Innocent Bystander

Notice how Israel is so out-of-the-picture in this sketch of Middle Eastern mayhem:

"Gunmen sworn to al-Qa'ida surge into battle under the noses of Israeli soldiers entrenched on the Golan Heights; in the Sinai, the Egyptians are still mopping up after an Islamic State offshoot killed dozens in an offensive that brushed the southern borders of Israel and Gaza. That troubled enclave, home to a largely Palestinian population of 1.8 million, continues to seethe a year on from the war with Israel that killed nearly 2300 people and left tens of thousands of homes in ruin, few if any of which have been rebuilt. If Bashar al-Assad's ruthless regime in Syria is on its last legs - as the Israeli military believes - the fall of the last Baathist dictator would further destabilise Lebanon, already buckling under the pressure of feeding two million refugees and keeping a lid on its own sectarian tensions. In the eye of the storm that has engulfed the Middle East, Israel commands a unique position to assess the chaos unfolding on each of its terrestrial borders and is warily assessing whether to enter a fight it has avoided so far." (It all comes back to Iran, says Israel, Jamie Walker, The Australian, 11/7/15)

You wouldn't know from reading the above that:

a) the al-Qaida gunmen in southern Syria are supported by Israel;

b) the Golan-Heights is occupied Syrian territory;

c) Gaza isn't "troubled," it's blockaded, starved and periodically savaged by Israel; 

d) the so-called "war" with Israel was just the latest in a series of genocidal Israeli onslaughts against an impoverished and ghettoised refugee population;

e) in the ruthlessness stakes, no Baathist dictator could possibly compete with Israel;

f) Israel's repeated invasions of Lebanon over decades have done more to destabilise that country than any number of Syrian, Iraqi or Palestinian refugees;

g) chaos in the Middle East has Israel's name written all over it.

h) see a)

Still, Walker's 'reportage' has its amusing side:

"Recently, one of Netanyahu's senior advisers talked this correspondent through the Israeli government's view of its volatile neighbourhood... Islamic State was a problem... but not a first-order one for Israel because the IDF would never run like the Iraqi army did last summer, and the jihadis had no illusions about the consequences of a direct confrontation... But Hezbollah was a different matter entirely. The fighters it had blooded in the service of Assad numbered in the thousands and they would end up facing Israel Israel with advanced weaponry and know-how."

So let me get this straight:

Asad's on his "last legs," despite help from Hezbollah.

Obviously, this is because the ferocious, unstoppable jihadis have Asad and Hezbollah on the run, right?

But Israel's more worried about Hezbollah than the jihadis...

I see...