Media Report 2025.06.28
FPM Media Report Saturday June 28 2025
IDF launches investigation into possible war crimes after deaths near aid sites
In short:
The Israeli military has opened an inquiry into possible war crimes after deaths near a Gaza aid site.
Meanwhile, 18 people have been killed by an Israeli air strike in Gaza, in an area where a crowd was collecting bags of flour from officials.
What’s next?
An association of clans and tribes has started an independent effort to guard aid convoys to prevent looting of shipments.
Israel’s Military Advocate General has ordered an investigation into possible war crimes over allegations that Israeli forces deliberately fired at Palestinian civilians near Gaza aid distribution sites, Israel’s Haaretz newspaper has reported.
Haaretz quoted unnamed Israeli soldiers as saying they were told to fire at the crowds to keep them back and use unnecessary lethal force against people who appeared to pose no threat.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for a comment from Reuters about the report.
Haaretz quoted a military spokesperson as saying that the army was trying to minimise potential friction between the population and Israeli forces, adding that following reports of civilian harm, the army had conducted investigations and given new instructions to ground forces.
UNICEF warns the situation in Gaza is rapidly deteriorating, with reported shootings at aid distribution sites of particular concern (David Speers)
Haaretz also quoted unnamed sources as saying that the army unit established to review incidents that may involve breaches of international law had been tasked with examining soldiers’ actions near distribution locations over the past month.
In all, more than 500 people have died near aid centres operated by the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) or in areas where UN food trucks were set to pass since late May, the Gaza health authorities have said.
In response to questions about previous incidents, the Israeli military often said troops had fired warning shots over the heads of people to get them to move.
It has also said it is reviewing various cases. It has yet to publish its findings.
The unnamed Israeli soldiers told Haaretz that military commanders had ordered troops to shoot at the crowds of Palestinians to disperse them and clear the area.
During a closed-door meeting with senior Military Advocate General officials this week, legal representatives rejected Israel Defense Forces claims that the incidents were isolated cases, Haaretz reported.
Strikes kill 18 collecting aid in Gaza
An Israeli air strike has killed 18 people in central Gaza reportedly collecting aid, witnesses have told the Associated Press.
The street hit on Thursday, local time, had a crowd getting bags of flour from a Palestinian police unit that had confiscated the goods from gangs looting aid convoys, witnesses said.
Hospital officials confirmed 18 people had died.
Gaza Humanitarian Foundation closes all aid sites
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which last week started handing out meals to hungry Palestinians inside the war-shattered Gaza Strip, said the sites would be reopened, but did not provide a date.
The strike was the latest violence surrounding the distribution of food to Gaza’s population, which has been thrown into turmoil over the past month.
After blocking all food for more than two months, Israel has allowed only a trickle of supplies into the territory since mid-May.
Efforts by the United Nations to distribute the food have been plagued by armed gangs looting trucks and by crowds of desperate people offloading supplies from convoys.
The strike in the central town of Deir al-Balah on Thursday appeared to target members of Sahm, a security unit tasked with stopping looters and cracking down on merchants who sell stolen aid at high prices.
The unit is part of Gaza’s Hamas-led Interior Ministry, but includes members of other factions.
A horrific scene
Witnesses said the Sahm unit was distributing bags of flour and other goods confiscated from looters and corrupt merchants, drawing a crowd when the strike hit.
Video of the aftermath showed bodies of multiple young men in the street with blood splattering on the pavement and walls of buildings.
The dead included a child and at least seven Sahm members, according to the nearby Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital where casualties were taken.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.
Israel has accused the militant Hamas group of stealing aid and using it to prop up its rule in the enclave. Israeli forces have repeatedly struck Gaza’s police, considering them a branch of Hamas.
An association of Gaza’s influential clans and tribes said on Wednesday they had started an independent effort to guard aid convoys to prevent looting.
The National Gathering of Palestinian Clans and Tribes said it helped escort a rare shipment of flour that entered northern Gaza that evening.
It was unclear, however, if the association had coordinated with the UN or Israeli authorities.
The World Food Program did not immediately respond to requests for comment by The Associated Press.
“We will no longer allow thieves to steal from the convoys for the merchants and force us to buy them for high prices,” Abu Ahmad al-Gharbawi, a figure involved in the tribal effort, told the AP.
Accusations from Israel
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz in a joint statement on Wednesday accused Hamas of stealing aid entering northern Gaza, and called on the Israeli military to plan to prevent it.
The National Gathering slammed the statement, saying the accusation of theft was aimed at justifying the Israeli military’s “aggressive practices.”
It said aid was “fully secured” by the tribes, which it said were committed to delivering the supplies to the population.
As world watched Israel-Iran war, in Gaza hundreds were killed
Palestinian health authorities say more than 800 Gazans were killed in IDF attacks during Israel’s 12-day war with Iran, as a starvation crisis grips the besieged territory.
The move by tribes to protect aid convoys brings yet another player in an aid situation that has become fragmented, confused and violent, even as Gaza’s more than 2 million Palestinians struggle to feed their families.
Throughout the more than 20-month-old war, the UN led the massive aid operation by humanitarian groups providing food, shelter, medicine and other goods to Palestinians despite the fighting.
UN and other aid groups say that when significant amounts of supplies are allowed into Gaza, looting and theft dwindles.
Israel, however, seeks to replace the UN-led system, saying Hamas has been siphoning off large amounts of supplies from it, a claim the UN and other aid groups deny.
Israel has backed an American private contractor, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which has started distributing food boxes at four locations, mainly in the far south of Gaza for the past month.
Thousands of Palestinians walk for hours to reach the hubs, moving through Israeli military zones where witnesses say Israeli troops regularly open fire with heavy barrages to control the crowds.
Health officials say hundreds of people have been killed and wounded. The Israeli military says it has only fired warning shots.
AP/Reuters
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Israel orders war crime probe on Gaza shootings: report
Israel’s Military Advocate General has ordered an investigation into possible war crimes over allegations that Israeli forces deliberately fired at Palestinian civilians near Gaza Strip aid distribution sites, Haaretz newspaper reports.
Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed over the past month in the vicinity of areas where food was being handed out, local hospitals and officials have said.
Haaretz, a progressive Israeli newspaper, quoted unnamed Israeli soldiers as saying they were told to fire at the crowds to keep them back, using unnecessary lethal force against people who appeared to pose no threat.
The military told Reuters that the Israel Defence Forces had not instructed soldiers to deliberately shoot at civilians.
It added that it was looking to improve “the operational response” in the aid areas and had recently installed new fencing and signs, and opened additional routes to reach the handout zones.
Haaretz quoted unnamed sources as saying that the army unit established to review incidents that may involve breaches of international law had been tasked with examining soldiers’ actions near aid locations over the past month.
The military told Reuters that some incidents were being reviewed by relevant authorities.
It added: “Any allegation of a deviation from the law or IDF directives will be thoroughly examined, and further action will be taken as necessary.”
There is an acute shortage of food and other basic supplies after the nearly two-year-old military campaign by Israel against Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip that has reduced much of the enclave to rubble and displaced most of its two million inhabitants.
Thousands of people gather around distribution centres desperately awaiting the next deliveries but there have been near daily reports of shootings and killings on the approach routes.
Medics said six people were killed by gunfire on Friday as they sought to get food in southern Gaza Strip.
