Meanwhile, back on the Strip

Iran is making this easy hard for Israel

You know the classic movie fight scene:

• Our hero, dressed distinctively to stand out, is surrounded by a horde of similarly dressed minions

• As one minion attacks, the others ready themselves to follow on in sequence, always giving the hero just enough time to recover from the last baddie dispatched before spinning and taking on the next one(s)

• Cue the churning music and proceed for about seven minutes of this violent ballet and you’re got yourself an improbable win of one master fighter over a cluster of marginal fighters.

It always seems a bit staged, does it not? A bit performative by design?

Why don’t they all rush at once and finish off the hero?

Because that’s just not the way things are done in this universe. The rules for avoiding escalation are clear and dutifully obeyed.

The rest? That’s just talk.

This logic is on full display right now with Israel taking on all comers while it finishes up its new design for the Strip (smaller, partitioned, buffered, locked down). Under normal circumstances, the West would be all focused and upset by this demolition drama and the profound suffering it has inflicted upon the Palestinians there.

But, as so often seems the case in this neck of the woods, Iran has other needs and thus other plans. It wants (needs) to remind any and all that its Axis of Resistance (a grand title for a handful of Tehran-backed militias surrounding Israel and arch enemy Saudi Arabia) gives it immense sway over developments. But, being itself not in good shape today at home, Iran is reduced to sending in its minions in choreographed sequence to bloody our hero before suffering his latest, brutal beatdown (Enjoy your remodeled port, Houthis).

Every time one of these players (Hamas, Houthis, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, various insurgent groups based in Iraq and Syria) takes a swing, Israel effectively parries and then punches back HARD. Meanwhile, the world holds its breath and mutters to itself about a “regionalization” of the conflict that would send the world into some sort of chaotic tailspin.

Except it never happens.

I know. I’ve been waiting on this for roughly HALF A CENTURY!

Iran keeps teeing up its minions, Israel keeps punching back, and Gaza’s diminishment continues apace — almost forgotten in the larger strategic angst mostly suffered by outside great powers (BUT … WHAT IF?).

On some level, this is the same old, same old for the last several decades, am I right? We’re just enduring a concentrated zone of conflict following Hamas’ 7 Oct attack. The dynamics, the sequencing, Israel getting its dirty work done within the Palestinian Territories … all of this is so familiar, like a movie remake because who can remember Patrick Swayze in “Roadhouse”?

[ANSWER: I can, but I liked the new one too.]

So, a new generation gets a new version of a familiar tale, and, despite the internal anguish it causes here in the States, the US stands by Israel because … our hero’s in the middle of a never-ending fight for its survival.

Meanwhile, Arab Americans feel bad, like Irish nationals long did regarding the bloody homeland they left behind. It’s all very sad, but it’s all very politically performative here in the States.

What’s always surreal in all of this is just how little the Arab/Persian world actually cares about Palestine and the Palestinians. They are always the afterthought, which tells us that Palestine has about as much of an independent future as Tibet or Xinjiang does in China — meaning, NO FUTURE.

On Gaza, the updated tale of the tape: