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Joel B. Pollak
Iran is staging an attack on all fronts against Israel through its terrorist proxies, taking advantage of Israel’s internal dissent and the Biden administration’s attempt to isolate the government of Benjamin Netanyahu.
In recent days, Iranian-backed terror groups, notably Hamas, have launched rockets against Israel from Gaza in the southwest and from Lebanon in the north — the latter with the permission of Iranian-backed Hezbollah.
Palestinians have stockpiled weapons in the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, with some barricading themselves inside to prepare attacks on Jewish worshippers at the Western Wall below — and to provoke Israeli raids that inflame opinion in the Arab world and in left-leaning Western media.
In addition, Palestinian terrorists killed three civilians on Friday: one, an Italian tourist killed in a car-ramming attack in Tel Aviv; the others, two British-born teenage sisters who lived in Efrat, a town in a part of Judea (the southern “West Bank”) that is close to Jerusalem and would return to Israel in any future peace deal.
Meanwhile, the Israeli opposition has continued its protests against judicial reforms, even as negotiations on a compromise have begun. There are reports that the Mossad, Israel’s foreign spy agency, backed the protests.
At the same time, the Biden administration has floated the idea of a partial nuclear deal with Iran that would give it sanctions relief and allow it to stop just short of the level of uranium enrichment necessary for a nuclear bomb.
President Joe Biden himself has also given Prime Minister Netanyahu the cold shoulder, refusing to invite him to the White House despite the results of Israel’s democratic elections nearly six months ago.
He has criticized Israel’s judicial reforms — which would, ironically, bring the Israeli judiciary closer to the American norm, and would be far less radical than reforms Biden himself has considered, such as “packing” the Supreme Court.
That has created a sense that Israel is alone and divided — and Iran is taking advantage, seeking to test Israel and expose its sudden strategic weakness.
Analyst Seth Frantzman, writing in the Jerusalem Post, noted that recent events “represent the manifestation of an Iranian strategy to confront Israel with multiple threats on different fronts. …
“Iran’s idea for a multi-front war is not new. It has been boasting in recent months about how Israel is internally collapsing and it has signaled that it wants to increase its threats,” Frantzman observed.
On Sunday, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, both backed by Iran, met in Beirut in a show of solidarity. Netanyahu has sounded the alarm, telling Israelis that the security situation is “challenging” and calling up the Border Police reserves.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