In all, more than 500 people have died near aid centres operated by the United States-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) or in areas where United Nations food trucks were set to pass since late May, the Gaza health authorities have said.
The unnamed Israeli soldiers told Haaretz that military commanders had ordered troops to shoot at the crowds of Palestinians to disperse them and clear the area.
During a closed-door meeting with senior Military Advocate General officials this week, legal representatives rejected IDF claims that the incidents were isolated cases, Haaretz reported.
There has been widespread confusion about access to the aid, with the army imposing for a time a 6pm-to-6am curfew on approach routes to GHF sites.
But locals often have to set out well before dawn to have any chance of retrieving food.
The Gaza Strip war began when Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, killing nearly 1200 people, mostly civilians, and taking 251 others hostage into the enclave.
In response, Israel launched a military campaign that has killed more than 56,000 Palestinians, the majority of them civilians, according to local health authorities in the Gaza Strip.
The Gaza health ministry said on Friday that at least 72 people were killed and more than 170 wounded by Israeli fire across the strip in the past 24 hours.
Australian Associated Press
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‘The war is over and who paid the price?’ The families who lost everything in Netanyahu’s 12-day war
By Matthew Knott
Raja Khatib can’t stop thinking about the way things were before the missile fell from the sky. His seemingly charmed life with his wife and three daughters in the lavish family home he called their palazzo. Their holiday home in Italy, funded by his thriving career as a successful, respected lawyer. “It felt like I had the best life,” he says. “I had everything.” Slumped in a brown chair in his elderly parents’ living room, he takes a deep breath as he prepares to tell his story. Soon, a tear begins streaming down his cheek.
The Khatib family had just returned from a holiday in Italy when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu authorised a series of surprise attacks on key military and nuclear facilities in Iran a fortnight ago, triggering a war between the Middle East’s dominant military powers. On the second day of the war, Iran fired a ballistic missile at Haifa, Israel’s third-largest city and the home of the country’s most important naval base. Israel’s famed Iron Dome air defence system intercepted the missile, protecting the residents of Haifa. Instead of its target destination, the missile landed on top of the Khatibs’ home in Tamra, 25 kilometres away.
The three-storey structure was made of thick stone and concrete, had two safe rooms, yet proved no match for the bomb. As he discovered to his horror as he searched through the rubble in the black of night, Khatib’s wife Manar died in the attack. So did two of the couple’s three daughters – Shada, a university student, and 13-year-old Hala. His sister-in-law, who lived in the building with his brother, died as well.
“My palace is gone and I don’t care,” he says. “I don’t want to see the house. I will never want to live there again. If God gives me strength, I will live somewhere else.” He is tormented by the thought that if his family had remained in Italy just one day longer, the outbreak of the war would have prevented them from flying home. Some days he wishes he too died in the attack, so he could avoid the pain of living without his wife and daughters. They are buried, side by side, in a cemetery next to his parents’ home.
Like almost all the 37,000 residents of Tamra, Khatib is a Muslim and an Arab citizen of Israel. Around 20 per cent of Israel’s population – around 2 million people – are Arab, with many preferring to be known as Palestinian citizens of Israel, reflecting the fact they are descendants of those who remained after the creation of the Jewish state. Although technically enjoying the same legal and voting rights, Arab citizens of Israel often face entrenched segregation, economic inequality and discrimination.
Adding to Khatib’s grief is that some of his fellow citizens cheered on the attack that killed his wife and daughters. In a video that has been widely shared and condemned in Israel, people speaking Hebrew can be heard celebrating as they watch rockets landing on Tamra while singing a hateful anti-Arab song, May your village burn. Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who visited Tamra after the attack and met with Khatib, condemned the video as “appalling and disgraceful”. Netanyahu said he “vehemently” rejected such rejoicing. “The missile makes no distinction,” he said. “It harms Jews as well as Arabs. They’re coming to destroy all of us, and we stand in this battle together.”
While most Israelis would indeed recoil at the video, there is no denying the political divisions between the nation’s Jewish majority and Arab minority – including on the war with Iran. A survey by the Israel Democracy Institute taken during the war found that 82 per cent of Jewish Israelis supported the strikes on Iran, while 65 per cent of Arab Israelis opposed the attacks and were suspicious of their timing. Khatib believes Netanyahu launched the strikes for self-interested political reasons, to distract from political scandals and anger over his handling of the war in Gaza.
As a ceasefire agreement took hold this week after 12 days of fighting, Netanyahu hailed Israel’s operation in Iran as a “historic victory” that would be “studied by armies all over the world”. Khatib, however, does not believe any military gains are worth the pain he is suffering. “The war is over, and who paid the price? I did, and other families like mine.”
We encounter a different message altogether at Bat Yam, a city near Tel Aviv that is a stronghold of Netanyahu’s conservative Likud party. Just hours after Khatib’s home in Tamra was hit, an Iranian missile cratered into a 10-storey apartment building, killing nine people. The town’s mayor has described the blast as the most devastating missile attack in Israel’s history. Many of the surrounding apartments were destroyed and rendered unlivable, including the home of car salesman Ronen Sha’a Shua and partner Ivanka.
Since the attack two weeks ago, they have come to their apartment to see if they can enter to salvage any belongings, but it is still too dangerous to do so. Mangled air-conditioning units dangle from buildings like oversized Christmas ornaments, with electricity wires and steel beams spilling out everywhere.
Rather than being disillusioned by the attack, the couple say they feel galvanised and more patriotic than ever. “I’m not even mad about this because I support the war,” says Ronen, who is Jewish, as he gazes up at his bombed-out apartment. “It was a justified war and we did an incredible job.” Before the war, they were considering moving to Ivanka’s birth country of Bulgaria for a quieter life. “This has made up our minds: now Israel is No.1. We saw what we are up against.”
Asked his thoughts on Netanyahu, he uses the prime minister’s nickname: “I love you, Bibi.” Asked why, he says: “It’s simple: you feel security with him. There’s no better alternative. With him, it feels like we have a security guard, someone you can believe in.” While he says Netanyahu is partly to blame for the failures that led to the October 7 attacks, he says the Israeli military and intelligence services also share responsibility.
First elected in 1996, Netanyahu has been in office for most of the past 30 years, making him the longest-serving prime minister in Israeli history. For almost all that time he has said that a nuclear-armed Iran would pose an existential threat to Israel, and has urged successive US presidents to attack Iranian nuclear enrichment facilities. All said no, until Donald Trump on Sunday agreed to unleash bunker-busting bombs on Iran’s three main nuclear facilities.
The impact of the strikes remains contested. While Trump insists Iran’s nuclear facilities have been “obliterated”, a leaked assessment by the US Defence Intelligence Agency concluded they probably only set back the Iranian nuclear program by a few months and that much of the nation’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium may have been moved before the strikes. The long-term consequences of the war also remain unclear, with some analysts arguing it will ultimately drive the Iranians to develop nuclear weapons.
Such arguments currently have little traction in Israel, where Operation Rising Lion (as the campaign against Iran was officially called) has been hailed as a strategic triumph. Electronic billboards beside major highways in Israel are displaying messages of thanks to Trump for intervening in the conflict, and Netanyahu is basking in praise for weakening Israel’s biggest strategic adversary.
