Israel continues to claim victimhood, even as it slaughters children in Iran 

In the early hours of June 13, Israeli fighter jets struck deep into Iranian territory, targeting military installations, apartment blocks, and reportedly killing senior Iranian officials, including the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The attacks came without warning. They were neither reactive nor defensive. And yet, the Israeli government, true to form, rushed to describe the assault as a “preemptive strike”—as if the law bends itself to match the anxieties of a nuclear-armed state.

But language cannot disguise illegality. Israel’s framing collapses under the weight of international law. Article 51 of the UN Charter authorizes the use of force only in cases of self-defense if an armed attack occurs. In exceptional cases, states have tried to invoke anticipatory self-defense, citing an imminent and unavoidable threat. But even under this controversial doctrine, the bar is extraordinarily high: the threat must be “instant, overwhelming, and leaving no choice of means and no moment for deliberation,” as the Caroline case—still the prevailing standard—puts it. By Israel’s own admission, this was not a response to any immediate Iranian attack. There was no missile barrage, no ground incursion, no declaration of war. It was, at most, a preventive strike—an illegal act of aggression dressed up in the language of legitimacy.

Israel’s defenders will claim that Iran’s nuclear program poses an existential threat, even though U.S. intelligence agencies continue to affirm that Iran is not currently developing a nuclear weapon. Others will point to Iran’s regional influence or its support for proxy forces. But none of this justifies bombing another sovereign country without an imminent threat. There is a difference between “anxiety” and legality, and Israel cannot continue to collapse the two every time it chooses to strike.

This attack was not isolated. It is the latest flare in a sustained pattern of extraterritorial violence. In the past three years alone, Israel has bombed Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and now Iran—each time under the pretense of defense, each time flattening civilian infrastructure, killing children, and then turning to the world with outstretched hands, insisting it is the aggrieved party. It is a state that moves as if it were always under siege and always entitled to strike first, not in response to threat, but in response to the possibility of parity.

Indeed, Israeli officials seem to understand what their actions might provoke. In the hours following the attack on Tehran, Defense Minister Israel Katz announced that Israel was bracing for a “significant attack from the east.” A state truly acting in self-defense does not expect retaliation from the victim of its own aggression. What this reveals is not fear, but strategy. Israel struck Iran knowing it could provoke a response—knowing it could then leverage that retaliation to justify further escalation, knowing the cycle would deepen, and that the U.S. would once again be called upon to “stand by its ally.”

This is how Israel manufactures permission. It imposes a logic of perpetual exception onto itself, one in which its borders are elastic, its enemies ever-expanding, and its right to violence absolute. And perhaps more dangerous than the strikes themselves is Israel’s unshakable role in global diplomacy as the one state whose aggression is never met with consequences. It alone can claim existential peril while occupying, besieging, and bombing at will. It alone can kill across borders and call it peacekeeping. It alone can claim the mantle of victimhood while its weapons systems light up the skies of half the region.

This is not just a military problem. It is a discursive one. For decades, Israel has mastered the art of narrative manipulation, presenting itself as the eternal target, even as it becomes the aggressor. This victimhood is selective and theatrical. It centers fear while erasing context. When Hamas fires rockets, the world is shown a nation under siege. When Israel drops American-made bombs on hospitals and refugee camps, the world is told it is defending itself. When its neighbors resist, they are described as terrorists. When it kills their scientists and children, it is called deterrence.

This asymmetry is not incidental, it is the cornerstone of Israel’s political project. Zionism depends on the notion that any challenge to its authority is existential, that any people with the capacity to resist must be rendered defenseless. And so, Palestinian existence becomes a threat. Iranian enrichment becomes a threat. Lebanese sovereignty becomes a threat. And the response is always the same: preemptive, punitive, and unaccountable.

But the consequences of this violence are not Israel’s alone. Already, the United States has begun evacuating diplomatic personnel across the Middle East, bracing for retaliation. Already, pundits in Washington are openly debating whether Iran’s response will force American involvement. This is not an Israeli war. It is a regional destabilization campaign backed by the full financial, diplomatic, and military weight of the U.S. government. And it is being carried out in our name.

The irony is that even Israeli security experts know these strikes will not achieve their stated goals. Iran’s nuclear program is vast, fortified, and distributed. Facilities like Natanz and Fordow are buried under granite and reinforced concrete. Experts like Harrison Mann, a former executive officer at the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, have admitted plainly that these strikes cannot destroy Iran’s capabilities. At best, they may delay progress for a few months. At worst, they could trigger the very outcome they claim to prevent: the collapse of diplomacy and a sprint toward weaponization.

And yet, none of that seems to matter to Netanyahu. What matters is power, optics, and longevity. He bombed Iran just as he bombed Gaza, just as he plotted the assassination of Hezbollah’s Nasrallah last year, all while facing increasing isolation, domestic unrest, and global condemnation. This is the same man who stood before the UN as 149 countries voted to demand Israel comply with international law, then responded by sending jets to bomb Tehran. The message could not be clearer: Israel does not respond to law. It responds to defiance with violence. It responds to condemnation with escalation.

We are told, again and again, that Israel is defending itself. But the truth is harder to stomach. Israel is defending its right to act with impunity. It is defending a regional order in which its supremacy is never questioned and its borders are wherever it decides they are. It is not fear that drives these actions. It is entitlement.

And until the international community is willing to stop rewarding that entitlement with silence, impunity, and weapons, the violence will continue. The region will burn. And Israel, cloaked in the language of self-defense, will remain what it has long become: a rogue state, posing as a victim, at the center of an unfolding catastrophe.