Does Israel have a death wish?

The Economist  yesterday, October 11 – its pro-Israel tone as gung-ho as that of the politicians and the “some generals” its kicker invokes:

Its second paragraph tells us that:

Israel is again on the verge of thumping Iran. This time Netanyahu will have no problem getting the approval of a cabinet which if anything is even more gung-ho than he is …

No by-line is given so I’ll take some convincing that the second sentence – with its gushing “if anything”  and incredulous “even more gung-ho” – wasn’t written by a teenager. You’d think, wouldn’t you, that ‘Bibi’ presided over an unruly but in his hands malleable cabinet of erstwhile Mahatma Gandhis …

… as opposed to one which houses Itamar Ben-Gvr, Bezalel Smotrich and Yoav “human animals” Gallant, and which not so much briefs against its “leader” as publicly threatens to smash that eggshell coalition of end-times fanatics the moment he betrays a scintilla of sanity weakness.

Thereby landing him in court on embezzlement charges that could see him locked up and the keys tossed into the Red Sea.

As for the first sentence, whose verb of choice for a move capable of kick-starting WW3 is “thumping”, let me apply a light edit:

Today Israel says it is once again on the verge of thumping Iran.

There; fixed it. Because to borrow from Mandy Rice-Davis, the genocidal regime would say that, wouldn’t it?  It would  parade with strutting chutzpah  for the world’s cameras as if Iran hadn’t, on October 1st, launched its Operation True Promise 2. Of which I wrote, two days later:

In a game-changing display of its capacity to slice through Iron Dome and David’s Sling, Tehran has telegraphed – in sterner terms than those of Operation True Promise in April – to the terrorist state and its Western partners in genocide that the era of Zionist impunity is over. No Western asset in the Middle East is untouchable. Be it an RAF base in Cyprus supplying intel for IDF murder from the air, a US warship in the eastern Med, the oil fields of the Arab autocracies, the ships through the Hormuz choke point or, indeed, the apartheid state itself – all are vulnerable …

This transformed reality has either gone unnoticed by the children who wrote that Economist piece or, like the regime they fawn over, they are indulging in a few Zionist psyops of their own. Me, I lean towards the first explanation.

And the “four options” heralded in the title? Introducing the piece in his weekly contents round-up, digital editor Lane Greene tells us that Israel:

… could hit leadership, missiles, oil—or the nuclear option, Iran’s enrichment facilities.

But here’s the problem, Lane – may I call you that? Iran showed on October 1st that it can – and has promised that it will – hit back on all four.

With interest.

I don’t say this would necessarily stop a regime of do-or-die fundamentalists with the scent in their nostrils of a Greater Israel from Nile to Euphrates, Jerusalem to Damascus. Just that the uncharacteristic delay in Israel’s response – not even a first anniversary IOU for October 7 – lends itself to the possibility that True Promise 2 brought a touch of sobriety to, and focused some at least of the hearts and minds in, the control centres of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and more importantly Washington …

… and that in the absence of certainty, what we can do is view our systemically corrupt media – for which this is not a subject it can report unfettered – with the utmost caution and consult, as widely as time permits, sources less answerable to power.

Here are three such sources. One is a fairly short read from Anti-imperialist News, on why Israel is nervous.

The other two are viewings. Professor Mohammad Marandi is now cited often on this site (see how he deals with Piers Morgan on a related matter). Here he speaks at greater length on the questions at hand. How will Israel respond to October 1, how will Iran respond to that response, and has Israel for the first time lost “escalatory dominance”? The video is close to an hour long but, well, this is the weekend and these questions are kind of important …

It can be argued of course that what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander – that the oft-quoted words of Mandy Rice-Davies may equally be levelled at an Iranian professor of English Literature and Islamic Studies at Tehran University. I’ve spoken before of the need, once we’ve seen that our mainstream media cannot afford to be truthful on matters vital to the concerns of the oligarchs who rule the West, to triangulate.

I’ve spoken too of how market analysts and finance advisors, whose job when all is said and done is to peer into the future – not least of dollar dominance – can be remarkably insightful on matters geopolitical. One such is Lena Petrova. Another is Alex Krainer, here in dialogue with the same man, a quietly impressive Nima Alkhorshid, who interviewed Professor Marandi.

This too is longish, at just shy of fifty minutes. Watching both would be great but if it’s an either/ or, I’d call it for Krainer. It’s a tad shorter and – zero disrespect for the eloquent and informed professor – Alex has the advantage of emotional distance since his country is not facing attack by eschatological fanatics with nukes.

Have a good weekend.

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