“Israel may have removed the most multi-sided octopus of threats it has ever faced – and in one fell swoop, and put every adversary in the region on notice that it will no longer play nice,” ran a typical analysis in The Jerusalem Post. Following the ceasefire agreement this week, veteran US Middle East negotiator Aaron David Miller summed up the situation by telling The New York Times: “The most ruthless, politically savvy politician in Israel today sits astride Israeli politics and the US-Israeli politics, for now, like some sort of colossus … Netanyahu comes out of this, for now, extraordinarily powerful.”
Walking along the beach promenade as the sun sets over the horizon, aged care worker Ifat Shani says: “I’ve been against him all the time, but he did the right thing now. It will be good for all of the Middle East if Iran cannot get a nuclear bomb; they do not want Israel to exist here.” Like most other Israelis she regards the Iranian regime as a uniquely menacing threat given its support for proxy groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas, and its stated vow to wipe Israel off the map.
Sitting with a group of friends nearby watching the sunset, 27-year-old French-Israeli Alexia Maarek says she is no fan of Netanyahu’s domestic policies or his far-right governing coalition. But she applauded his decision to take on Iran. “The war with Iran was not negotiable,” she insists.
As she throws a ball around with her granddaughter in Tel Aviv’s Dizengoff Square, Monica Levi says: “Before I thought we needed someone else, but now I think he is clever.”
Aged care worker Ifat Shani says she has never been a supporter of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu but she thought he was justified in attacking Iran.
Aged care worker Ifat Shani says she has never been a supporter of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu but she thought he was justified in attacking Iran.Credit: Kate Geraghty
Similarly, all of Netanyahu’s main political foes backed his strategy on Iran. “Benjamin Netanyahu is a bitter political rival,” said the centrist opposition leader Yair Lapid. “I think he’s the wrong person to lead the country. But on that, he was right.” Naftali Bennett, Netanyahu’s chief conservative opponent, praised the government for working to remove the “cancerous growth” of Iran’s nuclear program.
In a rare public statement, the head of the Mossad spy agency, David Barnea, said: “Israel, thanks to this entire security apparatus, today feels like a different country, a safer country, a braver country that is prepared for the future … Objectives that once seemed imaginary have now been achieved.”
As with last year’s stunning pager attacks against Hezbollah operatives in Lebanon and the killing of militant leader Hassan Nasrallah, the operation against Iran has led to a boost in Netanyahu’s popularity. A poll taken this week by the Walla newspaper found Netanyahu’s Likud party gaining ground in the polls, and would pick up an extra four seats in the Israeli parliament, although not enough to form a coalition government. One-third of Israelis said their view of Netanyahu had improved, compared with 8 per cent who said they viewed him more negatively, and 54 per cent whose view was unchanged.
Netanyahu’s critics are growing increasingly concerned by a prospect that seemed unthinkable after the failures of October 7. “The biggest danger facing us all – Israelis and Palestinians – is that after the war in Iran, Prime Minister Netanyahu might be, once again, electable,” Gershon Baskin, a fierce critic of Netanyahu and veteran hostage release negotiator, wrote on Substack this week.
The complex relationship between Netanyahu and Trump frayed on Tuesday, when Trump publicly demanded Israel not retaliate against Iran for a missile strike that killed four people in the southern city of Beersheba. “We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the f— they’re doing,” Trump fumed.
Two days later, the bromance was back on as Trump hailed Netanyahu as a “great hero” on social media and called for all criminal charges against him to be dropped. Netanyahu is facing charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust, including allegations he traded favours with media proprietors for positive coverage. He has pleaded not guilty, and his trial, which began in 2020, continues to proceed at a glacial pace.
“After the war, he should quit on a high note like a king,” taxi driver Mordehai Rahamim says of Netanyahu. “He’s been around too long. There is too much drama around one person.” But with the Israeli political left in disarray, he believes Netanyahu will win re-election next year.
Tamar Hermann, one of Israel’s top experts on public opinion, cautions not to overestimate the impact of the 12-day war on Netanyahu’s popularity. “It has changed little if anything,” the senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute says. Rejecting fevered speculation that Netanyahu could call snap elections to capitalise on his success, she notes that the euphoria of military triumph can quickly fade as life returns to normal. “Less than half the Israeli public has full or partial trust in Netanyahu,” she says. Still, she believes Netanyahu has a real shot at re-election next year.
The end of the war with Iran will see the focus again return to Gaza, and the plight of the remaining 50 Israeli hostages held by Hamas, around half of whom are believed to be alive. Indeed, celebrations at the ceasefire with Iran were muted by the news on the same day that seven Israeli soldiers had been killed in Gaza. Speaking to Israelis of all political persuasions over the past week, we found an overwhelming desire to secure a hostage release deal and pervasive fatigue with the war. “Finish it, it’s enough,” Netanyahu supporter Ronen Sha’a Shua says. “We can’t move on until our hostages come back.”
The pro-Netanyahu Israeli Hayom newspaper reported that Trump and Netanyahu have agreed to end the war in Gaza within two weeks, and that a coalition of four Arab countries will govern the strip. While these reports have not been confirmed, it is widely believed that Trump’s decision to intervene against Iran was somehow linked to an agreement to wrap up the war in Gaza and pursue new peace agreements with Israel’s neighbours. “We think we will have some pretty big announcements on countries that are coming into the Abraham Accords,” Trump adviser Steve Witkoff said this week, referring to the agreements that saw Israel normalise relations with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco in Trump’s first term.
Raja Khatib, whose wife and two daughters died in the Iranian missile attack, urges Netanyahu, a lifelong opponent of a Palestinian state, to go even further. “I hope the wars will end and that there will be a just peace, that there will be two states: Palestinian and Jewish living side by side,” he says. “Otherwise, the Middle East will burn and there will be more wars.”
At times, when he sits in silence, he hears the voice of his late wife telling him to keep living for the sake of their middle daughter, Rozan, 16, who made it to the family safe room and survived the missile attack. “I have to build a new house, build a new life,” he says, “but the pain will be forever.”
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I detest Trump and Netanyahu, but on some things they’re actually right
David Brooks
June 28, 2025 — 5.00am
Like a lot of people of center-right/center-left political leanings, I’ve spent the past few decades detesting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, especially as he has grown increasingly authoritarian, bellicose and inhumane. And yet those of us in the Bibi critics’ club do have to confront an uncomfortable fact: especially over the past 10 months, Netanyahu has impressively followed through on his aim to remake the face of the Middle East.
He’s degraded Hamas and Hezbollah, two of the vilest terror regimes on the planet. He has made the Iranian theocracy look pathetic and decrepit. Israel has demonstrated its vast military and intelligence supremacy over its enemies, establishing total freedom of the skies over much of Iran. It has shown that its agents can penetrate enemy organisations and find and kill their militant leaders. Netanyahu’s actions have contributed to the toppling of the Assad regime in Syria and have helped the legitimate Lebanese government regain control of its own territory. The Axis of Terror is in shambles.
This includes the Israeli-US assault on Iran’s nuclear program. We don’t yet know how much damage that assault has done. An early Pentagon report found that the attacks set the Iranian project back only a few months, which was picked up big-time on one side of the internet. But several other reports, including one from the Institute for Science and International Security, found that the attack “effectively destroyed” Iran’s enrichment program.
