On July 16, 2025, Israeli warplanes struck central Damascus, bombing the Defence Ministry, areas near the presidential palace, and military positions in Sweida. At least three people were killed and dozens were injured.

Israel claimed it was acting to protect the Druze community. The Druze in Syria, primarily concentrated in the Sweida region, have long had a complex relationship with the Syrian state, but had been hopeful for a peaceful future under the new Syrian leadership. 

But Israel’s strike here wasn’t an anomaly. It was an expression of something much older and far more dangerous.

For decades, Israel has behaved like a rogue state, killing, attacking, and destroying with impunity. It has violated international law repeatedly, including UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 2334, which call for the withdrawal from occupied territories and an end to settlement activity. Israel's disregard for these has been well documented.

It has targeted nuclear scientists in Iran, bombed Syria hundreds of times, launched wars in Lebanon, and maintained a decades-long siege on Palestine’s Gaza—all while receiving billions in US military aid and political cover. According to the Congressional Research Service, the US has provided Israel with over $174 billion in bilateral assistance since 1948, including $3.8 billion annually under a 10-year memorandum of understanding.

This has led Israel not to preserve regional stability, but to sabotage it.

The latest Israeli air strike on Damascus damaged civilian buildings, government infrastructure, and electrical facilities. Multiple residential neighbourhoods were affected. Dozens were injured, while some remain trapped under the rubble. Though Israeli officials spoke of “precision” attacks, the impact was anything but contained.

A pattern of escalation

In Lebanon, Israel has ramped up its military offensive, despite a ceasefire. In the south, flattening homes, hospitals, and schools. Water and electrical networks have been destroyed. Journalists and medics have been killed.

According to Human Rights Watch, Israeli strikes have displaced tens of thousands of civilians since late 2023. Israeli leaders have openly threatened to send Lebanon “back to the Stone Age”—a warning made by Defence Minister Yoav Gallant in June 2024.

But the world barely blinks—until Hezbollah fires back, and then the calls for “both sides” to end escalations begin. 

In April 2024, Israel bombed the Iranian consulate annexe in Damascus, killing 16 people, including senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commanders — a direct strike on diplomatic soil. Iran responded with hundreds of missiles and drones, triggering the most direct clash between the two countries to date.

Then, just over a year later, Israel escalated, launching unprecedented strikes deep inside Iran, targeting nuclear facilities and killing top military leaders. Iran retaliated with ballistic missiles. This was not a tit-for-tat. It was war, sparked by Israel, framed as self-defence, and met with silence by the very powers that claim to uphold international law.

And then there is Gaza…

Since October 2023, almost 58,500 Palestinians have been killed, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. The majority civilians, tens of thousands of them, children. But even this number undercounts the devastation.

A peer-reviewed study in The Lancet, one of the world’s leading medical journals, found trauma-related deaths in Gaza were 41 percent higher than reported, over 64,000 by mid-2024, with likely more than 70,000 by October. A 2025 preprint study estimated 84,000 deaths, and The Economist suggested the real number, including indirect causes, may exceed 100,000.

UN Special Rapporteurs have described Israel's actions as "a textbook case of genocide," citing patterns of targeted attacks on civilians, denial of food and medicine, and mass displacement. Others have referred to this war as encompassing domicide, scholasticide, and ecocide—the systematic destruction of homes, schools, and the environment.

Israel has flattened entire neighbourhoods, bombed schools and hospitals, destroyed water networks, obliterated bakeries and aid trucks, and starved 2.3 million people. A deliberate dismantling of life.

Even Yemen—a country already crushed by years of war and famine—has been drawn into the chaos. In response to Israeli atrocities in Gaza, the Houthis, known formally as Ansarallah, began targeting Israeli-linked ships in the Red Sea. Israel responded with strikes inside Yemeni territory, and its allies joined the effort. Yet again, another sovereign state was pulled into Israel’s self-created theatre of endless war.

The doctrine of chaos

There’s a clear and chilling pattern. Every time a moment of stability appears, Israel escalates. Every time resistance organises, it crushes. Every time international pressure builds, it provokes a new front. This is not a defensive posture. It’s a doctrine of chaos, designed to keep Israel the region’s only unchallenged military power.

The policy is not accidental. The Israeli military's own Dahiya Doctrine outlines the use of overwhelming force against civilian infrastructure to deter opposition. Israel’s "war between wars" strategy further institutionalises routine strikes in neighbouring countries, ensuring no front remains dormant.

And the reason it can do this is simple: impunity. 

While other states are sanctioned, invaded, or isolated for far less, Israel is rewarded. It receives $3.8 billion annually in US military aid. It is shielded at the UN Security Council by more than 45 US vetoes over the decades—vetoes that have blocked investigations, ceasefires, and condemnations. It violates more UN resolutions than almost any other country, and nothing happens.

Israel’s air strike on Syria on July 16 was not an isolated act. It was part of a long, destructive legacy—one that has brought the Middle East to the brink, over and over again.

What the region needs is not more American weapons in Israeli hands. It needs accountability. What the world needs is not more rhetoric about democracy. It needs justice.

Because while one state is permitted to destroy, the rest of us are condemned to live in the wreckage it leaves behind.