A week since March 12th, wild claims of Iranian missile strikes killing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have started surfacing on social media. The digital grapevine regarding Mr Netanyahu’s death occupied the social media, prompting mass demonstrations in Tel Aviv and massive public discontent. While the Israeli officials tried using several videos featuring the prime minister to negate the pro-Iranian propaganda regarding his assassination, the claims of visual illusions like six fingers, missing teeth, and excessive filters raised doubts about the authenticity of the videos. Yet, no credible sources could flag them as AI-generated.
Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump’s silence on the issue has also fanned the rumours around Mr Netanyahu’s death.
The overall secrecy surrounding the Israeli prime minister’s whereabouts and his absence at crucial Israeli security meetings, which are chaired by Israel Katz, the defence minister, have raised suspicions. The situation has also raised questions on Israel-US’s performance in the military strikes against Iran, despite killing top figures of the Islamic Republic, from former supreme leader Saeed Ali Khamenei on the first day of the conflict to Intelligence Minister Esmaeil Khatib, whose death was announced by Mr Katz on March 18th.
Netanyahu’s death mystery
For Iran, killing Mr Netanyahu during the war would mean its greatest achievement since the Islamic Revolution in 1979. The killing of the head of the government would not only mean the obliteration of an enemy figure but also a wanted war crime accused in the International Criminal Court.
This would have seriously elevated Iran’s status among the few countries that have the capability of hitting and killing their enemy’s top officials.
However, although Iran has built a large stockpile of effective killer drones and hypersonic ballistic missiles, it doesn’t have the required technical skills and intelligence network required to conduct real-time precision strikes on enemy targets. Especially when it’s a military-technocrat state like Israel.
Moreover, due to the Shiite war doctrine that prevents targeting or killing civilians and innocent people, Iran has been far more careful in choosing targets vis-à-vis the US and Israel. Thus, its killing power has been seriously constrained.
While random drone and hypersonic missile strikes have turned several localities of Tel Aviv into heaps of rubble, bearing similarities with war-torn Gaza, the strikes, Iranian officials told East Post, remain highly anticipatory and random. Iran faces an acute shortage of ground intelligence in Israel and is dependent mostly on satellite-fed information, which isn’t verified at the ground level.
This reduces the scope of hitting high-value mobile targets in Israel, including the prime minister and his cabinet colleagues.
Meanwhile, Israel has used ground intelligence, technical data and satellite imagery to conduct strikes that have killed the Ayatollah, his intelligence chief, Mr Khatib, and the national security chief, Ali Larijani. Iran couldn’t match that killing spree. It couldn’t kill any top Israeli official.
Still, it doesn’t mean everything is great in Israel.
Israel suffers censorship, crackdown
Israel isn’t only suffering a barrage of Iranian missiles hitting it, but the country is also crippled by an iron-clad censorship system that conceals its losses and penalises any factual reporting.
Due to the extreme censorship regime, there remains a lack of transparency regarding the real scenario. The lacunae in the government’s communication system have stirred a lot of speculation, especially regarding Mr Netanyahu.
Rather than clarifying, the Israeli authorities have further fuelled rumours through their poorly-edited videos and deletion of social media posts regarding the prime minister’s status. These have indicated that the Israeli government continues to remain immersed in a state of crisis due to Iranian attacks and its censorship rules.
While Israeli media toes the government line, sources in Tel Aviv inform East Post that it’s hard to speculate regarding the status of the prime minister when most people in the city are living in bunkers.
Netanyahu’s death won’t resolve Zionist issues
While there was a general atmosphere of jubilation within the anti-Israel camp across West Asia and beyond, following the rumours of Mr Netanyahu’s death, one major issue remains overlooked.
The two-year-long Gaza genocide has turned the Israeli prime minister into a symbol of Zionist occupation and atrocities. However, the fact is that the Zionist menace that threatens peace and stability in West Asia is larger than individuals like Mr Netanyahu or their parties.
In the 2022 elections, out of a total of 4.79m voters who had cast their votes, 23.4% had voted for Mr Netanyahu’s Likud party. The far-right party won 1.12m votes.
However, it was not the only one. The election data show that almost all parties with significant vote share are Zionist and oppose Palestinian statehood. The principal opposition force, Yesh Atid, got 847,435 votes, which is 17.8% of the total votes cast, and its policies on Zionism and occupation are quite similar to Mr Netanyahu’s Likud.
Also, Religious Zionism, which has rabble-rouser leaders like Bezalel Smotrich, Itamar Ben-Gvir, etc, has managed to bag 516,470 votes, which is 10.8% of the total votes. Other right-wing forces like National Unity Party (432,482, 9.1%), Shas (392,964, 8.2%) and United Torah (280,194, 5.9%) have also received far more votes than the Islamist conservative Arab bloc Ra’am (194,047, 4.1%) and the left-wing Hadash-Ta’al (178,735, 3.8%).
This shows the overwhelming majority of Israel’s adults support the Zionist occupation and aggression against Palestinians. Therefore, Mr Netanyahu’s death won’t change the real political equation as the occupation state will keep breeding his clones. The ideology, rather than the individual, works as a menace here.
Despite the death of crucial Zionist leaders, their ideology will continue to thrive, and the threat of a “Greater Israel” will loom over the region.
Arithmetic that drives “Greater Israel”
For decades, critics have alleged that the Israelis have been planning to establish a “Greater Israel” by annexing territories in the neighbourhood, especially in West Asia.
While for many it remains a conspiracy theory, the Israeli prime minister, on several occasions, has nodded to the plan and allowed its execution.
What drives this plan isn’t any Jewish secret body’s long-term agenda but the practical challenges faced by a modern, apartheid state.
Israel has a higher total fertility rate (TFR) in the world among developed and advanced economies.
At a time when the TFR has been falling steeply across the West and Japan, making Africa and Asia the citadels of population growth, Israeli Jewish women have surpassed Muslim women in the region in giving birth.
An Israeli Jewish woman’s TFR was between 2.9 and 3.06 children in 2024, whereas a Muslim woman’s TFR was 2.75. According to data, the ultra orthodox or Haredi Jewish community’s women maintain higher birth rates, often delivering up to seven babies.
At the same time, Israel’s economy has been developing at a rapid pace. In 2024, Israel’s GDP reached $555bn despite the Gaza genocide. The country’s per capita income was around $64,276 in 2026, which is close to $57,915 on purchasing power parity.
Israel’s high per capita income and TFR show that, as the advanced economies see their TFR falling, anti-immigration politics gain currency there, the Israelis will be dominating the world with their constantly growing population and data.
Experts claim that nations that have higher per capita income and TFR will dominate the world. Israel has started confirming the claim by chasing the “Greater Israel” goal. This will mean richer Israeli women with several children need land and food. With Israel shrinking in the war, it’s the only way out for Tel Aviv. In this operation, too, the Israeli game plan is to annex Iran using a proxy regime under the former monarchy’s so-called heir. If Israel wins against the Iranians, then there will be no stopping its “Greater Israel” scheme. The people of the entire West Asia and the northern parts of Africa will become victims of this expansion spree.
Whether Israel can reach close to it is something that remains to be seen.
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