By Ali Aziz:

Israel’s current election, coming at a critical juncture, is arguably the most significant in Jewish history. It spans more than three years, a period fraught with greater peril than any since Israel’s founding in 1948. On October 7, Hamas, backed by Iran, launched the most brutal assault on Israeli civilians in decades. Militants opened fire indiscriminately, carrying out a massacre that claimed 1,200 lives in a matter of hours and resulted in the taking of approximately 250 hostages. Israel’s response was swift and forceful; the government issued immediate evacuation warnings to Gaza residents, signaling its intent to uproot Hamas through military action, a goal that could not be achieved without a prolonged war. Under intense pressure, driven largely by internal Israeli demands, the situation rapidly escalated into full-scale conflict. Had it not been for these domestic pressures, and had the Israeli government exercised greater patience and long-term strategic restraint, it might have focused on rallying global public opinion around the plight and victimization of the Jewish people. Instead, the current approach has inadvertently handed a gift to the Palestinians and the forces supporting them, an opportunity they are now exploiting for their own political gain.

In truth, the events of October 7 constituted a genocidal massacre of defenseless people, driven solely by the fact that they were Jews. The chilling reality of this massacre is a stark reminder that a Holocaust could, at any moment, unfold once again. What followed was that Israel, a state that considers itself liberal, began taking rapid, imprudent steps with unconsidered consequences. It transformed the image of Jews from a persecuted, targeted people into oppressors committing massacres across the Gaza Strip. This transformation, portraying the state as a savage, criminal entity, has been in the planning for many years. It is a project in which Iran, Syria (under the leadership of Bashar al-Assad), Hamas, and various Islamist movements, including certain Palestinian factions, have all played a part.

Since 2003, and even earlier, the dominant image in global media, the one that has come to shape public perception, has been defined by the mass killings and genocides perpetrated by Iran and its affiliated militias across Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen against various minorities. This narrative is reinforced by imagery associated with Islamist movements and groups, entities born from the most horrific forms of collective violence, characterized by the use of car bombs and armed terrorist activities. This trajectory spans from the events of September 11, through the rise of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, to the appalling massacres committed by the Syrian regime against its own people since 2011, which resulted in a massive death toll, as well as the complex, often contradictory dynamics surrounding the fight against ISIS (an organization that received covert support from Iran). Ultimately, all these elements converge into a single, cohesive picture: a cycle of death, darkness, savagery, and ruin.