Bennett: ‘In Gaza, Israel is fighting Iran’

Economy Minister Naftali Bennett, who serves on Israel’s defense policy-setting security cabinet, insists in a Daily Beast article published Saturday that, “Simply put — Israel is fighting Iran.”

Israel’s ongoing conflict with Hamas in the Gaza Strip has for the umpteenth time exposed Iran as the true source of instability in the Middle East.

At a time when Western powers are working to reach a deal with Iran over its illicit nuclear program, events in Gaza need to serve as a warning of what will happen if they fail.

As the Israeli government has claimed for years, Iran is the main sponsor and one of the main supporters of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the two terrorist organizations that have fired over 1,600 rockets into Israel over the past few days.

The M-75 rocket, which has been fired repeatedly into Tel Aviv and beyond, is a copy of Iran’s Fajr-5 artillery rocket, manufactured in the Gaza Strip with assistance from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps. The Hamas drones, shot down by the Israeli Air Force, appear to have been the Ababil, an unmanned aerial vehicle designed and manufactured in Iran.

These Iranian weapons were used against Israel at the same time that Iran’s leadership was sitting with the P5+1 in Vienna to negotiate a deal over its nuclear program. While Secretary of State John Kerry sat with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif, Hamas was firing barrages of Iranian rockets into Jerusalem.

For Israel, the message is clear. An Iran that provides, already today, its terror proxies with sophisticated rockets, drones, and other technology could one day hand off a crude nuclear device or dirty bomb to these same terrorists.

In addition, an Iranian regime with nuclear weapons is a regime more willing to take risks and to test the West’s resolve. Deterrence will no longer work.

That is why Israel’s operation in the Gaza Strip needs to be put into the correct context. While the terrorists against whom Israeli soldiers are fighting in Gaza are Palestinian, they are in reality proxies of Iran located on our western border.

Simply put—Israel is fighting Iran.