Illegal, immoral, lawless “preventive” bombing attacks on Irans & Lebanon’s civilian populations by Israel and the United States, have violated all laws, ethics, and any semblance of humanity.
Mar 11, 2026
( Israeli Ultra-Nationalists and warmongers National Security Minister Ben-Gvir (l.), Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, and Finance Minister Smotrech, far right.)
(US officials Trump & Hegseth (not pictured) are conducting an illegal war with Israel against Iran, Lebanon, Gaza and the Palestinian West Bank.)
At long last, after decades of blocking any peace agreement between the Unite States and Iran, pleading for US support for “decapitating” (assassinating) Iranian leaders; undermining all efforts for a two-state solution with Palestinians; and succeeding in securing an endless stream of American armaments to annihilate 20,000 innocent Palestinian children and turn Gaza into a mass graveyard, Israel, under the totalitarian leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu, has unveiled it’s secret weapon against the Muslim world: the United States military, led by a Christian Nationalist extremist who hates Muslims as much as the Netanyahu gang does, and green-lighted by an American Golem of a President who would do anything to escape jail, and the Epstein files.
Netanyahu and his extremist Ultra Nationalist government—driven by convicted terrorist Meir Kahane’s disciples Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israeli’s National Security Minister and Bezalel Smotrich, Israeli Finance Minister— chose to respond to the October 7, 2023, massacre by Hamas of more than 1200 innocent Israeli citizens and the forced kidnapping of hundreds of hostages, by grinding Gaza into the dust, and killing more than 75,000 Palestinian non-combatants. Such a genocidal counter-attack also blew up the most fundamental Jewish ethical standard of “proportionality of response,” which guided the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) since it’s inception.
Critics of the Netanyahu’s genocidal and disproportionate response to Hamas’ horrible murders and torture of innocent Israelis were instantly assailed as Anti-Semites—including Jews in Israel and abroad , if we questioned not only the Israeli government’s utter annihilation of Gaza, but Netanyahu’s sinister track record of previously providing funding to Hamas for the terrorist organization to torpedo any Palestinian hopes for a two-state solution—an outcome which Netanyahu and his extreme right wing supporters violently oppose.
Overnight, any semblance of the Israeli Defense Force’s (IDF), Code of Ethics for the IDF was obliterated by the Netanyahu government. Before BiBi bastardized the highly regarded Israeli Military and transformed it into his own ICE-like hit squad, the Code of Ethics for the IDF—based upon fundamental humanitarian principles of Judaism— commanded the IDF to adhere to specific rules of combat.
That Code of Ethics, required as part of basic training for IDF soldiers for decades, consisted of four essential principles:
· NECESSITY: “to apply force only for the sake of the mission;”
· DISTINCTION: “aim your fire at those who pose a threat, NOT at combatants indiscriminately;
· RESPONSIBILITY: “since you know there will be collateral harm of civilians, you have to do whatever you can to MINIMIZE the expected collateral harm.”
· PROPORTIONALITY: “Is the expected collateral harm proportionate to the military achievement?”
Netanyahu and his megalomaniacal, anti-Judaic cabinet— hell-bent on driving Palestinians and Muslims from all parts of Israel and from surrounding lands in the Middle East— negated all of that moral and ethical guidance for Israel’s soldiers, which had gained the IDF world-wide respect for decades. Unarmed Palestinian women and children—either in Gaza or the West Bank—were considered sub-human by the Ultra Nationalists controlling the Israeli government and its’ armed forces. Fanatical, law-breaking Israeli settlers were permitted to randomly kill Palestinians and to destroy life-sustaining olive-tree orchards of Palestinian families living in the West Bank for decades, while the IDF stood by silently and did not act to protect human life.
Instead of abiding by the IDF’s historic ethical code, Bibi and his band of extremists justified dropping 2,000 pound bunker-buster bombs—provided by the United States—on civilian populations by claiming, suspiciously, that Hamas or Hezbollah combatants had hidden themselves underneath non-combatant populations and structures, like hospitals, schools, day-care centers, or apartment buildings.
Just this week in Iran, the exact same bogus argument was used when US Tomahawk missiles, obliterated an all-girls school where some 150 young Iranian girls were massacred.
By its’ own actions, the Netanyahu government has not only trashed the humanitarian underpinnings of Judaism—an ethical, spiritual and religious standard that existed thousands of year before Israel did—but has single-handedly undermined the credibility of any statements or videos coming from the IDF or the nation of Israel, much as the Trump Administration and the US Defense Department under former Fox-News commentator Pete Hegseth has done. Facts and any concern for humanity have been suffocated completely in the fog and fury of of an undeclared, illegal war with extraordinarily high personal and political stakes for both Netanyahu and Trump.
