Benjamin Netanyahu remains the king of Israeli politics and the critical figure in the Middle East.
In a truly masterful hour-long interview with CNN, the Israeli Prime Minister revealed, without quite explicitly using these words, that Israel has undertaken a series of drone attacks against Iranian weapons facilities.
These attacks are designed both to serve Israel’s interests and to hinder Iran’s ability to supply drones and other weapons to Russia for its use against Ukraine.
Israel faces a period of intensified violence in the Palestinian territories, along with some dangerous internal polarisation, but Netanyahu looks like a politician in the box seat who has faced all these problems before and knows what he’s doing.
CNN’s worldview is left liberal and it’s not remotely sympathetic to Israel, but the condition of the interview was obviously that Netanyahu be allowed a reasonable chance to finish his answers and that the dialogue be polite. TV networks should try this style with subjects they don’t view sympathetically more often.
Netanyahu confronts a sea of troubles. Some nine Palestinians, including one certainly innocent civilian, were killed a recent anti-terror operation in Jenin. Seven innocent Jewish worshippers were murdered in a terrorist attack outside a Jerusalem synagogue and a couple of days later a Palestinian child shot and wounded another group of Jewish Israelis.
Read the article by Greg Sheridan in The Australian.