question about the cost of trust in external promises.
In this logic, Israel occupies a special place. After the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, the debate was not only about the military response but also about the willingness of Western elites to consistently support the right of a democratic state to self-defense in the face of terrorist warfare. For many in Israel, this is where the main gap between beautiful declarations of values and real political will became apparent.
In Simons’ view, Iran is the third element of the same picture. It is about a regime that combines internal repression, the export of instability, and pressure on the neighboring region. At the same time, there were various assessments of the scale of the January 2026 repressions in Iran: human rights activists reported mass killings of protesters, and several investigations and publications suggested that the death toll could have exceeded 30,000 in two days, although these figures remain disputed and require cautious wording. Human Rights Watch spoke of mounting evidence of mass executions, and major international media pointed to the extremely severe scale of violence.
Why the author brings these three stories together
The logic of the column is that Ukraine, Israel, and Iran show the same problem from three sides. Ukraine demonstrates that the West poorly prevents aggression. Israel shows that the West often begins to morally waver when a democratic country responds to a terrorist attack. Iran reminds us that Western rhetoric about human rights too often does not translate into real pressure on regimes that kill their own citizens.
This is where the topic becomes especially sensitive for Israel. Because from the Israeli perspective, the question is no longer abstract. If the democratic world cannot respond equally clearly to the Russian war against Ukraine, Islamist terror against Israel, and repression within Iran, then the problem is not a lack of information but a crisis of strategic clarity.
Where exactly, according to Simons, the West fails
The essence of Simons’ argument is not reduced to emotions.
He writes about moral disorientation, where part of the Western establishment continues to think in terms of procedures, compromises, and reputational risks even when faced with forces openly betting on violence, intimidation, and the destruction of the very rules. This is why, in his opinion, democracies lose not only in reaction speed but also in the ability to call things by their names.
For Ukraine, this meant too slow a realization of the scale of the Russian threat. For Israel, attempts to impose symmetry where one side commits a terrorist attack on the civilian population and the other defends its own existence. For Iran, chronic lagging of real international reaction behind the regime’s level of brutality.
In the middle of this conversation, it is especially appropriate to remind that NAnews — News of Israel | Nikk.Agency has repeatedly recorded the same pattern: in the modern world, not only borders but also the very mechanisms of moral distinction become vulnerable when democracies begin to be ashamed of their own righteousness faster than dictatorships of their own cruelty.
What this means for Israel
For the Israeli reader, the main takeaway from such a text is not to mechanically accept the British column as a final diagnosis, but to see the overall scheme. Israel has long lived in a reality where the issue of security cannot be separated from the issue of international legitimacy. And if Western democracies lose the ability to defend allies without endless reservations, it becomes a threat not only to Kyiv or Iranian dissidents but also to Israel’s own strategic position.
Moreover, Iran in this triangle is not just another example of authoritarianism.
It is a state that for decades has been forming an anti-Israeli regional network, supporting proxy structures, and simultaneously suppressing its own society. Therefore, the “Ukraine — Israel — Iran” link does not seem artificial to the Israeli audience. On the contrary, it shows how different crises converge at one point: the question of whether the West can defend freedom not at conferences, but in confrontation with force.
The book behind this column and the broader meaning of the debate
Simons’ column echoes his book Never Again: How the West Betrayed the Jews and Itself, which was published in 2025–2026 in various formats and develops the same line: the crisis of the West is not only a story about Jews, Israel, or specific wars, but a story about how liberal societies lose the instinct for self-preservation.
One can argue with the author’s individual emphases, his sharpness, and how much he generalizes different international stories. But ignoring the main nerve of this text is already difficult. Ukraine reminded us that promises do not always protect. Israel showed that even after a monstrous blow, allies can quickly move from sympathy to hesitation. Iran proved that authoritarian regimes are willing to go further than many Western politicians are ready to admit.
Therefore, the question posed by this column sounds extremely concrete for Israel: if democracies truly want to survive as democracies, they will have to relearn not only to talk about values but also to defend them with force, consistently and without self-disarming naivety.
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