Power, extremism, and chaos – Israel at a crossroads

“The state is being transformed into one with hollow institutions, driven by messianic religious ideology and sustained by military force”, is a profound observation by Abed Abou Shhadeh, a political activist based in Jaffa.

Under the hazy fog created against the backdrop of an orchestrated violent campaign by the Netanyahu regime to topple the Islamic Republic of Iran, parachute an American-based monarchist and impose an abominable discredited “Peacock Throne”, one could easily mistakenly think that Shhadeh is referring to Iran.

Wrong. He is referring to the Zionist settler-colonial regime.

And the reasons he provides makes it abundantly clear that in the near-total absence of a meaningful opposition, Israel is “systematically dismantling state institutions in ways that allow the current government to entrench its power, weaken the judiciary, and erode political and social norms”.

Shhadeh correctly argues that Netanyahu appears to be gambling that maintaining even a facade of democracy and respect for human rights is no longer necessary. The arrogance associated with Israel’s contemptuous defiance of the UN Charter and international laws, confirms the understanding by Shhadeh that Israel was never a liberal democracy.

With the world’s attention fixated on Iran, Netanyahu and his criminal gang of warlords find it opportune to continue encouraging Donald Trump’s administration to retreat from international institutions and applaud the crumbling of global order.

And despite the huge number of Israelis emigrating – reverse aliyah –and the regime recording its lowest population growth rate, Netanyahu’s obsession with killing Palestinians and their allies in the region has not subsided.

On the contrary, his appetite for war has increased with the knowledge that Trump is a faithful poodle, willing to do his bidding by partnering to orchestrate and execute regime change in Iran. Back in 2025 when Netanyahu launched a full-scale military attack on Iran, his goal was not limited to destroying Iran’s nuclear capabilities.

It was also regime change. The plan was that the military strikes would trigger a reaction leading to unrest and the toppling of the Islamic Republic. On both counts he failed, even after dragging Trump into unleashing US military power.

Prior to this humiliating defeat, it is well known that Netanyahu has been the chief architect engaged in what’s been described by analysts as a long-running shadow war against Iran.

The tactics used have included targeted killings of Iran’s nuclear scientists as well as cyber-attacks. Setting up Mossad operations and sleeper cells with huge amounts of cash, has been part of it. Reporting from Jerusalem for the New York Times on the current regime-change roots in Iran, David Halbfinger wrote that no country is watching the protests in Iran with greater interest than Israel, which sees the Islamic Republic as a mortal enemy and an existential threat.

Confirming Netanyahu’s obsession with Iran, he emphasised that both the government in Tehran and its supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have been portrayed as a global menace akin to Nazi Germany by the Israeli leader.

Author Mel Frykberg has written extensively on Netanyahu’s regime-change goal in Iran. According to her research, Netanyahu first warned in 1992, when he was a parliamentary member, that Iran was three to five years away from a nuclear bomb. Then in his 1995 book, Fighting Terrorism, Netanyahu warned that Iran was “five to seven years at most” from assembling a nuclear weapon.

Frykberg reminds us that in 1996 a policy document called, A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, prepared by a study group led by American neoconservative Richard Perle, was presented to Netanyahu, who was also Prime Minister at the time.

The plan called for regime change in North Africa and the Middle East which involved the overthrow of seven countries to be replaced by friendlier regimes that were more pliable to Israeli and American plans for domination and regional hegemony.

The plan was to target Iraq and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan before finishing off with Iran. The document argued that regime change was preferable to pursuing peace talks with the Arab world. In 2006, US General Wesley Clarke received a classified memo outlining a new military strategy of toppling seven countries over five years. Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran were again perceived as being hostile to Israel and the US.

That the recent attacks on Tehran are part of a long-standing plan by the US and Israel, is thus not surprising. However, the internal nightmare facing Netanyahu is beyond ideological. It is real. It borders on collapse.

“The Israeli state is quickly becoming a hollowed-out shell. Institutions are failing, public servants are leaving and political appointees serving their patrons are the only ones left to step in and fill the gaps. The Israel that emerges is bound for institutional, financial and cultural poverty – or implosion”, are the words of Ori Goldberg. In a recent op-ed, Goldberg spelled out why he believes the Israeli geopolitical clout is shrinking while the state itself is succumbing to dysfunction.In contrast to the Islamic Republic of Iran, it has become clear that Israel has become an agent of regional chaos.

Iqbal Jassat is the Executive Director of the Media Review Network in Johannesburg

DAILY NEWS