March 1, 2026
Orly Noy
“You can’t step in the same river twice,” goes the saying by the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus. But apparently you can destroy an enemy you already proclaimed destroyed. Only eight months ago, following the ceasefire with Iran, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that “in the 12 days of Operation Rising Lion, we achieved a historic victory, which will stand for generations.”
It turns out this “historic victory” did not last even a single year, let alone generations.
This time, the attack came with an added objective: liberating the Iranian people from the oppressive rule of the ayatollahs. For it is well known that one of Israel’s central roles in the Middle East is to rain freedom upon the peoples of the region with fighter jets and bombers.
Suddenly, Iranian lives have become very dear to Israeli hearts; so dear that they are willing to spend long nights in bomb shelters, knowing that they will face heavy casualties on their own side, provided our pilots deliver good news of freedom — or at least the assassination of Iran’s leadership and the destruction of Revolutionary Guard infrastructure and nuclear facilities.
“Our operation will create the conditions for the brave Iranian people to take their fate into their own hands,” Netanyahu tweeted shortly after the attack began. “The time has come for all parts of the people of Iran — the Persians, Kurds, Azeris, Baloch, and Ahwazi — to cast off the yoke of tyranny and bring about a free and peace-seeking Iran.”
The same man who, more than any other in Israel’s history, has worked tirelessly to set citizens against one another, to incite and inflame, to stir unprecedented hatred among them; the man who has an international arrest warrant hanging over his head for crimes against humanity — this man now expresses concern for the unity of the Iranian people and their struggle against tyranny. It might have been comical were so many lives not at stake.
The Iranian people are waging a brave and inspiring struggle for their freedom. The international community has diplomatic and economic tools to assist them without repeated airstrikes that promise little in terms of lasting change. To cheer the Israeli-American assault is to embrace a cannibalistic global order in which strength alone defines morality.
In celebrating the war, Israelis are celebrating that system: a world in which the bully sets the rules. For now, they can be relieved that the bully is on their side.
The familiar chorus
But the rhetoric of solidarity dissolved almost as quickly as it appeared. Once reports began to emerge of civilian casualties — especially from the girls’ elementary school in Minab, where some 150 children were killed in an apparent Israeli airstrike — the supposed concern for the Iranian people revealed itself to be paper-thin.
Shocked, I shared the videos from the school on my Facebook page. I confess I did not expect the torrent of hatred that followed.
I already know that, aside from a very narrow fringe, one cannot expect empathetic reactions to the mass killing of Palestinians; that the overwhelming majority of the Jewish public in Israel not only does not mourn but openly rejoices at every Palestinian death, under any circumstances. But I did not imagine that similar bloodlust would accompany the bombing to death of little girls in school uniforms, particularly after so many Israelis rushed to declare that it wasn’t the Iranian people who are our enemy, but the regime.
Within five hours, my post had accumulated hundreds of hateful comments, and the usual wave of threats and abuse had started bombarding my inbox. Some denied the incident had taken place at all, or claimed that the Iranian regime bombed its own school. A larger portion rejoiced at the fate of the murdered girls.
“Too bad they don’t close schools on Shabbat!” someone wrote, adding five laughing emojis to underline his delight. “Excellent, excellent, excellent, joyful and heartwarming. May there be many more cases like this, and soon among the leftists,” wrote another.
No less depressing, and predictable, was how Jewish opposition leaders eagerly and reflexively rallied behind Netanyahu in support of the war. “I want to remind us all: The people of Israel are strong. The IDF and the Air Force are strong. The strongest power in the world stands with us,” tweeted Yair Lapid. “In moments like these we stand together — and we win together. There is no coalition and no opposition, only one people and one IDF, with all of us behind them.”
Even Yair Golan, who is meant to mark the leftmost boundary of the Zionist spectrum as chairman of The Democrats party, maintained polite restraint and offered full backing for the war. “The IDF and the security forces are operating with strength and professionalism,” he wrote. “They have our full backing.”
Naftali Bennett, the leading candidate to replace Netanyahu in the next elections, lagged behind his colleagues because he had to wait for the Sabbath to end before tweeting. Once it did, he promptly aligned himself with the war effort. “I stand in full support of the IDF, the government of Israel, and the prime minister for Operation ‘Roaring Lion.’ The entire people of Israel stand behind you until the Iranian threat is destroyed,” he declared.
For these three men — Lapid, Golan, and Bennett — no task is supposedly more urgent than replacing Netanyahu’s blood-soaked, Kahanist government, which has led the country to unprecedented depths. They understand how dangerous he is. They know the devastation another term would bring.
Yet the moment the smell of war fills the air, all these insights evaporate, replaced by automatic reverence to the Israeli war machine. It is as if the very idea that a war can be opposed simply does not exist within their cognitive framework.
No one understands this mechanism better than Netanyahu. However precarious his political position may be, he knows that uniting even his fiercest rivals across the Zionist spectrum is only a click away. If “in wartime there is no coalition or opposition,” then perpetual war becomes his most reliable political strategy — and he has learned to deploy it with increasing frequency.
Netanyahu is a cynical and dangerous war criminal. But one thing cannot be denied: No Israeli leader has so deeply understood the collective psyche of Jewish Israeli society. A society that seems capable of feeling its own pulse only in war and destruction; that, if it is not attacking, destroying, and killing, is not entirely certain that it exists. In that sense, Netanyahu fits it like a glove.
Orly Noy
Months after proclaiming a
'historic victory,' Israel embarks on another offensive against Iran — and the
ritual erasure of political dissent begins anew.
