Opinion: War on Iran: How Israel is demolishing the myth that once shielded it
Ever since the state’s founding, Israeli leaders have trotted out phrases like “a villa in the jungle”, “tough neighbourhood” or, perhaps most tiresomely, “only democracy in the Middle East”.
The function of this propaganda has been to persuade their audience - both the domestic Israeli electorate, and the leaders and citizens of Israel’s allied states in the Global North - that the country is an island of civilisation in a sea of barbarism.
They suggest that despite its sweeping victories in most of the wars it has fought, its region-leading military backed by unlimited US aid, and its nuclear arsenal, Israel is in fact at continuous risk of being overrun by Arab, Iranian and Muslim hordes, and its people “driven into the sea” - just as, in fact, Jewish militias drove Palestinian refugees into the sea in 1948.
This myth has had a powerful, malign impact.
Read more: War on Iran: How Israel is demolishing the myth that once shielded it Opinion by Gabriel Polley
Iranian workers clear debris from a damaged building after a strike on the capital Tehran on 15 March 2026 (Atta Kenare/AFP)