Israel is supposed to tolerate the intolerable.

A terror group has launched thousands of missiles into the Jewish state over the last year — catalyzed by a hideous pogrom against Israel carried out by another terror group — and we are told that it is Israel, finally hitting back in earnest, that is dangerously escalating the situation.

Since the Hamas atrocities on Oct. 7, Lebanon-based Hezbollah has fired roughly 8,000 rockets into Israel. These indiscriminate attacks have forced tens of thousands of Israelis to flee the north of the country. In July, a missile killed 12 young adults and children who were playing soccer in the Golan Heights, a random massacre with no military purpose whatsoever.

Israel retaliated for the horror in the Golan Heights but has generally absorbed Hezbollah’s attacks, since it’s been focused on the war against Hamas to its south while the Biden administration has been working to stay its hand in the north.

The theme, as ever, is that the Jewish state is expected to accept as background noise unprovoked attacks on its sovereign territory that no other state would ever abide.

What other country is asked to bear the rocketing of its civilian population as the price for faux regional comity?

Israel won’t abide by these rules, and nor should it. It began turning up the heat against Hezbollah with its “Mission Impossible”-worthy attacks on Hezbollah operatives via their pagers and other electronic devices. Sure enough, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others have condemned the Jewish state.

Israel hits terrorist targets from the air — and it’s accused of war crimes.

Israel goes in on the ground — and it’s accused of war crimes.

Israel does neither, opting instead to target terrorists by using their own devices against them — and it’s accused of war crimes.

The assumption is that Israel’s role is to duck and cover and take whatever punishment its remorseless enemies dole out, lest things “escalate.”

The idea that the pager attack is a violation of international law is preposterous. The philosopher Michael Walzer made the case against the operation in The New York Times, arguing that the operatives killed and wounded “had not been mobilized and they were not militarily engaged.” In the same breath, though, he conceded, “Yes, the devices most probably were being used by Hezbollah operatives for military purposes.”

This made them legitimate military targets. As a practical matter, there is no other way that Israel could have hit so many terrorists with so little collateral damage. It could have droned or sent sniper teams after just a few of them and — tragically — ended up causing more collateral damage.

Israel has followed up with a bombing strike against a meeting of high-level Hezbollah leadership and the destruction from the air of Hezbollah munitions and missile launchers.

If Israel can successfully deter Hezbollah, it could mean that the conflict de-escalates. Regardless, the Jewish state is under no obligation to tolerate the intolerable.

Rich Lowry is editor in chief of the National Review