How the world has reacted to Iran’s attempt to eradicate the Zionist entity.

By Neville Berman

The antisemites of the world are up in arms. The Islamic Republic of Iran had a plan to build a ring of fire of terrorist entities around Israel and then to simultaneously attack the Zionist entity from all sides. It was assumed that the Palestinians living in Israel and the West Bank would relish the opportunity to join the fight and kill the Zionists who had stolen their land.  Surely 90 million Iranians could be relied upon to get rid of the cancerous growth of Zionists that had infected the world once and for all? Everything had fallen into place for the final destruction of Israel.

With the exception of the International Atomic Energy Agency, everybody knew that Iran was building a nuclear arsenal to attack Israel. Germany, France and Britain had already succumbed to the large Muslim populations that they had so graciously invited into their countries. No matter what Iran did, European appeasement was absolutely assured.

Iran had the third largest oil reserves in the world, and no one would dare attack Iran as the price of oil would skyrocket. Despite American sanctions, Iran was flush with money from oil sales to China. The Iranians had thousands of inter-continental missiles that they could use to attack Israel with. They were even selling suicide drones to Russia to use against Ukraine. America was tired of war, and it was assumed that they would avoid getting militarily involved in another bloody Middle East conflict. The Jews living in Israel were divided and demonstrations against the government were taking place daily. They assumed that Israel was on the verge of collapse.  The Iranians even erected a large clock in Tehran that was counting down the days for the destruction of the Zionist entity.  Iran was on the verge of finally annihilating the Zionist enterprise. What could go wrong?

Two things initially went wrong. Firstly, Hamas attacked Israel without coordinating the attack with Iran and its other proxies. Secondly Iran totally underestimated the resolve of the Jews. Built into the DNA of Jews is faith, survival and innovation. Empires have come and gone. The Jews have survived. Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks has stated that Judaism is not about the idea of power. It is about the power of ideas. Jews know how to survive and prosper wherever they are forced to live. Like steel that has been made stronger by being subjected to extremely high temperatures, the Jews have been strengthened through their own history of over 3,000 years of being victimized and slaughtered. They understand that in every generation some nation will arise that wants to kill them. They prepare for a worst-case scenario.

Jews are really annoying. They have never stopped believing in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They refuse to convert and recognize Jesus as the Messiah. They keep Saturday as the sabbath. They have returned to the land that God promised to the seed of Abrahan, Isaac and Jacob. They have succeeded in making Jerusalem the capital of the State of Israel. They have resuscitated Hebrew as a spoken language. They have made the desert fertile. They have become the start-up nation. Israel is a powerhouse of innovation and technology.  Jews are stubborn and argumentative. They refuse to commit suicide to please the world. They want to live in peace. This obviously threatens world peace. How annoying.

Since 2005, when Israel withdrew from Gaza, Israel believed that as long as the Palestinians in Gaza were living a better material life, everything in Gaza was hunky dory. Israel was concentrating on the much larger threat from Hezbollah in the north, and fell asleep regarding watching Gaza in the south. October 7, 2023 was a wake-up call for Israel. Hamas had stunned Israel and the world. Like Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Hamas had won the opening battle. In an instant, all differences in Israel were set aside. The country immediately united and went to war to defend itself. Despite enormous difficulties, Israel succeeded in decapitating the top leadership of both Hamas and Hezbollah and greatly reduced their capacity to attack Israel. Assad was overthrown, not by Israel, but by the Syrians themselves who took advantage of Israel’s crippling of Hezbollah. Iran had lost the proxy armies it had spent billions building up in Syria, Lebanon and Gaza. Iran then made a major error. It attacked Israel directly. It amounted to a declaration of war. The rest is history in the making.

For years America and Israel have stated that Iran will never be allowed to have a nuclear arsenal. After Israel destroyed the Iranian air defenses, it was time to put into action what both Israel and America had stated about Iran’s nuclear program. Israel succeeded to attack the Natanz nuclear site and to eliminate senior Iranian military leaders and nuclear scientists. President Trump then took advantage of the situation and announced that America had attacked and totally destroyed the Iranian nuclear sites at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan.