Under the spurious “self-defense” definition defiled by Israel—and used as a fake shield to justify military attacks upon others— any civilian population in any country in which anti-Israel terrorists may be hiding is fair game for any indiscriminate—and non-proportional— IDF attack. National borders, international law, or individual state sovereignty do not matter under this new formulation of “self-defense” by the Netanyahu government, and echoed by the most anti-democratic, fascist government in United States history. To phrase it differently, “we have seen the enemy, and it is everybody else, but us.”
Netanyahu and the Ultra Nationalists ruling Israel, have effectively used the “self-defense” trap to ensnare the US and other allies in its illegal military actions, expanding it’s unending crusade for revenge for the murders of October 7, 2023, well-beyond retribution against Hamas, or the boundaries of Gaza and the West Bank.
Prior to this week’s unprovoked attack upon Iran by Israel and the United States, and Israel’s massive bombing campaign in Lebanon which has, so far, driven 700,000 Lebanese citizens from their homes, Bibi launched a Regional “Ring of Fire” War against the terrorist groups Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis. Anyone Netanyahu perceived to be a threat to Israel was fair game for a “disproportionate”attack, without any reason required, except those manufactured by BiBi. The Trump Administration has adopted the same nationalistic, militaristic approach to all other countries it deems a threat in the Western Hemisphere, includingVenezuela, Cuba, and at times, Mexico.
Before using the United States military as a shiny, new blunt instrument of terror against Iran over the past few weeks, Israel had already dangerously expanded it’s “Ring of Fire,” across the national borders of Lebanon, Yemen & Syria.
The first Israeli/American missile strikes against Iran’s alleged nuclear capabilities in June, 2025—which failed to take them out, despite Trump’s claim they were “obliterated”— was, the Israeli’s said, to retaliate for Iranian missiles being launched into Israel. In truth, Iran’s missile attack was done in response to Israel’s attack on Hezbollah strong holds in Southern Lebanon, the assassination of Hezbollah and Iranian leaders, and the maiming of thousands of Hezbollah operatives and Lebanese citizens with exploding personal communications devices—an illegal act on Israel’s part, considered by some, to constitute terrorism against the nation of Lebanon and its people. This week, Israel stepped up its acts of terror against the non-combatants of Lebanon by carpet-bombing Beirut.
Two years ago, in a remarkably prophetic piece, the Jewish publication The Forward outlined several military options Israel might take against Iran, which would shatter any hopes for a ceasefire, any chance of peace in the MidEast, and destabilize democratic nations and economies around the world, which is precisely what is happening right now during this current assault on Iran and Lebanon:
· “A tactical strike on Iran: A more substantial response could involve direct military action against Iranian assets, such as oil facilities or military installations. This would aim to inflict real damage on Iran’s infrastructure, forcing it to reconsider further provocations.
An attack on an oil installation, for instance, could disrupt Iran’s economic lifelines and send the clear message that Israel will not tolerate continued missile strikes. The goal here would be to create enough pain for Iran to deter future actions, without pushing the region into a full-scale war.”
· “A strategic overhaul of the region’s balance of power: This option is far more ambitious, and fraught with risk, but could reshape the Middle East. It would involve Israel somehow pushing the West to lay down the law with Iran, demanding not just an end to its missile strikes, but a full dismantling of its nuclear program and an end to its sponsorship of proxy forces across the region”.
The Forward goes on to point out that the most extreme option poses a serious, not hypothetical, risk of starting World War III:
“If Iran responds forcefully, the U.S. would almost certainly be drawn into the conflict to protect Israel. This could trigger a chain reaction, with Russia and China, both of whom have strategic relationships with Iran, seeing an opportunity to exploit the chaos. China could use the distraction to finally make a long-threatened move on Taiwan, while Russian President Vladimir Putin might take the opportunity to expand his war in Ukraine, or press into neighboring countries.
The global balance of power would be thrown into disarray, with potentially catastrophic consequences.”
The stakes here, at this very instant in human history, are extraordinary, and not just for the future existence of Israel, nor the existence of Iran, nor the entire Middle East, but for all of us.
Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin, in his final speech delivered at a Peace Rally where he was assassinated by an Ultra Nationalist Jewish extremist on November 4, 1995, stated clearly one of the fundamental principles upon which the State of Israel was built:
“The path of peace is preferable to the path of war. I say this as a military man…and see the pain of the families of the IDF soldiers. For them, for our children, in my case for our grandchildren, I want this Government to exhaust every opening, every possibility to promote and achieve a comprehensive peace.”
