The West’s bubble of illusion about Israel - and about itself – is finally being burst

The West’s bubble of illusion about Israel - and about itself – is finally being burst Submitted by Jonathan Cook on Thu, 04/30/2026 - 14:09 The genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing in Lebanon exhausted the West’s moral legitimacy. Now Iran is slowly exhausting the West’s military primacy A man burns a picture of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu during a protest against the US-Israel military action in Iran, near the US embassy in Manila, 9 April 2026 (Jam Sta Rosa/AFP) On For decades, two irreconciliable narratives about Israel and its motivations have existed in parallel. On the one side, an official western narrative portrays a plucky, besieged "Jewish" state of Israel, desperate to make peace with its hostile Arab neighbours.