From Gaza to Iran: Israel imposes its narrative
In recent days, international headlines have begun to devote less space to Gaza. Images of the ongoing genocide are being displaced by maps pointing to Iran, as has happened in the past with Syria and Lebanon. In the dominant narratives, the focus is no longer on the systematic elimination of the Palestinian people, but on the escalation between Israel and its people. enemies regional. The script is familiar: Israel acts, another actor responds, and the escalation is presented as an exchange of aggression between states. The question that is never asked is who decided on this framing.
Recent Israeli attacks on Iranian territory—directed not only against military infrastructure, but also against specific individuals and, in some cases, their families—have been described as part of a answer, one preemptive strike or a regional escalationMany headlines fail to mention Gaza. Projecting the policy of elimination beyond Palestine, without allowing for a continuity between Gaza, Nablus, Damascus, Tehran, or Baghdad.
But this legitimacy is built on an elision. Iraq, covert operations in Yemen, and assassinations in Iran do not seek merely to respond to specific threats, but to uphold a strategic doctrine of regional supremacy. Selling arms and other instruments combat tested.
The problem is not only the silence on Gaza, but the framing it allows. Defining the situation as a regional escalation erases the radical asymmetry between an occupying power, equipped with the most sophisticated military apparatus in the region, in addition to nuclear bombs, and the populations subjected to its structural violence. It once again presents Israel as part of a dispute between equals, and not as what it is: an expanding colonial power.
This framing strategy has a central discursive dimension. Presenting attacks as exchanges, or as part of a logic of mutual deterrence, normalizes Israeli violence and depoliticizes extermination. It is no coincidence that the assassinations of Palestinian leaders are reported as "collateral impacts," while any rocket launched from southern Lebanon makes front-page news with the word "threat."
Given this narrative, it is necessary to reestablish continuity. Remember that attacks on Iran cannot be dissociated from the total war in Gaza. That Israeli violence does not respond to isolated threats, but to a doctrine of regional supremacy and permanent confrontation, which instrumentalizes the notion of defense to depoliticize that of aggression. And that this doctrine is deeply rooted in colonialism and the structural racism upon which the Israeli state was built.
The danger of accepting the framework of a regional conflict is not only narrative. It has material consequences. While the focus remains on state disputes, the genocide continues uninterrupted and without necessarily real international pressure. In this calculated distraction, Israel finds space to continue eliminating lives, structures, and memories, and to do so with the legitimacy granted by a narrative that presents it as a reactive actor, not a systematic aggressor.
Breaking with this narrative is, today, a political urgency. Not because there is no regional dimension to Israeli politics, but because it can only be understood by starting from the colonial fact that gives rise to it. Gaza is not a closed chapter. It is the key to understanding everything.
