My Column This Week in The Times of Israel—15 June 2025
'Israeli Government Opts for Revolution'
Half of my heart is with my undocumented coworkers who have to live in permanent fear of being rounded up at or on their way to work. The other half of my heart is with my comrades and friends—and editors and colleagues—across Israel, who are now facing an outright genocidal assault by the Islamist Iranian regime, whose days are surely numbered.
Over the weekend, protests were held across the country under the Democratic Party-backed slogan of “No Kings,” an obvious jab at the sitting President whom they dub to be an absolutist monarch. Although there is little doubt that the protests were inspired in opposition to immigration raids of work places by the Trump Administration, the anti-Trump forces once again frame the question wrongly by arguing Donald Trump and his conservative movement are the main enemy, when it’s actually the class system he merely represents. Working people agree that framing the question around Trump being the main problem, and supporting looting and rioting, takes attention away from the struggle of fighting for amnesty for all undocumented workers in the U.S.
Also in the past week, Israel took the courageous and correct step of moving to dismantle the clerical and genocidal Iranian regime’s nuclear capabilities. Their response in the last 72 hours — attacking residential areas, killing civilians — shows how important it was to dismantle the regime’s nuclear capabilities. My piece this week in The Times of Israel discusses the latter, and I will discuss the former in other outlets coming soon. The situation in the Middle East is the most dire it has been since the Second Gulf War of 2003 and the ensuing civil war.
Within minutes, Tel Aviv went from being one of the most technologically advanced and modern cities in the world to looking indistinguishable from stricken parts of Gaza, Ukraine, and Lebanon. Although Israel’s actual power is overstated for propaganda reasons, we see the true proportion of a country of ten million—approximately the same population size of Cuba—preemptively attacking a regime that’s taken captive over 100 million people of all nationalities and world views—approximately the same population size of Russia. Thus, to truly appreciate the genocidal attack Iran is engaging in against Israel, it would be analogous to imagine what it would be like if Russia (never mind the U.S.) one day got it in its head to invade and destroy Cuba. That’s the situation.
And yet, this David versus a goliath is holding up moderately well, repelling many rockets and drones while also landing heavy blows against the regime. And while pundits say the U.S. relationship is the most crucial, the true X-factor is the Iranian people and working-class. I tried to put these feelings into thoughts in my column this week for The Times of Israel.