The world was outraged. The hypocrisy is mind-boggling. The United Nations immediately condemned America for endangering world peace. The European Union issued a statement that it is deeply alarmed by the American action in Iran. Not surprisingly, they were never deeply alarmed by 30,000 rockets fired at Israel by Hamas and Hezbollah. Iran claimed that what America did was outrageously dangerous. Coming from a country that has financed, armed and trained terrorist entities all around the world, it appears that they know all about outrageously dangerous behavior. Iran announced that America has broken all red lines of peaceful behavior, and that they will respond forcefully, and that all American assets in the middle east were military targets.

Hamas claims that the attacks are barbaric. Well Hamas obviously knows a thing or two about barbaric attacks. Qatar, the supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood, announced that the American attack on Iran will have catastrophic consequences.  Russia announced that the American attack on Iran is against international law. From a country that has deliberately and without provocation, attacked Ukraine and is now claiming that all of Ukraine is part of Russia, this takes chutzpah to an entirely new level.

Only one country has stated the truth. Israel has thanked President Trump for destroying the nuclear sites in Iran that were a direct threat to the world. The moral compass of the world has completely collapsed. The end result will be the repeat of the story of David and Goliath. Tiny Israel will defeat the Mullahs of Iran. With Iran defeated the inevitable result will be the expansion of the Abraham Accords and the real possibility of peace in the Middle East.

After Israel destroyed the nuclear reactor in Iraq in 1981, the Prime Minister of Israel, Menachem Begin, asked Sam Lewis, the American Ambassador to Israel, to convey to President Reagan a message that Israel had in a defensive action destroyed the nuclear reactor in Iraq. In the fullness of time, the initial condemnation of what Israel had done, gave way to profound thanks. The same scenario is likely to repeat itself in the current war. The truth is that Israel is not a threat to world peace. The religious fanaticism of Iran’s Shiite mullahs, to annihilate Israel and subjugate the world to Sharia rule is the real problem.

It’s time for the world to understand what is happening.   

About the writer:

Accountant Neville Berman had an illustrious sporting career in South Africa, being twice awarded the South African State Presidents Award for Sport and was a three times winner of the South African Maccabi Sportsman of the Year Award.  In 1978 he immigrated to the USA  to coach the United States men’s field hockey team, whereafter, in 1981 he immigrated to Israel where he practiced as an accountant and then for 20 years was the Admin Manager at the American International School in Even Yehuda, Israel.  He is married with two children and one granddaughter.

While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

Framing antisemitic tropes about Jewish or Israeli influence over US presidents has a long and toxic history.

By Adam Levick

On June 22, 2025, President Donald Trump ordered the US Air Force to drop multiple bunker-busting bombs on three nuclear facilities in Iran – the Fordow Uranium Enrichment Plant, the Natanz Nuclear Facility, and the Isfahan Nuclear Technology Center.

The US attack – almost certainly a one-off – occurred nine days into the war between Israel and the Islamic Republic which has seen Israel’s Air Force (IAF) achieve air supremacy, allowing the military to strike hundreds of military targets, including IRGC leaders, nuclear facilities and nuclear scientists throughout Iran – over 1,000 sorties in which the IAF lost not a single plane.

However, that one American attack began to immediately be framed by some British media outlets as an example of the Israeli tail wagging the US dog, suggesting that the US president was coerced into making the decision by Israel’s prime minister.  This framing, evoking antisemitic tropes about alleged Jewish and/or Israeli power and undue influence over the United States, has a long and toxic history. In recent decades, it’s been associated with the progressive left, but has also been embraced by some within the MAGA right.

Enter Edward Luce, the Financial Times’s US Editor, and arguably the most openly anti-Israel contributor at the outlet. While not justifying the October 7 massacre, Luce suggested, in an opinion piece three days after worst antisemitic atrocity since the Holocaust, that the attacks in southern Israel were understandable. His foray into the Jewish power calumny began even before Trump made the decision.

