The Telegraph, increasingly functioning as the official paper of the Israeli state in Britain, published a report last week warning that “London, Paris, Berlin, and every other European capital now lies within Iranian reach.” The reader was then told that this was what “experts” were really fearing in the context of the imperial war waged against Iran. Despite the paywall on the report, it was relatively easy to uncover the identity of those fearful experts, for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had issued a remarkably similar warning just a day before: “The Iranian terrorist regime poses a global threat. Now, with missiles that can reach London, Paris, or Berlin.”
Israeli expertise is not confined to missile technology, however. It was widely reported last week that the very same experts tortured a 1-year-old Palestinian child by “extinguishing cigarettes on his body in front of his father in order to extract confessions.” Like many other standard applications of Israeli expertise, this too did not find its way into The Telegraph’s reporting. It appears as though the experts in “death and destruction from the sky all day long” are consulted only when their expertise serves certain ends.
Nonetheless, there is no doubt that many are inspired and indeed guided by such expertise, particularly the war hawks at the heart of the empire, including U.S. President Donald Trump himself. The unforgivable targeting of more than a hundred schoolgirls in Minab, Iran, was apparently just another manifestation of how strongly Trump’s decisions have been informed by Israeli expertise, as American conservative pundit Tucker Carlson even entertained the possibility that the coordinates for that hideous attack may have been provided by the Israelis.
Deference to Israeli expertise by the empire is perhaps understandable, given the infamous “special relationship” that the likes of U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham are never tired of invoking when it comes to matters of war and murder. It is certainly less understandable, however, in the case of Europe, and particularly Britain, which reportedly faces the “biggest economic hit from Iran war of any major country” according to the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD). Can Israeli expertise be of any use for Britain, for example, in dealing with its rapidly developing energy crisis after Qatar halted all LNG exports due to the war of Israel’s making? Likely not.
The main beneficiaries of Israeli expertise are naturally the Israelis themselves, along with their “partners” and “patrons” in the upper echelons of American society. The rest of the world, on the other hand, may find that Israeli expertise comes with a heavy, invisible toll. Britain is discovering this the hard way. Presumably, upon the advice he received from the same group of experts, Trump openly questioned whether it makes sense to defend a country that “wasn’t there” when he needed it, referring to Britain’s refusal to join the war against Iran directly. Of course, The Telegraph would never mention Israeli expertise in this context either.
The true genius of this expertise lies in how versatile and portable it can be. It produces warnings of grave threats that never really existed, and methods tested elsewhere are repeated in new theaters of war. A risk assessment can be entirely imaginary, yet cited as evidence of danger. And, in a way, it is evidence of danger, as it seems to terrify foreign capitals like London, Paris and Berlin. So much are they terrified, in fact, that they feel compelled to rely on the same expertise that is only accelerating their decay. The alternative might be to find a new source of expertise, an indigenous one perhaps, which would prioritize the interests of the people at last. Whether this is possible is doubtless a difficult question to answer, but it is a question that cannot be ignored.