We may know in time what the bombings accomplished. In the meantime, we do know that Israel and the US have the will and capacity to attack Iran anytime and any place. We do know that if Iran reconstitutes its nuclear program, Israel and the US have the capacity to deliver a much more devastating and regime-threatening blow. We also know that Iran and its proxies have made some insanely self-destructive miscalculations since October 7, 2023, and they must know that, too. These are ominous omens for the theocrats in Tehran.
No, I am not saying I support all the ways Netanyahu has responded to the October 7 attack. I supported the aim of the war in the Gaza Strip – to degrade Hamas – but the way Israel has done this has often been uncivilised and barbaric, exercising a callous disregard for human life. And I’m not saying Netanyahu and his settler allies have any sensible vision for how to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian dispute in the years ahead, beyond bullying, bigotry and cruelty.
But I am saying that people like Netanyahu and Donald Trump, who I generally regard as forces for ill in the world, turn out to be, at least on the broader issue of the Iranian threat, forces for good. I am saying that those of us who detest Bibi and Trump should show a little humility and do some rethinking.
What do those guys know that led to their success? What can we learn from what just happened?
I think Netanyahu was right to be obsessed with Iran over the past several decades. The 1979 Iranian Revolution was a signature event in world history. Iran has been the central source of instability in the Middle East ever since. Other issues in that region are secondary.
I also think Netanyahu was right to go on offensive and take a maximalist response to the events of October 7. Over the past few decades, Iran has methodically built a noose around Israel with terror armies and advanced weaponry. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has declared that Israel will not exist in 2040, but he’s been patient about how to achieve his life-defining goal. For example, he’s worked relentlessly to build a nuclear program, but he’s been willing to stay just on the cusp of building the bomb until the conditions are right.
For decades, both Israel and the US were willing to tolerate the noose. Dismantling it seemed too hard and risky. That changed on October 7. Israel learnt, to its shock and dismay, that it lacked the capacity to anticipate and prevent murderous attacks. Suddenly the looming noose began to appear intolerable. Netanyahu, and the Israeli public generally, decided to respond by attempting to dismantle the whole noose, including Hezbollah and the future possibility of Iranian nukes, and that now looks like the right call.
Occasionally I see lawn signs asserting that “war is not the answer”, but here was a circumstance in which war was the answer. Here was a circumstance in which the raw power really mattered. Israel was able to beat the once feared Hezbollah because it is more effective and more powerful. Iran has responded feebly to the bombing raids not because of the kindness of its heart but because it is ineffective and less powerful.
While many people have overestimated Hezbollah’s and Iran’s capacities, Netanyahu and Trump — ruthless bullies both — seem to have some ability to smell weakness. Other American administrations imagined they could neuter revolutionary Iran through some sort of negotiation, but for over 40 years Iran has relentlessly refused a rapprochement with the West.
Netanyahu was also right to understand that sometimes it’s more important to defeat a narrative than to defeat an army. One crucial divide in the Arab world is between those nations that have accepted that Israel is a reality, which they have to deal with, and those still who dream that Israel can be wiped off the map. As Jeffrey Goldberg noted in The Atlantic this week, both President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt before the Six-Day War in 1967 and Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar before October 7, 2023, seemed to believe that Israel was more of a colonial outpost than a real country. The Jews could be pushed out of Israel the way the Belgians were kicked out of their colonies in Africa.
In other words, many of Israel’s enemies in the Middle East actually believed the narrative that gets floated among overheated activists on Ivy League campuses. They paid for their belief in that myth by suffering devastating defeats, and in many cases, such as Sinwar’s, they paid for that false belief with their life. They underestimated Israelis’ desire to live on their ancestral homeland and the degree to which Israel is a legitimate nation like any other.
After the events of the past year, it’s hard to believe that anybody could still believe in the narrative that Israel is more colonialist than real country. If the Middle East is ever going to be a more prosperous and peaceful place, it will be because everybody finally acknowledges, even at Columbia, that Israel is not going to be exterminated from the river to the sea.
The final lesson to be learnt, and this is one we seem to have to learn over and over again, is that our enemies are truly our enemies. In the 1930s a great portion of the British establishment traipsed over to Germany and returned claiming that Hitler was a decent enough chap you could do business with. They simply could not acknowledge to themselves the evil inherent in that man, even though he declared it openly in speeches and writings.
This same pattern of denial prevailed in the Western response to Lenin and Stalin, in the way some in the West refused to see Mao as the mass murderer he was, and in the Western response to Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah. There are many people in the West who can’t believe that our enemies believe what they say they believe. They do not want to stare into the abyss and face the consequences of those realities. Netanyahu, for all has manifold moral failings, is willing to call Iranian reality by its true name and draw the obvious conclusions from that.
No, I’m not turning into a Bibi/Trump admirer. But I do miss the days when liberal hawks roamed the earth. There was a tradition – running from Franklin Roosevelt through Harry Truman, Senator Scoop Jackson and Hillary Clinton – made up of people who championed democracy and human rights, but who also understood that in a dangerous world, American power is a necessary force for stability,
As far as I can see, the liberal hawk tradition died in the wake of the failures of the Iraq War. I look at many of the Democratic responses to the US bombing of Iran and the following thought occurs to me: Many of these people instinctively assume that American power is the primary problem in the world. Many of these people seem to assume that if Trump does it, it must be bad, and no independent thinking is required. Truman and Ronald Reagan believed in using American power to ward off foreign threats. These people, on the other hand, talk as if their mission is to protect the world from the threat of American might. A party beholden to these prejudices is simply unfit to govern what is still the world’s leading superpower.
I’ll say it again: I detest Bibi and Trump. I worry that Team Trump lacks the attention span and competence to handle a complicated international crisis. But it would be a catastrophe if those of us who oppose Netanyahu and Trump concluded that we have to be against everything they are for. That would mean withdrawing from the world and letting the wolves run free.
The New York Times
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MSF slams US-backed Gaza aid scheme as ‘slaughter masquerading’ as aid
June 27, 2025 – 10:42PM
AFP
Medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) called on Friday for a controversial Israel- and US-backed relief effort in Gaza to be halted, branding it “slaughter masquerading as humanitarian aid”.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which began operating last month, “is degrading Palestinians by design, forcing them to choose between starvation or risking their lives for minimal supplies”, MSF said in a statement.
It said more than 500 people have been killed in the Gaza Strip while seeking food in recent weeks.
Starting in March, Israel blocked deliveries of food and other crucial supplies into Gaza for more than two months, leading to warnings of that the entire population of the occupied Palestinian territory is at risk of famine.
The United Nations sas Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is illegal under international law.
The densely populated Gaza Strip has been largely flattened by Israeli bombing since the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel by Hamas.
Israel began allowing food supplies to trickle in at the end of May, using GHF — backed by armed US contractors, with Israeli troops on the perimeter — to run operations.
The latter have been marred by chaotic scenes and near-daily reports of Israeli forces firing on people desperate to get food.
There are also concerns about the neutrality of GHF, officially a private group with opaque funding.
The UN and major aid groups have refused to work with it, citing concerns it serves Israeli military goals and that it violates basic humanitarian principles.
The Gaza health ministry says that since late May, nearly 550 people have been killed near aid centres while seeking scarce food supplies.
“With over 500 people killed and nearly 4,000 wounded while seeking food, this scheme is slaughter masquerading as humanitarian aid and must be immediately dismantled,” MSF said.
