Withering Brits, Killer Israelis

Two new polls at Jeremy's Knesset Insider show that this September's Knesset elections will leave Israel more or less where it stands now, politically.

We're still counting on the Stroock Rule, or Will's Rule, or whatever we called it, and assuming the right is under-polling a bit.

Meanwhile Drudge links to a France24 report in which an Israeli minister brags about killing Iranians:

An Israeli minister boasted Sunday that his country was the only one that "has been killing Iranians", after tensions between Britain and Iran rose in the Gulf. Regional Cooperation Minister Tzachi Hanegbi's comments to public radio were a reference to Israeli strikes in neighbouring Syria against Iranian and Hezbollah military targets. But they came after Iran seized a British-flagged tanker on Friday, adding to tensions between Washington and Tehran linked to a 2015 nuclear deal. Hanegbi accused Iran, Israel's main enemy, of seeking to create "chaos" and "harm freedom of navigation." Asked if he feared that Israel would not receive the backing of the United States in the case of a conflict with Iran, Hanegbi suggested that Tehran would avoid such a scenario."Israel is the only country in the world that has been killing Iranians for two years," he said. "We strike the Iranians hundreds of times in Syria. Sometimes we acknowledge it and sometimes foreign reports reveal it." He added that the Iranians "understand that Israel means business."

Tough talk from the Israelis always gives us the warm fuzzies.

The Israeli campaign in Syria is going to make a hell of a book one day.

We believe that the Iranians believe that an attack on Israel would be a bad idea. So they look tough by pestering the weakling Brits. 

Sounds to us like a case for Palmerston, as the British used to say. Theresa May is not Palmerston. And so Britain's almost ritualistic post-war humiliation continues....

Speaking of books about clandestine Israeli military ops...(in Sudan)