Desperate for War
Who kills a hostage negotiator?
Someone who doesn’t care about the lives of hostages.
Who assassinates a political official while they’re attending a funeral in an adversarial nation?
Someone who wants to start a war.
When the Israeli military, with the full support, if not at the direct order, of the Israeli government, assassinated Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, it wasn’t just with an awareness of what consequences may result, but a desire that they would. For Netanyahu and his fellow genocidal fanatics to have carried out this action, or allowed it to be carried out, without forethought for the further death and chaos it would cause, they would have to be among the most astronomically stupid people on earth. While they may be among the most feckless and evil, I don’t think we can assume that they are that stupid. Not giving them the benefit of that doubt, we can only assume that they assassinated Haniyeh because they do not care about recovering the Israeli citizens still being held by Hamas, perhaps would even prefer if they were killed, and they did so in the Iranian capital because they want to start a war with Iran.
A too-generous interpretation would be that it was the intent of Netanyahu and his despotic cabinet of fair-weather co-criminals to demonstrate that they have the power and will to eliminate their adversaries anywhere with impunity. This is in essence the rational equivalent of a bully beating the shit out of someone in public because they know that they have bigger and badder bullies backing them up. Anyone with the most expensive weapons that the US government can carelessly heap upon them at their disposal could potentially assassinate almost anyone anywhere if they are determined and malicious enough. One could say that they are letting their nuts hang, showing off that they can commit any egregious act and no one will have the gonads to step to them in response. But for people like Netanyahu, a megalomaniac who was itching to go to war with their nemesis neighbor three doors down even before his political career and his life as a free person, not ousted by a public that hates him and a judiciary ready to try him for corruption and failures of leadership, hinges on prolonging the fire and fog of war, a response is the point. He’s managed to stay in power and out of prison by prolonging the obliteration of Gaza and the genocide of everyone therein; if he forces Iran into a war that consumes the region and pulls in reluctant allies to add to the bonfire, he could be dead of old age before facing the justice he deserves.
From the start of the current conflict, when Israelis were taken hostage into Gaza, Netanyahu and others in power in Israel have shown no genuine concern for securing their safe return. They’ve favored death and destruction, so-called displays of power, over diplomacy. Through negotiation, the majority of the hostages could have been freed, rather than most of them being unaccounted for and many likely dead. And if he and those of his ilk had their way, they’d have been at war with Iran years ago. Because this isn’t the first time they’ve carried out military strikes and killed people on Iranian soil or killed Iranians abroad. Honestly, they must be frustrated that they’ve kept pushing and prodding only for the Iranian government to continue showing restraint and avoiding direct open warfare. Those of us that don’t want to see that whole section of the world reduced to smoldering nuclear slag, and would very much prefer not being involved in the conflagration, can only hope that sense and restraint prevail, and malignant warmongers like Netanyahu don’t get their way.