– Surge in gunshot wounds –
GHF has denied that fatal shootings have occurred in the immediate vicinity of its aid points.
On Tuesday, the United Nations condemned what it said was Israel’s “weaponisation of food” in Gaza and called it a war crime.
MSF said the way GHF distributes food aid supplies “forces thousands of Palestinians, who have been starved by an over 100 day-long Israeli siege, to walk long distances to reach the four distribution sites and fight for scraps of food supplies”.
“These sites hinder women, children, the elderly and people with disabilities from accessing aid, and people are killed and wounded in the chaotic process,” it said.
Aitor Zabalgogeazkoa, MSF’s emergency coordinator in Gaza, said the four sites were all under the full control of Israeli forces, surrounded by watch points and barbed wire.
“If people arrive early and approach the checkpoints, they get shot. If they arrive on time but there is an overflow and they jump over the mounds and the wires, they get shot,” he said in the statement.
“If they arrive late, they shouldn’t be there because it is an ‘evacuated zone’ — they get shot.”
MSF said that its teams in Gaza were seeing patients every day who had been killed or wounded trying to get food at one of the sites.
It pointed to “a stark increase in the number of patients with gunshot wounds”.
MSF urged “the Israeli authorities and their allies to lift the siege on food, fuel, medical and humanitarian supplies and to revert to the pre-existing principled humanitarian system coordinated by the UN”.
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Joe Hildebrand: ABC and Lattouf both engaged in some pretty atomic-level silliness
Despite having much sympathy for the ABC and Antoinette Lattouf, both engaged in some pretty atomic-level silliness long before the final atom was split by this week’s judgment, writes Joe Hildebrand.
Joe Hildebrand
‘Impartiality, objectivity and fairness’: The ‘double standard’ exposed in ABC vs Lattouf
Centre of Independent Studies’ Tom Switzer discusses the wrongdoings of both Antoinette Lattouf and the ABC regarding their
The case of Antoinette Lattouf v the ABC is perhaps the greatest lightning rod in the endless culture wars swirling around in Australia today.
It is a story that is an almost supernatural confluence of every white-hot cultural conflict between the activist left and right: Israel v Palestine, workers v bosses, free speech v public responsibility, the ABC v mainstream media, identity politics v so-called racism.
Such an explosive combination of combustible elements is rarely seen outside an Iranian uranium enrichment facility.
Lattouf can, of course, rightly claim victory in the courts, and the ABC has retreated to lick its wounds, but the truth is that both parties and their confused cheerleaders are still neck-deep in a cripplingly questionable ideological quagmire.
I have much sympathy for both the ABC and Lattouf, having worked for the former and with the latter.
But both engaged in some pretty atomic-level silliness long before the final atom was split by this week’s judgment.
Few readers will be unfamiliar with the matter, but basically Lattouf, a holiday fill-in host for a week on ABC morning radio, reposted a tweet about alleged Israeli atrocities in Gaza and was told not to come back for the remainder of her shifts after objections from then-chairwoman Ita Buttrose.
But the Federal Court this week ruled that Lattouf had been unfairly dismissed because she had expressed a political opinion – as opposed to, say, a culinary opinion, such as that ketchup and tomato sauce are as bad as each other.
And here we really get into the weeds. ABC journos and presenters are supposed to be impartial. But what does that even mean?
At a base level, it means they are supposed to be impartial in their duties working for the national broadcaster. But in the age of social media, what does that mean either?
There was never a suggestion that Lattouf had been biased on air during her Whitlam-esque three-day flame-out. But she had posted a tweet during this time that did indeed seem to favour one side over another in the interminable Israel v Palestine conflict. But then Lattouf would say that she had merely reposted a tweet from a human rights organisation stating a fact about the conflict.
And here lands with a thud the first rule about politics, and the more radical the politics the more indisputable the rule: Both sides think they are simply stating the facts. It is always the other side that is the purveyor of lies, propaganda and fake news.
This is the real inconvenient truth: In a world where there are endless sources of information, misinformation and disinformation, everyone thinks they are simply speaking the truth.
We have created a universe in which political crusaders do not see themselves as “right” or “left” but simply right; everyone else is wrong.
Vaccines save lives or vaccines kill; Trump is evil or Trump is the messiah; Israel equals genocide or Palestine equals terrorism. Anyone who believes any of these statements doesn’t think it is a matter of opinion, they think it is an indisputable fact.
But the real twist is that the court found Lattouf had not been unjustly fired for merely speaking the truth but for expressing a “political opinion” – the one thing ABC employees are not supposed to do.
And so suddenly this battle went from “I have done nothing wrong” to “I have been crucified for bravely standing up for what I believe in”.
So let’s pan out from this primordial mess of principles. The less haughty reality is that Lattouf was a perfect fit for the ABC and its audience: Highbrow, progressive and extremely pro-Palestine.
And this is where I feel sorry for Aunty. It has a legal obligation to be a mainstream broadcaster but is populated by so many inner city hipsters and pummelled by so many online Trots, that it is constantly boxed into the course-correction of a Hindenburg Zeppelin.
Turn to the left and it loses audiences – RIP Q&A; turn to the centre and it gets monstered by the Sunday morning Soviet sympathisers who think the revolution will be on Insiders.
Thus it hires trendy lefties like Lattouf but then warns them to shut up on Twitter so they can pretend they’re impartial. It is a masquerade that fools few and pleases fewer.
How’s this for an alternative approach: Hire people who are genuinely impartial – or at least a genuinely broad representation of mainstream Australia – and then let them say whatever they want.
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Uneasy peace in war-torn land
The bombs, for now, may have stopped, but the fear remains.
The Via Dolorosa, the streets where Jesus walked, are almost empty.
The Wailing Wall, where Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prayed for Donald Trump, only has a few kippah-wearing pilgrims putting their own private thoughts in the cracks.
The golden dome on the Al-Aqsa mosque glistens in the sun, but is less busy than usual.
This is Jerusalem, where an uneasy peace is holding.
The site of so much conflict over the past 1000 years and the centre of three of the world’s major religions, people living, working and visiting the Old City are worried that it may not last.
Israeli mother Ariel Klein, 49, says she is scared.
“I am afraid; I have three boys, the big one is in the army and I’m really afraid,” she said.
“My parents live in Haifa, which is a target for Iran.”
Ms Klein, and her partner, Limor Liza Eckhaus, 49, were some of the few people still in Jerusalem despite the threat of Iranian missiles.
The couple, from Zikhron Ya’akov in northern Israel, made the trip to Jerusalem to visit her son.
Most of the businesses in the Old City, which is normally bustling with selfie-taking tourists, are closed when News Corp Australia visited before the ceasefire.
Winding through the narrow, cobblestone streets, which are only a few metres wide, feels strange.
Shop window shutters are down, secured with heavy-duty padlocks.
Many of the shop owners are either standing out on the street looking bored or sitting on a chair perched outside the front of the premises, despondent that they have hardly any customers to serve.
Fawaz Shaaban, 63, has lived in Jerusalem his entire life and had been praying that the US would intervene in the war. He didn’t think that Israel could strike a decisive blow on Iran by itself.
Mr Trump’s bold bombing raid was the answer to his prayers, giving him hope that Iran would not get a nuclear weapon that could wipe Jerusalem off the map.
“People don’t work; people are very scared,” he said.
That word again: scared.