On June 20, two days before the US strike, and amidst the debate about what Trump would do, Luce published a piece titled “MAGA’s battle with Israel for Trump’s mind”.  The headline ignored the debate within the administration between isolationists (also known as the “restrainers”) like Vice President JD Vance, and interventionists like Secretary of State Marco Rubio, instead casting Jerusalem as the lone party attempting to “control” Trump’s “mind”.

The text picks up on the headline’s theme:

“Trump’s managerial style is usually to encourage squabbling between underlings. That enhances his role as the decider.  But it is Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, not Trump or his loyalists, who has been dictating the agenda….”

Luce’s use of the word “dictating”, referring to the act of imposing one’s will or authority on others, leaves little doubt that he’s imputing Israeli control over US decision making. He used  same word in a column he wrote after the US attack, (“Trump has opened a Pandora’s box”, June 22), which included the following:

“Trump’s brief televised address following the strikes was meant to showcase his command of the situation. In reality, Netanyahu has been dictating events. But even he, cannot predict how Iran will respond.”

This pattern persisted in an opinion piece (“Trump’s step into the dark”) by the FT’s editorial board :

“The Trump administration has allowed Netanyahu, who has long opposed diplomatic efforts with Tehran, to sideline diplomacy and drag Trump into a war he has wanted for a decade.”

It’s not just the Financial Times.

Andrew Roth, the Guardian’s global affairs correspondent based in Washington DC, wrote an analysis after the US strike also denying the US president agency, positing instead that Trump unwittingly fell into a “trap” set by Jerusalem (“What a difference a week makes: Trump falls into Netanyahu’s trap”, June 22).  In addition to the headline, Roth’s piece includes the following:

“From early suggestions that the Trump administration would rein in Netanyahu’s military ambitions, it now appears that the Israeli PM has maneuvered the US into striking Iranian uranium enrichment sites directly after a series of military attacks that Washington was unable to deter the Israeli PM from.”

Further into the piece, Roth again picks up on the same theme of Israeli control over US presidents:

“While Netanyahu had been able to maneuver previous administrations into supporting his military adventures in the region, some critics of Israel began to laud Trump for his ability to resist Netanyahu’s pull.”

The Israel-centric conspiratorial mindset of Roth can’t accept that the support of previous US presidents for Israeli wars with Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and Hezbollah, was made of their own free will, based on what they felt was in the national interest.

The Guardian’s veteran columnist Simon Tisdall advanced a similar theme of an Israeli trap (“No matter what Trump says, the US has gone to war – and there will be profound and lasting consequences”, June 22). Tisdall wrote the following:

“Trump, the isolationist president who vowed to avoid foreign wars, has walked slap bang into a trap prepared by Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu – a trap his smarter predecessors avoided.”

In addition to the antisemitic pedigree of such explanations for US decisions to use military force in the Middle East, the ‘Israel controls Washington’ charge is, and has always been, the go-to narrative for intellectually lazy commentators who don’t want to grapple with the complexities of the internal debates and foreign policy decision-making processes within the White House.

Of course, to gather accurate, fact-based assessments of the Trump administration’s decision to bomb Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan would require real journalism, a far more arduous task than deploying antisemitic dog-whistles about Israeli puppeteers controlling the president of the world’s greatest power.

About the writer:

Adam Levick immigrated to Israel from Philadelphia , USA in 2009, and has been co-editor of CAMERA UK since 2012. He previously worked as a researcher at NGO Monitor and, prior to that, at the Civil Rights Division of the Anti-Defamation League. He’s had op-eds published in numerous Jewish and non-Jewish publications, published longer papers at the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs on “Antisemitism in Progressive Blogs” and “Antisemitic Cartoons in Progressive Blogs”, and was previously a member of the Online Antisemitism Working Group for the Global Forum to Combat Antisemitism. He frequently gives presentations about media bias and antisemitism, including one in 2022 at the inaugural conference of the London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism.

