Everything is personal

I am back in my office in Beer Sheba today with the “good news” that as of 5:30 this morning life is back to normal.

And how shall we understand the last 48 hours?

Here is what I believe is the official scenario (the media ia a full participant in this version):

Hero Netanyahu has joined the ranks of hero Trump (not Obama) by “getting the bad guy.”

Wimp Ganz never delivered like this. Big mouth Bennett gets no credit.

So, here we have the Middle East in half a nutshell. Good Guy, Bad Guy. Boom. No Bad Guy. All praise to Good Guy.

Several questions arise to challenge this extremely seductive narrative:

1. The Bad Guy was an operative of Iran. Makes it hard to believe that Boom No Bad Guy changes anything with Iran. How can the Bad Guy be both a Really Big Bad Guy and just another little bad guy sent by the Big Big (Yuge) Bad Guys?
2. Who is the Good Guy here? The PM announced that the Good Guys were the military and security who not only executed the Boom but also initiated it. After 5 years of no Booms. Difficult to understand.
3. But it is the PM who is by all accounts acting as if he gets all the credit for the precise Boom, is doing all the bragging about it, is stealing  this show. Such a Good Guy that in great modesty (?) hr gives credit in words to others while the theatrics takes all the bows.

In short, the South has been clobbered by missiles for 48 hours, but it is all personal. The Bad Guy is gone, Hurray for the Good Guy.

Sound like a mobster movie?

That — and in Netanyahu’s Middle East — is where everything is personal.