Jewish-Israeli support for the illegal war of aggression against Iran is near-total. A recent Israel Democracy Institute poll (March 4) registered it at a whopping 93%. Naturally highest on the right (97%), it is still 93% at the center, and even an overwhelming 76% on the left. Opposition is at a negligible 3%. Let us also remember that 68% of Jewish-Israeli voters in the last elections were self-described right-wingers, and that percentage is rising to 75% among the first-time voters.

This overzealous support for the war in Iran reveals an inherent truth of Israeli society, demonstrated by this quote by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu back in 2015, where he spoke at parliament, saying:

“I’m asked if we will forever live by the sword — yes.”

This was linked with his claim that “at this time we need to control all of the territory for the foreseeable future.”

So Netanyahu ties up ‘living by the sword’ to territorial expansion. This is a constant in Israeli policy – territory before security, and then claiming that keeping the gains is a matter of security.

That territory is, of course, Palestine from the river to the sea, but it goes further than that. Last month, the Israeli centrist opposition leader Yair Lapid, confirmed that territorial ambitions from the Euphrates in Iraq to the Nile in Egypt were part and parcel of Zionism, because “Zionism is based on the bible”, and “our ownership deed over the land of Israel is the bible”. Lapid was basically in agreement with the Christian Zionist US Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, who had earlier opined that Israel could just “take it all”, from the river to the river, that is.

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Well, you know, the Euphrates river, at the southern point, runs just 10 miles from Iran, and the joint Tigris-Euphrates basin, where it ends, is also in Iran. So one could arguably expand and include Iran in the picture, in addition to Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. After all, it’s not exact science. And if there’s one thing Israel is good at, it’s expanding.

Iranian-born, Israeli journalist Orly Noy, wrote an excellent piece in +972 Magazine, titled “We are at war, therefore we are” (March 1). Here she noted Netanyahu’s dramatic proclamation from June:

‘Only eight months ago, following the ceasefire with Iran, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that “in the 12 days of Operation Rising Lion, we achieved a historic victory, which will stand for generations.” It turns out this “historic victory” did not last even a single year, let alone generations.’

But this time it’s different: ‘This time, the attack came with an added objective: liberating the Iranian people from the oppressive rule of the ayatollahs. For it is well known that one of Israel’s central roles in the Middle East is to rain freedom upon the peoples of the region with fighter jets and bombers.’

Israelis are supposedly for removing an existential threat. But Iran isn’t really that. The problem is not that the Iranian regime is crazy, but rather that it is calculated in challenging Israel politically. In 2012, former Mossad chief Meir Dagan, called the Iran’s regime “a very rational regime.”

It is Israel that needs to coat its craziness with heroism. Thus, it is now on a most moral mission to “save Iran from itself”. Its recent aggressions against Iran apply the heroic lion association, no doubt to also appeal to the Iranian royalists whose flag bears that symbolism.

The lion rose, the lion roared.

The support for this supposed war of liberation naturally included the liberal (yet biblically maximalist) Lapid: “In moments like these we stand together — and we win together. There is no coalition and no opposition, only one people and one IDF, with all of us behind them”, he wrote.

It also included the furthest left of the Zionist political spectrum, Yair Golan, leader of The Democrats, the merger of Labor and the further left Meretz:

“The IDF and the security forces are operating with strength and professionalism. They have our full backing.”

Well of course, Golan, the army general, the leftist who advocated for starving Gaza’s population and hoped to see that “7 million Palestinians who live between the sea and the river have simply disappeared”, supports that military liberation operation.

Any leader in Israel knows that lining up the entire Zionist political spectrum behind them is possible with war, for some time at least. One would almost be a fool not to start a war, if one was an Israeli leader struggling with backing, polls, court cases and facing an election this year, which Netanyahu is. While some polls are suggesting a victory for Netanyahu’s current coalition in a future election, others are suggesting a stalemate with opposition parties, and Netanyahu seeks a decisive element that can cut through that.

What is clear is that the Zionist vision  of Greater Israel and beyond continues. The genocide continues, the ethnic cleansing continues, and the annexations continue, and Israelis seem to be in the conviction that this is just how it’s meant to be. Constant war, to sustain our constant expansion. Because we live in a “villa in the jungle”, as former Prime Minister Ehud Barak used to say. The perception of a war of civilization against barbarism, is as old as Zionism itself