Everyone was wide awake and alert, waiting for the next text message warning people to head to a bomb shelter.
Some of the restrictions began to lift after News Corp Australia visited Jerusalem, as schools reopened and some flights were allowed out of Tel Aviv.
However, people in Jerusalem have lived under the shadow of war since Israel was created in May 1948.
The 12-Day War, as Mr Trump has called it, comes after a long line of conflicts.
There was the 1948 war between Israel and neighbouring Arab states, which started less than six months after the nation was declared a state by its first leader David Ben-Gurion.
There was a Palestinian insurgency in the 1950s and then the Six-Day War in 1967 that Israel fought against Egypt, Jordan and Syria.
The Israeli Defence Forces won that conflict and expanded Israel’s territory, which created the Gaza Strip. There have been ongoing battles since.
The latest war started on October 7, 2023, when militants from terrorist organisation Hamas, backed by Iran, slaughtered 1200 Israelis and took more than 250 hostages.
Israel’s devastating response has included the near destruction of Gaza, which is still home to two million people, to stamp out Hamas.
It has also severely depleted Hezbollah, a terrorist group in Lebanon that threatens its northern border.
There has also been the fall of the tyrant Bashar al-Assad in Syria – with the help of Israeli strikes.
The “12-Day War” started when Mr Netanyahu decided to strike Iran directly, knowing that its proxy armies that surrounded Israel were unlikely to be able to respond.
The IDF gained control of the sky, allowing the US to send seven B-2 stealth aircraft to drop 14 GBU-57 bunker-busting bombs.
Mr Trump claimed that the bombs “totally obliterated” Iran’s bid to build a nuclear bomb.
But a report by the Pentagon’s intelligence arm, the Defense Intelligence Agency, later concluded the strikes had probably only set back the nuclear program by a few months.
The FBI launched a probe into the leak to CNN, which Mr Trump heavily criticised, demanding that the reporter who broadcast the story be sacked. The network backed its reporter, saying the report was based on “initial intelligence”.
People in Jerusalem were nonetheless grateful for the US intervention, but they have lived with fear for too long to take the ceasefire for granted.
“It’s bad for everybody; the situation is very bad, we are not allowed to open our shops,” said a vendor who wanted to remain anonymous. “It’s never been quiet like this, we feel terrible, we need a solution. I hope things get better.
“We are not allowed to speak at this time because I don’t want to cause any trouble for my shop or my business.”
The people of Israel continue to live in the shadow of the Holocaust.
They have also known that, since Iran’s Islamic revolution in 1979, hardline leaders there have wanted to destroy Israel.
They describe Israel as “Little Satan”, reserving the term “Great Satan” for the US.
The next move for both sides remains unclear.
Mr Trump expressed frustration at both Israel and Iran before heading to a NATO meeting in the Netherlands this week, saying they “don’t know what the f— they are doing”.
His outburst and some stern backroom calls ensured that the ceasefire held, despite both sides initially breaking it within hours.
Mr Trump announced that Iran had agreed to have talks with the US about its nuclear program, saying he won’t let Tehran get an atomic bomb.
The success of the US strikes on Iran and Israel’s decision to call a ceasefire have raised further questions about military operations in the Middle East.
The future of Gaza, where according to the Gaza health ministry run by Hamas, as many as 50,000 people have been killed since October 7, remains undecided.
There are at least 50 hostages still held by Hamas. Only 20 are believed to be alive.
There have been protests on the streets of Tel Aviv, with families demanding that Mr Netanyahu do a deal.
Hamas was unlikely to hand them over easily even though its leadership is decimated and the IDF controls 80 per cent of the Gaza Strip.
Pope Leo urged the world this week to remember those suffering in Gaza as he pleaded for aid.
Mr Netanyahu may now believe that with Iran’s nuclear ambitions curbed, Israel may have built enough of a security buffer to begin the task of rebuilding Gaza and creating a new normal.
The Royal Australian Air Force began bringing Australians home on evacuation flights from Tel Aviv after the reopening of Israel’s airspace.
The world, just like the people in Jerusalem, is praying the fragile peace will continue.
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Inside ‘Operation Narnia,’ the daring attack Israel feared it couldn’t pull off
Dov Lieber
Israel’s initial strike on June 13 took out Iran’s top commanders. Clockwise: General Hossein Salami (Commander-in-Chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps), General Gholamali Rashid (Commander of the Khatam al-Anbia Central Headquarters), Major General Mohammad Bagheri (Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces), Lieutenant General Ali Shadmani (Deputy Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces and Alternate Commander of the Khatam al-Anbia Central Headquarters), General Mehdi Rabbani (Deputy Chief of Operations, Armed Forces General Staff), General Amir Ali Hajizadeh (Commander of the IRGC Aerospace Force), Brigadier General Mohammad Kazemi (Head of the IRGC Intelligence Organization), and General Davood Sheikhian (Deputy Coordinator of the General Staff of the Armed Forces).
Israel’s initial strike on June 13 took out Iran’s top commanders. At midnight on June 13, Israel’s generals gathered in a bunker beneath Israeli air force headquarters and watched as jets descended on Tehran in an operation they called “Red Wedding.” Hours later and 1,600kms away, Iran’s top military commanders were dead – a mass killing much like the famous wedding scene from the show “Game of Thrones.” The combination of intelligence information and military precision that enabled the attack surprised people around the world. But it wasn’t the only improbable success at the outset of Israel’s 12-day campaign.
Another key part of the initial attack – considered so fantastical by even its planners that it was called “Operation Narnia,” after the fictional C.S. Lewis series – successfully killed nine top Iranian nuclear scientists almost simultaneously at their homes in Tehran.
Pulling off the attacks required elaborate ruses to ensure surprise. At the last moment, they nearly fell apart.
The operations have helped cement Israel as the dominant military power in the region, setting the stage for what Israelis hope will be a dramatic realignment of countries away from Iranian influence and toward friendlier relations with Israel. Top Israeli and U.S. officials say they expect Israel to sign new peace accords following the battle.
Alan Eyre warns Trump’s Iran claims lack proof, says Israel risks escalation and attacks may boost Iran’s aims.
Questions remain over whether Israel, which was later aided by a massive bombing strike on Iran’s nuclear sites by the U.S., has really achieved its war aims. There are conflicting reports about the damage done to the nuclear sites, and the jury is out on whether Israel and the U.S. can prevent Iran from rebuilding what has been destroyed.
Still, even some Israeli officials were surprised by how their plans, some of which dated back more than a decade, were able to come together. “When we started to plan this thing in detail, it was very difficult to know that this would work,” said Maj. Gen. Oded Basiuk, head of the Israeli military Operations Directorate and a key architect of the operation.
This account is based on interviews with 18 current and former Israeli and U.S. security officials.
Israel took a huge risk in launching the attack. Either Israel would hit the human targets all at once, or they would scatter. If they did, Iran’s retaliation would’ve been far more severe, and its nuclear ambitions intact. And had President Trump not been inspired by Israel’s early success to bomb Iranian nuclear sites, it isn’t clear how Israel would have achieved its chief aim of the operation. Even now, Iran has been hurt but could rebound more determined than ever to build a nuclear weapon.
Long road
The operation’s origins stretch back to the mid-1990s, when Israeli intelligence first identified what it saw as nascent Iranian attempts to build a nuclear weapons program.