While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

While terrified citizens typically flee from war zones – not Israelis who hurriedly flock back home from abroad.

By David E. Kaplan

Watching the news and seeing the long lines of cars trying to escape Teheran, Iran’s capital of 10 million and from there who knows where, and recalling how during the Syrian civil war a conflict that began in 2011, where at least 6.7 million fled abroad, Israel must be one of the few countries – maybe the only country – when at a time of war and extreme danger, Israelis abroad are queuing up to return!

What is more, with Ben Gurion Airport closed to passenger traffic since the war began on Friday 13, June, 2025, they are trying any means to return – short of crossing the Sahara on a camel – and are prepared to pay exorbitant prices to do so.

Despite the terror and the trauma, the character of the Israeli is to be at home, in one’s country, with one’s family, with one’s people and braving this war beyachad – “together”.

Amit Hari, a licensed captain and the owner of the Sailor Yacht Club in Herzliya told Times of Israel (ToI) that his phone has not stopped ringing since Israel closed its airspace leaving more than 100,000 to 150,000 Israelis stranded abroad.

Receiving “thousands of calls” from Israelis desperately seeking an avenue to return home from Cyprus, “I told my wife I feel like Schindler, I have a notebook here with lists, and basically, I’m trying to help anyone that I can who wants to come with us on our yachts to Larnaca and anyone who wants to return with us to the port of Herzliya.”

Hari, whose sailing club is operating three yachts out of the port of Herzliya to Larnaca, says:

 “It is not an easy trip of 30 hours on a yacht with people who are not used to sailing. It can be very challenging for them.”

It’s a bigger challenge for the well-over 100,000 Israelis stranded abroad in a rush to “get home”.

With Israel’s airspace closed for arrivals and departures as Iranian missiles continue to rain down bringing uncertainty  as to when regular commercial flights may resume, on Wednesday, Israel  together with local airlines, launched a repatriation operation. It is expected to take weeks. My friend Stanley Milliner stuck in Greece jokes in a WhatsApp:

“It’s a long way to swim!”

Hundreds stranded abroad and in Israel have headed online, seeking maritime travel solutions via social media channels. On Facebook, people have opened multiple groups dedicated to finding sea-based travel options – mainly out of Israeli ports in Herzliya and Haifa – but prices have steepened as demand has shot up.

One high-profile Israeli “marooned” in Cyprus was none other than the former  editor of The Jerusalem Post, US-born, Yaakov Katz who was on a flight from London to Tel Aviv set to land at 3:30 a.m. at Ben Gurion Airport when Israel launched its surprise attack.

“Minutes from landing,” Yaacov posted on X, “we were suddenly diverted to Cyprus and stayed on the plane for a few hours.” Stranded in Paphos for two days, he says “everywhere I went — from the streets to the hotel to the Chabad House that opened its doors within hours — I met Israelis who had one goal: get back home. Not to safety. To Israel.”

Working on ways to “get back” to Israel that included riskier routes via Egypt or Jordan, Yaakov received a call to be in Limassol within an hour as a “tugboat was leaving for Israel,” charging NIS 6,000 ($1,700) for the trip.

“Nine of us squeezed onto a vessel captained by Eli, a veteran Israeli sailor who didn’t ask questions.”

Among his group were “a brother and sister who are farmers and grow flowers in the Arava. They’d been in Holland on a sales trip. The brother insisted on returning to report for reserves. Another was a CEO from Karmiel. His company has 100 employees and global orders he is now fighting to fulfill, despite a country under fire.”

“No one asked if it was safe,” he wrote on social media. “But that’s not how Israelis think.”

On Wednesday, Israel launched a phased airlift operation to bring home its citizens. Following the first aircraft bringing home stranded Israelis, returnees expressed relief to be back on Israeli soil. Despite the nightly volleys of Iranian missiles, hotelier Yaakov Bogen, 66, told Agence France-Presse (AFP) after landing back in Israel that he would rather be at home with family than abroad.

“I belong here, and unfortunately we get used to these fights and war, but we prefer to be here, to support as much as we can.”

