Iran strikes Israel
[This note was posted on Monday with a major editing error:
the word "not" was mistakenly inserted after "simply."
That has now been corrected.]
Iran launched many
missiles and drones
against Israel.
Israel's attack on the Iranian consulate was not, in and of itself, a war crime. It was an
attack on military personnel of a country which was already at war with Israel.
I don't know what specific targets Iran's missiles and drones were aimed at, but I don't see a
reason why that attack would be a war crime. It seems that this is simply war.
Judged in terms of its effects in the current context, Israel's attack was a manipulative
provocation. Netanyahu must have figured that Iran would retaliate, and that this would give
Israel an opportunity to attack Iran in a much bigger way and justify it as "retaliation". He
may have hoped that this would talk western countries into "standing by Israel" in
war against Iran.
I am not the only one to
suspect that.
I hope those countries' governments are wise enough to refuse to fall for Netanyahu's efforts
to lure them into war, or lure them into disregarding the urgency of ending the siege of Gaza.
This could be an opportunity to squeeze Netanyahu out of the Israeli government. They could
tell Israel, "We will support Israel against Iranian attack, provided it adopts a defensive
posture and provided Netanyahu is not its prime minister."