Israeli intelligence began building an extensive network of agents inside Iran to facilitate a sabotage campaign, which included causing explosions twice at one of Iran’s main enrichment sites and assassinating some scientists. But Israeli officials ultimately determined those activities weren’t enough, and that they would eventually need to destroy Iran’s nuclear program, and the Iranian nuclear brain trust, from the air.
Doing so would be enormously difficult. The sites Israel would need to hit were more than 1,600km from home.
Pilots would have to learn how to fly in formations of six to 10 aircraft around a single tanker plane, taking turns to refuel – multiple times – during the journey. They’d also have to learn how to position their planes perfectly so that their missiles, when dropped, would land within 15 to 20 seconds of each other for maximum effectiveness.
Such training wasn’t possible in a country as small as Israel, running just 450km north-to-south.
In 2008, in what was called Operation Glorious Spartan, more than 100 Israeli F-15s and F-16s flew more than 1,600kms to Greece, testing their ability to fly far enough to hit Iran’s nuclear facilities. Such exercises would become more frequent.
Over the next several years, Israel came close to launching an air attack several times. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was repeatedly voted down by his ministers and security chiefs who feared starting a war with Iran or angering Washington, which at the time favoured a diplomatic approach.
Israeli military planners kept gaming out an attack, including a multifront war with Iranian proxies Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. There was also the puzzle of flying over Syria, then an enemy state under Iranian influence.
After Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, Israel has spent the past nearly two years decimating Hamas. It has also severely weakened Hezbollah, whose support had helped prop up Syria’s regime. Opposition forces then toppled Syria’s government, putting in place an anti-Iran government, which cleared the way for Israeli planes to cross the country’s airspace unimpeded.
By that time, Israeli spy networks inside Iran were extensive enough to track the movement of its military leaders and set up drone bases inside the country that could play a crucial role in knocking out Iran’s air defence systems during the attack.
Israel was able to further test its long-range fighter jet capability when it targeted Houthi rebels in Yemen over the past year. It also took out Tehran’s most advanced air defence systems, Russian S-300s, in attacks in April and October 2024.
Those attacks by Israel came in response to large missile barrages from Iran, which were largely repelled by Israeli air defence along with help from the U.S. and other allies. The tit-for-tats with Iran gave Israel the confidence it could go head-to-head with its fellow regional superpower.
Israeli strikes in Tehran killed some of the IRGC’s top commanders.
With so many pieces in place, plans for an attack intensified. Operation Narnia Adding to the urgency was a sense in Israel that Iran had begun to enrich uranium to such levels that it would be mere months away from building a bomb if it wanted to.
Fearing it had already lost the battle to suppress Iran’s uranium enrichment, Israel launched an operation to kill the Iranian scientists who could help their country use that material to build a nuclear weapon, even if Israeli attacks damaged or destroyed its nuclear sites – the far-fetched mission Operation Narnia.
In November 2024, the military gathered 120 intelligence and air force officials together to decide who and what would be in their crosshairs when fighting began.
In the end, the conference drew up a list of over 250 targets, including the scientists the Israelis wanted to kill, nuclear sites, Iranian missile launchers and military officials.
Another priority was figuring out how to gain air superiority over Iran from the get-go. This would pave the way for Israeli jets to continue pounding the long list of targets for the next 12 days. Israeli officials cross-referenced thousands of intelligence sources to map out Iran’s air defence systems.
The Mossad was brought in to aid that effort. Its agents spent months smuggling in parts for hundreds of quadcopter drones rigged with explosives – in suitcases, trucks and shipping containers – as well as munitions that could be fired remotely from unmanned platforms. Small teams armed with the equipment set up near Iran’s air-defence emplacements and missile launch sites, ready to take out the defence systems once Israel launched its attack.
Israel also launched larger drones from its own territory in the attack. The long-distance capabilities of some of the drones were tested for the first time the night before the attack, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Israeli ruses
Netanyahu and his military advisers made the final decision on June 9 to attack four days later, according to an Israeli security official.
None of the attendees – including Avner or Netanyahu’s wife, Sarah – knew the prime minister was planning to delay the wedding, the prime minister later said. He carried on as normal, so as to not tip off the Iranians.
The Iran crisis of the past two weeks isn’t just about nuclear weapons — it’s also an urgent reminder that border security is…
Meanwhile, Israeli officials were leaking reports to the media suggesting a split between Netanyahu and President Trump over whether to launch an attack. The leaks included details of a phone call between Netanyahu and Trump four days before the operation began, in which Trump told the Israeli leader he wanted diplomacy to run its course before turning to military options.
The day of the attacks, Trump told reporters that the U.S. and Iran were “fairly close to an agreement” and that he didn’t want the Israelis “going in.” Israeli officials also told reporters an attack was imminent, but they would wait to see the final result of a sixth round of nuclear talks between Washington and Tehran scheduled for Sunday.
In reality, generals were already making last minute preparations for the attack.
The key to the deception, said a security official familiar with the planning of the operation, was the idea implanted in the minds of the Iranians that Israel wouldn’t strike without U.S. authorisation and participation. As long as the U.S. wasn’t mobilising its forces and was engaged in negotiations, Israel could threaten to attack and even mobilise its troops in plain sight of Iran without giving away the element of surprise.
In fact, as Israeli aircraft were getting in the air, Trump posted on Truth Social: “We remain committed to a Diplomatic Resolution to the Iran Nuclear Issue!”
A key part of the final plan was to take out the leadership of Iran’s armed forces all at once – the effort known as Red Wedding. The move would cut off any immediate retaliation, while buying time for Israeli fighter jets and drones to take out Iranian missile launchers, thereby diminishing Iran’s inevitable response.
As the Israeli aircraft approached, however, a problem surfaced. The leadership of the Iranian air force was suddenly on the move.
Israeli officials in their bunker began to sweat. It was possible the whole plan was unravelling and that the Iranians were onto them.
But to the amazement of the Israeli high command, rather than scattering, the Iranian air force leaders gathered together in one place – sealing their fate. Israeli missiles started to fly.
Explosions also shattered the scientists’ homes, killing nine in near-simultaneous attacks to prevent them from going into hiding. Despite its long odds, Operation Narnia was succeeding.
The missiles then also hit radar stations, anti-aircraft batteries and Iranian surface-to-surface missiles. Soon Israeli intelligence was able to confirm that the human targets whose names it had collected back in November had nearly all been killed.
In around four hours, the opening operation was over.
In the following days, Israeli aircraft pounded Iranian nuclear and ballistic missile production sites and launchers, while also hunting down Iranian military leaders and nuclear scientists. A ceasefire was declared on Tuesday.
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HOW DELUDED WEST GOT ISRAEL-IRAN CONFLICT SO WRONG
Adam Slonim
In the early days of this overt round of the ongoing Israel-Iran combat, pundits and prognosticators lined up with remarkable confidence to deliver their verdicts: the Middle East was on the brink of a full-blown regional war.
From CNN panels to X threads, from Instagram reels to Canberra press briefings, the narrative seemed set in stone.
There would be a chain reaction: Sunni Arab monarchies dragged in, Hezbollah launching from the north, the Houthis from the south, Syria lighting up once more. The Strait of Hormuz would close. Oil would spike. And Tehran would unleash waves of asymmetric revenge through a web of proxies from Beirut to Sanaa. Some predicted a war lasting months. Others spoke in terms of years.