Also expressing relief to be back after her flight was redirected to Cypris, stylist 40-year-old Tali Gehorsam, explained:

“This is home. There’s no other place. To be overseas and to watch the news is not a nice feeling.”

At the most harrowing of times, Israeli citizens living abroad aren’t running from a war at home, but to it. From Athens to New York, Israelis are typically rushing to airports and diving into online chat groups for help, desperate to make their way “home”. It was the same when after Hamas attacked on October 7,2023. Whether these Israelis abroad were yearning to serve in a military reserve unit or to volunteer to shuttle supplies to those in need, they wanted to be in their country and serve. Yaakov Swisa, a 42-year-old father of five, said nobody called and asked him to return to Israel to fight, but he felt he had no choice. He had served for 15 years, and he said when he learned that his former army roommate was among those murdered at the Nova Music Festival, he wanted to rejoin his reserve unit, even if that meant leaving his family and his job in Los Angeles.

“I’ve been crying for two, three days. Enough. That’s it. I am ready to fight,” he said. “What else would I do … while my friends are being buried in Israel?”

It was the same with 18-year-old college student Adam Jacobs from New Jersey. Born and raised in the U.S. and for years traveled every summer to visit family in Israel, said when he learned his cousin was also among those murdered, he decided to put his life in the US on hold to depart for Israel and volunteer  his services  in whatever way he could.

“I couldn’t live with myself if I stayed here,” Jacobs said. “It’s never been this bad.”

The civic camaraderie was infectious.Although Londoner Israel Lawrence hadn’t been formally called up, the 27-year-old who was born in Israel, felt compelled to join his fellow soldiers, many already on the front lines, and help his family members, who were living in terror and chaos.

“I want to be honest with you, I’m scared,” said Lawrence, a trained rifleman who made his way to Israel via Cyprus in 2023 like others are now doing in 2025. “All the guys I’m with are terrified, but we are trained, and we’ll do the best we can.”

“Doing the best we can” is exactly how Israelis have responded since the barbaric invasion on October 7, both in Israel in showing extraordinary resilience and those abroad in trying by any means and expense to return home.

As I write, my cellphone bleeps. It’s a message from my stranded buddies Stanley Milliner and his wife Toni in response to my enquiry for an update as to their ‘Herculean’ – being in Greece – efforts in returning to Israel. Planning this trip three months earlier to “meet in the Med” with their South African  family from Cape Town, Alan and Silvana Silverman, they left on the 12^th June for Athens only to wake the next morning “with the world turned on its head.” It was an apt choice of words for this was war on another level. After nearly 2 years of heavy fighting since the October 7 attacks with the “proxies”, Israel was taking on the head of the snake – Iran – and all “our children and our grandchildren back in Israel running to bomb shelters.” With their days of ‘vacation’ in Greece tuning into the news all day and, “…texting the kids for an “all’s well” message,” they set about devising a way to return home. Their efforts reveal in this latest WhatsApp:

 “…It will take a week if nothing else goes wrong….Flying from Athens to Larnaca and then a Mano cruise ship home next Saturday.”

Yesterday morning, the cruise ship Crown Iris, operated by Mano Shipping, docked at the Port of Ashdod, carrying approximately 2,000 Israeli citizens rescued from Limassol, Cyprus. There are thousands back in Limassol waiting to follow. One of them is Hanit Azulay. She told Associated Press:

“My little daughter is over there; my family is over there and we are regular [sic] with this; it’s been nearly two years in this crazy situation…”

Where else in the world with ballistic missiles reining down on a civilian population where hospitals are a target like what happened in Be’er-Sheva where Soroka Hospital that serves around 1 million people living in southern Israel sustained extensive damage in a strike,  people abroad flock back. No myth like in Homer’s Odyssey, Israelis, like stranded warriors in foreign lands have one thing in mind – to return home.

As Israeli journalist and author Yaakov Katz put it:

“…..one goal: get back home. Not to safety. To Israel.”

While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).