Two years of blood and rubble in Gaza, and still Netanyahu beats his war drums like a desperate street performer who knows that if he stops banging, the crowd might finally walk away. Only here, the “crowd” is not admirers—it’s corpses, refugees, and a world staring at Israel’s moral collapse in real time.
The irony is so sharp you could cut glass with it: Israel has “conquered” Gaza for the second time in as many years, yet still has no plan for what comes after. No governance strategy, no recovery strategy—just endless rubble and a permanent funeral procession. A Super Sparta, Netanyahu boasts, as if economic isolation and cultural boycotts were badges of honor.
But perhaps the most bitter lesson is this: while Europe slowly peels away from Israel, while campuses in America explode with protest, the Sunni Arab capitals sit quietly polishing their Abraham Accord handshakes. Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, Rabat—nodding along as if Gaza were just an unfortunate weather report from a neighboring country. Their neutrality is not neutrality at all. It is complicity wrapped in the silk of “strategic interests.” They watch Gaza burn and sigh, “business as usual.”
And why not? They recognize the familiar stench. Netanyahu has turned Israel into what they know best: authoritarian, unaccountable, obsessed with martyrs and vengeance, dismissive of civilian lives. Israel, once the “only democracy in the Middle East,” has finally joined the family reunion of regional autocracies. Welcome home.
So when Netanyahu sends jets across Arab skies to bomb Gaza—or perhaps even Tehran—no one blinks. When Israeli ministers talk about annexing the West Bank, Sunni leaders feign amnesia about “Palestinian solidarity.” Because let’s face it: the Abraham Accords weren’t peace deals; they were arms deals, surveillance exchanges, and photo ops for Western approval. The Palestinians were never invited to the signing ceremony. Why start caring now?
Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s coalition has politicized every institution it touches: the army, the police, even the judiciary. His obsession with assassinating Islamist leaders abroad has become both policy and pathology. It’s all theater for his domestic base, who are told to accept dead hostages and endless war as noble sacrifices. After all, “total victory” sounds so much better than “we have no plan.”
And yet, even as Israel stews in its own messianic madness, its neighbors—those same Sunni monarchies and dictatorships—keep the deals alive. Not because they believe in peace, but because in Israel’s callousness, they see their own reflection.
So on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, as Israelis are asked to reflect on the year past, here is the bitter truth: this war has not just destroyed Gaza; it has devoured Israel’s last scraps of credibility. And the Sunni Arab regimes? Their silence is not neutral—it is a green light.
The lesson of two years of war is painfully simple: Netanyahu’s Israel is heedless, merciless, and increasingly friendless—except for Trump’s America and the Arab autocrats who have decided that Palestinian blood is just another price of “stability.”
Happy New Year.
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