Yet here we stand, 12 days later. No Arab nation has joined the fray. The Strait of Hormuz remains open. No ground invasion of Iran has occurred. The oil markets remain remarkably steady. Tehran has neither launched a regional war nor exacted the cataclysmic reprisals so confidently predicted. No new front has opened with Israel, even as it already holds the line across seven existing flashpoints. There was one small attack on one US base but nothing else. In fact, the response from Iran – a heavily telegraphed barrage largely intercepted by air defences – resembled not vengeance but performance: a bruised regime saving face, not escalating war.
What, then, accounts for this collective miscalculation?
In part, it reflects the enduring Western habit of seeing the Middle East through three flawed lenses: fear, fatalism and faith. Fear, that the region will always spiral towards violence. Fatalism, that the ancient hatreds and alliances are immutable and primed to explode. And faith – not religious, but ideological – in diplomacy, de-escalation and process as panaceas for even the most intractable conflicts.
These lenses distort more than they reveal.
Western observers, conditioned by decades of conflict and media shorthand, expect titanic struggles and lopsided outcomes. We see escalations as inevitable. What we don’t often see – or acknowledge – is the role of deliberate restraint, especially by leaders we have grown accustomed to villainising. Indeed, it falls to two of the most polarising figures in global politics – Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump – to have demonstrated what one might call a Churchillian clarity: that strength need not lead to recklessness; and that deterrence, if credible, can be more effective than devastation.
When the Israeli Prime Minister authorised the precision strikes on Iranian military leadership and nuclear infrastructure, and when the US President’s foreign policy architecture signalled unequivocal support for such a move, the chorus of condemnation was swift and familiar.
Critics invoked the spectre of 2003 and the quagmire of Iraq. Opinion pieces warned of regional blowback and a united front of adversaries. Analysts claimed Netanyahu was playing with fire. The phrase “all bets are off” became a common refrain.
Yet the region did not burn.
Iran’s response was largely ineffective. Hundreds of missiles and drones were intercepted, with many not even reaching Israeli airspace.
Not only did Israel’s defence infrastructure hold firm – bolstered by regional co-ordination including reported assistance from Jordan and indirect support from US Central Command – but the spectacle of a trillion-dollar, decades-long Iranian investment in nuclear weapons being reduced to ash was met with little more than muted theatrics.
This was not war. It was deterrence. And it worked.
A major reason things worked out to the advantage of Israel, the US and the West is simple: Trump said to the Iranians they had a final 60 days to work through a peaceful negotiation about their nuclear weapons program. The Iranian leadership refused to co-operate. Netanyahu, with Trump’s blessing, acted on the 61st day. No Syria-style “red lines” that were ignored and that undermined American deterrence. Trump negotiated first, then acted as he said he would.
One must ask, then: how did so many get it so wrong?
Let’s be specific. The BBC ran headlines predicting “an uncontrolled spiral”. Former Obama officials suggested the region was “on the brink of Armageddon”. MSNBC ran segments comparing the situation with July 1914. Australia’s Lowy Institute warned that a single miscalculation could “ignite the entire Middle East”. Major think tanks in Europe forecast oil at $200 a barrel. None of it happened.
Even the usual cascade of “expert threads” on social media offered maps of presumed Hezbollah war plans, scenarios of US evacuation from bases in Iraq, and speculative alliances forming from Cairo to Kabul.
It was all built on the same assumption: that Israel’s resolve would provoke uncontrollable chaos. That Iran’s threats were not bluff but gospel.
But in this case reality defied narrative. And that’s worth exploring.
Consider this: Iran had every rhetorical pretext to escalate. Its nuclear infrastructure was targeted. Its prestige was wounded. Its deterrence tested. Yet it responded with a gesture, not a war. Why?
Because it was outmatched. Because it was cornered.
And because the lesson Netanyahu and Trump had internalised – and that much of the Western diplomatic class has refused to learn – is that in certain strategic environments, force, credibly and appropriately projected, is more stabilising than endless rounds of negotiation that allow nuclear weapons to be created.
This brings to mind one of history’s most overlooked strategic analogies: the Berlin airlift of 1948-49. When Soviet leader Joseph Stalin blockaded West Berlin, many feared the Allies would retreat or provoke war. Instead, US president Harry Truman – cool, resolute and unflinching – ordered the airlift. For nearly a year, planes dropped supplies over a besieged city, refusing to blink. The result? No war. No Soviet escalation. The West held its ground. A muscular act of restraint became a masterstroke of strategy.
Similarly the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. When US president John Kennedy announced the blockade around Cuba and the Soviet Union sent ships to break the blockade, it was Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev who blinked. Strength at the appropriate time and place yielded backdown and enhanced deterrence.
Likewise, in 2025 Netanyahu’s strike and Trump’s endorsement were not bellicose spasms. They were calculated lines in the sand, meant to reassert deterrence in a region where deterrence had eroded. Of course, this doesn’t mean the Middle East is pacified.
Far from it. The threats remain: Hezbollah’s arsenal, the Houthis’ posturing, the ever-lurking Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps networks. But what this episode has made plain is that Western prediction models are broken. They are reactive, pessimistic and addicted to narratives of collapse. They interpret every act of strength as provocation and every moment of calm as fleeting illusion. In doing so, they overlook the deeper strategic math.
In the Middle East, power is not always linear. Action does not always yield equal and opposite reaction. Sometimes, bold action – especially when it is disciplined, proportionate and backed by capability – resets the game.
Yet, in policy circles, calls for “de-escalation” dominated. One European foreign minister even remarked that Israel must show “restraint in the face of aggression”, a phrase so absurd it collapses under its own logic. Imagine advising Britain to de-escalate while under V-2 rocket attack in 1944. The sentiment betrays the Western delusion: that process is always preferable to power. That negotiation, however one-sided, is morally superior to pre-emption.
But pre-emption is not always a moral failing. When executed with precision, intelligence and legitimacy – as it was in this case – it prevents greater wars.
It reinstates deterrence. And it spares civilians, infrastructure and economies the toll of prolonged conflict.
This is the paradox many in the West struggle to accept: restrained power can be more humane than endless diplomacy. Especially when that diplomacy serves only to delay the inevitable, embolden aggressors and paralyse allies.
So let us say it clearly: what Netanyahu and Trump achieved in these 12 days was not a miracle. It was leadership. It was clarity. It was Churchillian – not in theatrics but in knowing when to act, and when not to.
And in doing so, they rewrote the forecasts.
No mass war. No Arab uprising. No oil collapse.
Israel no longer threatened with elimination by its most powerful nemesis.
In time, perhaps, this episode will be remembered as a strategic hinge point – the moment deterrence was restored, when the Iranian regime’s aura of invincibility cracked and when the West’s failure to understand the region was once again laid bare.
But until then we would do well to remember the central truth this conflict revealed: In the Middle East – as in eastern Europe and East Asia – it is not strength that endangers peace but weakness and its accomplice, appeasement.
While diplomats hesitated, doomsayers panicked and analysts drowned in their models, Israel acted. With precision, clarity and courage, it didn’t just defy the predictions. It reshaped the strategic landscape of the region – not with treaties or timidity but with resolve. History didn’t just watch. It turned.
Adam Slonim is presenter of the podcast Behind the Headlines and director of the Middle East Policy Forum.
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