Netanyahu and the terrorist clones of Kahane now surrounding him, campaigned against every peace initiative put forth by Rabin going back 30 years–especially regarding a Two-State solution as outlined in the original UN Charter which created Israel. Cowardly US members of Congress—who received an extraordinary amount of money from the American/Israeli Political Action Committee (AIPAC)— enabled Bibi to directly undermine US National Security interests and Barack Obama’s Nuclear Peace Treaty with Iran in 2014, and again in 2024, when they facilitated BiBi’s bullying and bloviating before Congress to scuttle American cease-fire efforts in Gaza, tied to the freeing of the remaining hostages.
Netanyahu and his nationalist war-mongers never entertained any exit plan from Gaza nor the West Bank that involved Palestinian self-determination, or contradicts the fever dreams of the Ultra Nationalist coalition keeping Netanyahu in power, and out of prison.
The same nihilistic “no-exit” strategy applies to the brutal and illegal war being waged right now against Iran and Lebanon. But now Bibi has all-to-willing accomplices in the President of the United States—as eager to stay out of jail for crimes he has committed as Netanyahu is— and a messianic Christian US Secretary of Defense out to rid the world of, ironically, non-Christian infidels, who simply clutter the path to Armaggedon, the return of Christ to the Holy Land, and the forced conversion of all Jews to Christianity.
Ironically, Pope Leo, the Christian leader who heads the single largest Christian group in the world—1.39 billion baptized Catholics—has a far different take on the destruction of Gaza, the violence in the West Bank, the incessant bombing of Iran and Lebanon, and the Nationalist fiction that nations—like Israel and the United States—had the right to launch “preventive wars:”
“Let us raise our humble prayer to the Lord that the roar of bombs may cease, that weapons may fall silent, and that space may be opened for dialogue in which the voices of peoples can be heard.”
Two of Pope Leo’s most prominent representatives in the United States, Cardinal Blase Cupich, from Pope Leo’s hometown of Chicago, and Cardinal Robert McElroy of Washington, have strongly denounced the latest War in Iran, with Cupich calling it:
“A real war with real death and real suffering being treated like it’s a video game—it’s sickening.”
Cardinal Robert McElroy, the Archbishop of Washington, told the Associated Press just this week that the U.S. and Israel had failed to meet the minimum criteria for the war to be considered morally just:
“Lebanon may fall into civil war. The world’s oil supply is under great strain. The potential disintegration of Iran could well produce new and dangerous realities. And the possibility of immense casualties on all sides is immense. For all of these reasons, Catholic teaching leads to the conclusion that our entry into this war was not morally legitimate.”
Jewish organizations in the US and worldwide, like the American Council for Judiasm, and the Jewish Voice for Peace have offered an alternative voice for Jews, offering “Judaism beyond Zionism,” which, according to a March 2026 article in The Nation by Joseph Dana (“The Long Shadow of the ‘Jewish Question’”) points to a growing collection of:
“Synagogues, study groups, and ritual communities whose identity does not depend on an attachment to any state…These groups argue that thriving diaspora life is not a deficiency awaiting a territorial cure, but a legitimate form of Jewish existence that predates and will outlast the current crisis—and is, in fact, necessary to resolving it…these movements share a refusal to let the Israeli state define what Jewish identity means.”
Dana goes on to point out that, “In 2024, the Jewish Council of Australia was formed to explicitly challenge the claim that established Zionist organizations spoke for all Jews. When the council called for sanctions on Israel and an end to military ties, it framed its position as emerging from rather than contradicting its members’s Jewishness.”
Perhaps the merging of Israeli and US nationalist, militaristic and totalitarian ambitions will finally force American Jews to face the future of our continued connection to Israel, to mainstream Jewish organization, to AIPAC, and to public officials who pretend to be acting in our best interests, when, in fact, they are acting against the fundamental humanitarian teachings of our Judaism.
Writing about many of us Jews, worldwide, seeking a different, more just and humane definition of Judaism, Dana concludes in his article in The Nation:
“They are proposing an identity that doesn’t need to be defended through domination. The answer to what it means to be Jewish need not come at Palestian (nor Muslim—my edit) expense.”
The wisdom of Rabbi Hillel, the Elder, has never been more necessary for American Jews, and Jews worldwide to heed:
“If not us, who? If not now, when?”
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