The siren shattered the silence
of Saturday morning across Israel. Not to urge civilians to rush to shelters,
but rather to announce the outbreak of war itself — almost like a triumphant
fanfare. After more than a week of nerve-wracking uncertainty, tossed between
tense anticipation of a war we were told repeatedly was unavoidable, and faint
hopes that diplomacy might yet prevail, it was finally upon us.
“You can’t step in the same river twice,” goes the saying by the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus. But apparently you can destroy an enemy you already proclaimed destroyed. Only eight months ago, following the ceasefire with Iran, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that “in the 12 days of Operation Rising Lion, we achieved a historic victory, which will stand for generations.”
It turns out this “historic victory” did not last even a single year, let alone generations.
This time, the attack came with an added objective: liberating the Iranian people from the oppressive rule of the ayatollahs. For it is well known that one of Israel’s central roles in the Middle East is to rain freedom upon the peoples of the region with fighter jets and bombers.
Suddenly, Iranian lives have become very dear to Israeli hearts; so dear that they are willing to spend long nights in bomb shelters, knowing that they will face heavy casualties on their own side, provided our pilots deliver good news of freedom — or at least the assassination of Iran’s leadership and the destruction of Revolutionary Guard infrastructure and nuclear facilities.
“Our operation will create the conditions for the brave Iranian people to take their fate into their own hands,” Netanyahu tweeted shortly after the attack began. “The time has come for all parts of the people of Iran — the Persians, Kurds, Azeris, Baloch, and Ahwazi — to cast off the yoke of tyranny and bring about a free and peace-seeking Iran.”
The same man who, more than any other in Israel’s history, has worked tirelessly to set citizens against one another, to incite and inflame, to stir unprecedented hatred among them; the man who has an international arrest warrant hanging over his head for crimes against humanity — this man now expresses concern for the unity of the Iranian people and their struggle against tyranny. It might have been comical were so many lives not at stake.
The Iranian people are waging a brave and inspiring struggle for their freedom. The international community has diplomatic and economic tools to assist them without repeated airstrikes that promise little in terms of lasting change. To cheer the Israeli-American assault is to embrace a cannibalistic global order in which strength alone defines morality.
In celebrating the war, Israelis are celebrating that system: a world in which the bully sets the rules. For now, they can be relieved that the bully is on their side.
The familiar chorus
But the rhetoric of solidarity dissolved almost as quickly as it appeared. Once reports began to emerge of civilian casualties — especially from the girls’ elementary school in Minab, where some 150 children were killed in an apparent Israeli airstrike — the supposed concern for the Iranian people revealed itself to be paper-thin.
Shocked, I shared the videos from the school on my Facebook page. I confess I did not expect the torrent of hatred that followed.
I already know that, aside from a very narrow fringe, one cannot expect empathetic reactions to the mass killing of Palestinians; that the overwhelming majority of the Jewish public in Israel not only does not mourn but openly rejoices at every Palestinian death, under any circumstances. But I did not imagine that similar bloodlust would accompany the bombing to death of little girls in school uniforms, particularly after so many Israelis rushed to declare that it wasn’t the Iranian people who are our enemy, but the regime.
Within five hours, my post had accumulated hundreds of hateful comments, and the usual wave of threats and abuse had started bombarding my inbox. Some denied the incident had taken place at all, or claimed that the Iranian regime bombed its own school. A larger portion rejoiced at the fate of the murdered girls.
“Too bad they don’t close schools on Shabbat!” someone wrote, adding five laughing emojis to underline his delight. “Excellent, excellent, excellent, joyful and heartwarming. May there be many more cases like this, and soon among the leftists,” wrote another.
No less depressing, and predictable, was how Jewish opposition leaders eagerly and reflexively rallied behind Netanyahu in support of the war. “I want to remind us all: The people of Israel are strong. The IDF and the Air Force are strong. The strongest power in the world stands with us,” tweeted Yair Lapid. “In moments like these we stand together — and we win together. There is no coalition and no opposition, only one people and one IDF, with all of us behind them.”
Even Yair Golan, who is meant to mark the leftmost boundary of the Zionist spectrum as chairman of The Democrats party, maintained polite restraint and offered full backing for the war. “The IDF and the security forces are operating with strength and professionalism,” he wrote. “They have our full backing.”
Naftali Bennett, the leading candidate to replace Netanyahu in the next elections, lagged behind his colleagues because he had to wait for the Sabbath to end before tweeting. Once it did, he promptly aligned himself with the war effort. “I stand in full support of the IDF, the government of Israel, and the prime minister for Operation ‘Roaring Lion.’ The entire people of Israel stand behind you until the Iranian threat is destroyed,” he declared.
For these three men — Lapid, Golan, and Bennett — no task is supposedly more urgent than replacing Netanyahu’s blood-soaked, Kahanist government, which has led the country to unprecedented depths. They understand how dangerous he is. They know the devastation another term would bring.
Yet the moment the smell of war fills the air, all these insights evaporate, replaced by automatic reverence to the Israeli war machine. It is as if the very idea that a war can be opposed simply does not exist within their cognitive framework.
No one understands this mechanism better than Netanyahu. However precarious his political position may be, he knows that uniting even his fiercest rivals across the Zionist spectrum is only a click away. If “in wartime there is no coalition or opposition,” then perpetual war becomes his most reliable political strategy — and he has learned to deploy it with increasing frequency.
Netanyahu is a cynical and dangerous war criminal. But one thing cannot be denied: No Israeli leader has so deeply understood the collective psyche of Jewish Israeli society. A society that seems capable of feeling its own pulse only in war and destruction; that, if it is not attacking, destroying, and killing, is not entirely certain that it exists. In that sense, Netanyahu fits it like a glove.
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