War on Iran for Netanyahu’s benefit?
JVL Introduction
Is the war on Iran like, shall we say, the dramatically disproportionate response to the Hamas led attack on October 7th 2023 happening to protect Netanyahu? This is the argument outlined here by Yakov Hirsch who has written a number of articles on the weaponisation of antisemitism and broader Hasbara that you can see on Mondoweiss here.
He argues that Netanyahu is somewhat protected by “a certain cluster of “Never Again” journalists …..(who) have spent decades telling American readers that Israel’s enemies should be read through Holocaust categories. Iran is not just a hostile state; it is Amalek”. And, of course, Hamas are the new Nazis as well.
Of course Netanyahu has been talking of the existential threat from Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran for decades, invoking the Holocaust and biblical references to back up his argument. However Hirsch argues that the existential threat of most concern to Netanyahu is his own, regardless of how much death and destruction his decisions unleash.
LL
This article was originally published by Mondoweiss on Wed 4 Mar 2026. Read the original here.
Netanyahu and the US-Israeli assault on Iran
The Atlantic’s Yair Rosenberg recasts Benjamin Netanyahu as a tragic figure forced to take radical action after October 7, ignoring his long history of fomenting war and exploiting Jewish trauma to further himself and his Zionist ideology.
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I cannot see any reference to the Epstein Papers – surely a major cause of the timing of this present war of annihilation. Or do we no longer believe that the US could stop Netanyahu if it wanted to (as hinted by the Secretary of State, and in contrast to past Republican leaders such as Eisenhower)?
Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal. Every country he passes over on his way to Berlin, where he’s apparently been hiding since Israel and the US started their war on Iran, and the German government itself, should have arrested him. Why didn’t they? The US had itself no compunction when it came to arresting Venezuelan businessman Alex Saab from his plane refuelling at Cape Verde, in 2020. And he wasn’t a war criminal.