Netanyahu Urges International Community to Act to Protect Israel

After attacking several countries, Netanyahu warns of mounting tensions

After a 48 hour period over the weekend during which Israeli forces attacked five distinct factions in three separate countries, Israeli prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is now seeing  Israel at serious risk.

Netanyahu is now demanding that the international community “act immediately” to halt Iran from its attacks on Israel. Notably, those targets of Israel were mostly Shi’ites, and therefore Israel perceives them as mostly in league with Iran, but there were no attacks against Israel over the weekend.

Indeed, the only hint of an Iranian attack on Israel was the Israeli military’s allegation that Iran was going to do so, which they created as a justification for their Saturday attack in Syria.

Rather, if Israel is facing substantial risk of attack at all at this point, it would surely be from a group like Hezbollah looking to retaliate for Israeli attacks against them. The weekend salvos clearly put Israel at risk, and potentially on the path toward a regional war.

Given that, it takes some nerve for Netanyahu to “demand” the international community do something on his behalf. It may, however, point toward a very specific endgame he is working toward.

The past couple of Israeli invasions of the Gaza Strip went poorly from a political standpoint for Netanyahu because in both cases, the Israeli press spun them as Palestinian aggression, but peace deals were worked out before a popular, bloody war even got off the ground.

In this case, Netanyahu may be trying the same thing, hoping he can get some political points in the lead up to the election and hoping that he can get international diplomats to keep it from escalating into a practical problem, and then try to get more credit for being able to aggress against most of his neighbors with impunity.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.