From
Beersheba to Babylon: Netanyahu casts himself as liberator of Iran
Speaking at
a hospital hit by an Iranian missile, the Israeli prime minister invoked
ancient Persia as he hinted at a historic mission
Julian
Borger in Beersheba
Thu 19 Jun
2025 20.05 BST
It was in
the Beersheba, about 1,000km and 2,500 years from Babylon, that Benjamin
Netanyahu suggested on Thursday that the time had come for the Jews to repay
their ancient debt to Cyrus the Great and bring liberation to Iran.
The Israeli
prime minister had just made a tour of Soroka hospital, which a few hours
earlier had sustained a direct hit from an Iranian ballistic missile on one of
its buildings.
The strike
came shortly after the upper floors of the building had been evacuated – an
escape already being described by Israeli leaders as miraculous.
If the
hospital director had not acted, Soroka could have seen the worst loss of
Israeli civilian life since the Hamas massacre on 7 October 2023.
Netanyahu’s
long grip on power had looked irretrievably broken on that date 20 months ago,
as his security forces had been powerless to save Israeli lives. But now, two
wars and more than 55,000 people dead, the prime minister is carrying himself
as a man of destiny.
Increasingly
confident of fundamentally redrawing the map of the Middle East, he toyed with
the idea of regime change in Iran – the leader of a 10 million-strong nation
calling on a population almost 10 times bigger to overthrow the clerical regime
that has ruled the country since the 1979 revolution.
“People ask
me – are we targeting the downfall of the regime?” Netanyahu said, talking to
the press in a hospital compound strewn with broken glass. “That may be a
result, but it’s up to the Iranian people to rise for their freedom. Freedom is
never cheap. It’s never free. Freedom requires these subjugated people to rise
up, and it’s up to them. But we may create conditions that will help them do
it.”
If Israeli
bombs were to break down the pillars of the Islamic Republic, Netanyahu said it
would represent the paying of millennia-old dues, dating back to the liberation
of the Jews from captivity in Babylon, by the Cyrus of Persia, the legendary
predecessor of the ayatollahs.
“I want to
tell you that 2,500 years ago, Cyrus the Great, the king of Persia, liberated
the Jews. And today, a Jewish state is creating the means to liberate the
Persian people,” he said.
When Cyrus
stormed ancient Babylon, it was by land invasion. There are fewer guarantees
that an aerial bombing campaign – not an option for the ancients – can change
another country’s leadership in the way favoured by the bombers.
So far there
are signs that even fervent opponents of the oppressive regime are rallying to
its cause in the face of an outside threat. At worst, bombing campaigns can
bring monsters to power, as the US bombing of Cambodia helped create the Khmer
Rouge.
On this
occasion, Netanyahu had come to the southern city of Beersheba, on the edge of
the Negev desert, to paint Iran’s leaders as monsters for the bombing of the
Soroka hospital.
“We’re
targeting missile sites. They’re targeting a hospital,” he said. “They’re
targeting civilians because they’re a criminal regime. They’re the
arch-terrorists of the world.”
An hour
earlier, Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, had stood in the same spot, with the
same charred building behind him, and made the same argument, telling Iran’s
leaders: “Your crimes against humanity, your war crimes, won’t deter us.”
Herzog left
without taking questions, nor was Netanyahu challenged with questions over
Israel’s relentless destruction of the hospitals and clinics of Gaza, where 2.2
million Palestinians remain trapped under siege conditions some have compared
to medieval warfare.
Aryeh Myers,
a spokesperson for the Israeli Magen David Adom emergency services, argued that
there was a critical distinction, pointing to Israeli claims of Hamas
strongholds under Gaza’s medical facilities.
“The main
difference between this hospital is it is a totally civilian hospital,” Myers
said, as he helped oversee the evacuation of patients to other hospitals in the
region. “There are no tunnels underneath [Soroka] – it’s not housing terrorist
headquarters. This hospital is for the civilians who live in the Negev region –
whether they are Jewish residents, Muslim residents, whoever it is.
“We’ve got a
huge Bedouin community that live in this area who are served very much by this
hospital. And the fact that this hospital was targeted is a horrendous state of
affairs,” he said.
International
humanitarian law affords strong protections to hospitals, clinics, ambulances,
and their staff, who are to be protected at all times. The bar for infringement
is set very high.
Iran’s
foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, argued that the Iranian missile had been
aimed at a nearby Israeli military headquarters and claimed Soroka hospital
only suffered “superficial” damage from the blast wave. There was no question
the damaged hospital building had been hit directly, however, and the map
Araghchi used to illustrate his online claims bore little relation to the
actual downtown area of Beersheba.
On the other
hand, Netanyahu’s claims that he knew all of Israel’s military sites and there
was no such site “for miles and miles around” also seemed open to
interpretation.
The prime
minister has a reputation for creativity when it comes to spinning a narrative,
especially in this mood, as he surveyed thousands of years of history.
Ultimately, he suggested, final liberation for Jews and Persians could depend
on another latter-day king far beyond these shores, whose evangelical
supporters have also likened to Cyrus the Great.
Netanyahu
described Donald Trump as a saviour in waiting – “a tremendous friend, a
tremendous world leader”, who he praised for “his resolve, his determination,
and his clarity”. The message has been consistent for several days now: if
Israel is to play the transformative role for the ages that Netanyahu has in
mind, it is clearly going to need a lot of help.
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário