Federal Government Has Embroiled Australia Militarily in the Quest for a Greater Israel

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday, 19 March 2026 that whilst the US-Israeli war of aggression on Iran is decimating that country, it now requires a “ground component” to achieve regime change. Yet many consider he’s seeking to permanently destabilise Iran, in order to end opposition to Israeli expansionism, which makes the unbridled support our PM has provided extremely questionable.

Thursday, 19 March 2026, was the 19th day of the illegal and unprovoked US-Israeli assault on Iran. Netanyahu’s call came soon after US president Donald Trump said he didn’t want US troops on the ground. And as the Israeli PM flips between regime change and ending Iran’s nuclear threat as the purpose of the conflict, there are suggestions that the Israel lobby duped Trump into joining the war.

The given reasons for progressing the US-Israeli war of aggression, regime change to liberate the Iranian people or to end Iran’s nuclear threat, are now widely debunked, while it’s known that Netanyahu has for decades sought US assistance on an attack on Iran, in order to weaken Tehran, as it’s the key backer of forces attempting to prevent further Israeli expansionism in the region.

The key issue that tends to be supressed in mainstream renderings of the current conflict is that Netanyahu, his extremist ministers and his Likud Party are rather committed to the idea of “Greater Israel”, which not only includes Gaza and the West Bank,  but comprises the entire “promised land” or the taking parts of Lebanon, Egypt, Syria and Jordan as well.

So, as it increasingly appears that Trump, pumped up on his nation’s January 2026 kidnapping of the Venezuelan president to secure that nation’s oil reserves, has been unwittingly led to commence an Israeli desired protracted war against Iran, in order to consolidate Tel Aviv’s power, the Albanese government appears to be actively supporting the progression of the Israeli settler colonial project.

Israel lobby hawks

Not only is the war on Iran an illegal act of aggression, but it lacks a concrete purpose and planned and cited objectives.

At one moment, Netanyahu and Trump are raising Iran’s nuclear threat and in the next breath, they’re talking the liberation of the Iranian people. However, early on, they assassinated Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khaemini, who’d issued a 1990s fatwa against Iran acquiring nuclear weapons, whilst instead of liberation, they’re bringing the Iranians annihilation.

The type of warfare waged against the Palestinian population of Gaza, which comprises of an ongoing genocide, brought a shock of the new, as international humanitarian law, or the law of armed conflict, was tossed out the window, and instead, the unrestrained assault on civilians sites, like schools and hospitals, were treated as legitimate targets, with an eye to total decimation.

The shifting borders of Greater Israel and the blueprint of the destruction of Gaza can both be read in the attacks that Israel is waging against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. Israel warned Lebanese people in Beirut to evacuate, ahead of the extreme bombardment in southern Lebanon, that has left over 1 million civilians displaced since 2 March, which, as in Gaza, works to free up the land.

Trump ran on an ‘America First’ platform in the 2024 election, which meant ending US involvement in “forever wars” in foreign lands. Yet, during his last campaign, Trump was financially backed by serious Israel lobby players, like Miriam Adelson, the widow of Israeli billionaire Sheldon Adelson, and hawkish hedge fund manager Paul Singer, who’ve both long desired war on Iran.

Trump-appointed director of the US National Counterterrorism Centre Joe Kent resigned last Tuesday, citing the Iran war as reason, stating that the nation had “posed no imminent threat” to the US, while it’s clear the White House started this war “due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby”. And this was a serious rebuke from a Green Beret and key MAGA insider.

The broader settler colonial project

According to the Hebrew Bible, God established a covenant with Abraham, leaving the Holy land or the promised land to one of his son’s descendants, who are now understood to be Jewish people. The biblical promised land today covers modern day Israel, the occupied Palestinian territories, Lebanon, Jordan, parts of Egypt and southwestern Syria.

Greater Israel is a political concept that is larger than the promised land. Also sourced from the Bible, Greater Israel includes parts of Saudi Arabia and Iraq. The father of political Zionism, Austrian journalist Theodor Herzl explored the idea of a larger Israel, and the concept became popular in Israel around the time of the 1967 Six Day War, which saw Tel Aviv take Gaza and the West Bank.

Netanyahu told ex-Israeli politician Sharon Gal in an August 2025 interview that he is on a “historical and spiritual mission”, and that he’s attached to the visions of the promised land and Greater Israel.

The Israeli PM was further subjected to criticism after he appeared before the UN in September 2023, and he held up a map with a version of Israel that incorporated the occupied Palestinian territories.

Taken against this backdrop, the commencement of the Gaza genocide in October 2023, and the enhanced militarised approach Israel has been taking in the occupied West Bank over that same time, can be interpreted as, not solely a reaction to the Hamas 7 October attacks on Israel, but rather a nation that had found a reason to progress its vision of a Greater Israel in the Middle East.

As former Israeli negotiator Daniel Levy explained this week, he considers that Tel Aviv understands that the US empire is in decline. So, embroiling Trump in war on Iran at this time is a last-ditch effort to utilise US power to secure greater regional strength for Israel, so that in the future, Tel Aviv will be the regional powerhouse, with a destabilised Iran no longer posing any opposition.

Riding the Greater Israel wave

Australian PM Anthony Albanese was the first global leader to support the US-Israeli war. This appeared in aid of appeasing Trump, who, in turn, was appeasing his Israeli lobby backers, who seek to destabilise Iran in order to further expand the Israeli settler colonial project. So, in following the leader, federal Labor has unwittingly embroiled this nation in the quest for Greater Israel

However, Albanese appears to have affirmed the illegal war on Iran and in doing so, added our country’s approval to the tearing down of the post-World War II international order, which the ongoing actions of both the US and Israel are also aimed at achieving, because he is concerned with the rise of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party domestically, as it threatens his future political power.

In the initial days of the conflict, Albanese was adamant that this nation was not involved in the war, despite it being widely understood that the US-Australian Joint Pine Gap facility in the middle of this continent would likely have been supplying intel for the initial US-Israeli strikes, and besides, Australian soldiers embedded in the US Army were also involved in the initial fighting.

The Australian prime minister then announced on the 10 March 2026, that he was sending an E-7 Wedgetail surveillance aircraft, air-to-air missiles and 85 Australian troops to the United Arab Emirates, purely on a defensive basis to protect Australians in the UAE, as well as Emirates. But Australian troops on the ground not being involved in the war, doesn’t quite add up.

So, Albanese has involved this nation in the US-Israeli war of aggression against Iran, which ultimately, is all about facilitating Israeli progression of its genocidal warfare tactics beyond the confines of the Gaza Strip, with the ultimate goal of securing a greater regional presence and power.

And with the scenes of angry Muslim worshippers calling out the presence of the PM and home affairs minister Tony Burke at a Ramadan event at Lakemba Mosque on Thursday night, the position federal Labor is taking on the international stage is clearly serving to severely fracture the Australian domestic sphere.