Israel Announced Their New Enemies List – And It’s as Insane as You’d Expect

Right, so Israel has discovered a brand new “axis of evil.” Not content with Iran as the eternal bogeyman, Another mad Israeli Minister, this time in the form of Amichai Chikli has decided to expand the franchise, naming Qatar, Syria, and Turkey as the new existential villains to Israel’s existence. It would be funny if it weren’t so deadly serious. Qatar, bombed in its own capital by Israel while hosting peace talks, is now recast as a secret terror sponsor. Syria, already in ruins after the fall of Assad, not to mention the new rule by an Al Qaeda cast-off, is still being pummelled by Israel as if inflicting further instability on other nations were Israel’s birthright. And Turkey, the supplier of nearly half of Israel’s oil, is suddenly plotting a neo-Ottoman imperial return with Jerusalem in its sights no less. This is not foreign policy. It is a show of how absolutely deranged Israeli government figures are — a desperate attempt to turn every critic into Iran 2.0. to restore their victim status. The trouble for Israel is that the mask has slipped, their performances no longer convince and there is zero likelihood of that changing.
Right, so it takes a special kind of arrogance to stand on a stage at a diplomatic conference and announce that you have discovered a brand new “axis of evil,” but ludicrous degrees of arrogance is something Israeli elected officials seem to have in spades. This is exactly what Amichai Chikli, Israel’s Minister for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism, did at the recent Jerusalem Post Diplomatic Conference. Before ambassadors and journalists, with the world watching, he declared that Qatar, Syria, and Turkey now formed “the new axis of evil,” and in case anyone missed the point, he added that this was “the new Iran.”
Chikli accused Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of plotting a “neo-Ottoman vision,” supposedly dreaming of resurrecting an empire that would swallow Jerusalem. He claimed Erdogan “openly calls for Israel’s annihilation.” He portrayed Syria not as a country still crawling from the ruins of civil war, but as a fully-fledged extension of Iran itself, even though the new de facto unelected leader Al Sharaa, deposed the actual Iranian ally in Bashar al-Assad. And he turned Qatar — a state that has mediated talks, hosted ceasefire negotiations, and got bombed by Israel for its trouble — into a masked villain, a terror sponsor pretending to be a broker.
The phrase “axis of evil” was not pulled out of thin air. George W. Bush minted the term in 2002, lumping together Iran, Iraq, and North Korea to prepare the ground for the invasion of Iraq. It was never analysis. It was propaganda — a way of collapsing differences, of turning three very different states into one monstrous enemy. It was designed to frighten the public and grant a blank cheque for war.
So when Chikli drags the phrase back up and reframes it to fit his new narrative, it is not clumsy rhetoric, it is quite deliberate. It is an attempt to recycle a weaponised phrase to justify more acts of aggression, sabotage peace, and portray critics as existential threats. But here is the question: has Israel actually pointed to its next targets by naming Qatar, Syria, and Turkey in this way? Or is this the tantrum of a state losing its grip — a government whose excuses are crumbling, whose mask is slipping, and whose propaganda no longer convinces?
Because this is not just about enemies. It is about stories. Israel has always survived on the power of a story. The story of being a small democracy surrounded by vicious enemies who want to destroy it. The story of Iran as the master villain. The story of peace as something Israel yearns for but Arabs refuse. Those stories worked for decades. They made Western publics sympathetic. They kept the aid and weapons flowing. They allowed Israel to act with impunity, cloaked in victimhood. But what happens when those stories finally collapse as they now have? What happens when the mask falls and the world sees not a plucky democracy but a nuclear-armed occupier bombing mediators, sabotaging peace, and starving civilians? That is the context of Chikli’s speech. And that is why his words feel less like strategy and more like a desperate howl.
Take Qatar. For years, Israel tolerated Doha as a necessary nuisance really. The Qataris hosted Hamas’s political bureau. They funnelled money into Gaza, paying civil servants and buying fuel. People too easily forget that Hamas are the elected administration of Gaza and aid was provided for the politics to be made possible despite the Israeli blockade. That aid, awkwardly, was often coordinated with Israel itself though, because Tel Aviv preferred Qatar footing the bill for keeping Gaza on life support. The arrangement was uncomfortable but useful, but it also positioned Qatar well as mediators, it had positive relations with both sides.
That arrangement collapsed in practice on October 7th 2023, but the minute Israeli missiles hit Doha during ceasefire talks, attempting to assassinate Hamas negotiators in the Qatari capital, Israel burned its bridges. This was no border strike, no battlefield clash. It was an assassination at the heart of diplomacy in an erstwhile allies capital. Qatar’s government raged. Its Foreign Ministry declared that Israel’s prime minister had committed a blatant violation of international law and promised such crimes would not go unpunished. Israel had not struck Hamas tunnels, but a negotiating table.
Then came Egypt’s revelation. Cairo claimed it had foiled a parallel Israeli plot on its own soil, targeting Hamas negotiators there. Two capitals, two sets of talks, both marked for sabotage.
So why now brand Qatar as part of an “axis of evil”? Because bombing a mediator looks indefensible. Unless you can say the mediator was never really a mediator — that it was always a wolf in sheep’s clothing, Hamas’s financier, a secret member of the new Iran. That is the trick. Chikli’s rhetoric rewrites the story after the fact. Israel did not sabotage peace, it struck an enemy disguised as a broker.
But outside that bubble, the excuse collapsed. They are so used to their words being carried as fact no matter how mad, they still miss the fact that this is no longer the case. At an emergency session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Iran’s ambassador Ali Bahreini condemned Israel’s attack on Qatar and warned that such aggression threatened not only the region but global stability itself. Qatar demanded accountability. The world saw what Israel wanted to obscure: a state that dared to host talks was bombed, its neutrality destroyed.
That is why this is bigger than Hamas. Israel is not just targeting militants. It is targeting mediation itself. The lesson the world is learning as a result is that no Arab capital can play host to negotiations unless Israel approves. Qatar, by being branded “axis of evil,” is being permanently blacklisted as a mediator now. This is not just a strike against an enemy. It is a strike against the very infrastructure of peace. Israel absolutely do not want peace, so how can you negotiate with that? Negotiations have to begin at a position of some common ground, but there is none, when peace is off the table at the start.
Now Syria. If Qatar has been recast into an enemy to cover sabotage, Syria has been Israel’s eternal target. For over a decade, Israel has launched hundreds of strikes inside Syrian territory. Damascus Airport, Aleppo Airport, warehouses, convoys, military sites — all hit. Civilians killed, soldiers buried, sovereignty shredded. The Golan Heights still illegally held by Israel. Always with the same excuse though: these are Iranian supply lines to Hezbollah. Always cloaked in the language of “prevention.”
But the reality is starker. Israel is actively arming thousands of Druze fighters in southern Syria, aiding them in defending themselves against their new unelected President who has done nothing but target minorities since claiming power, but all despite that leader desperately wanting to ally himself to Israel. This is not about stopping weapons shipments. It is about carving out influence, destabilising the south, ensuring Syria never recovers. It is the continuation of an old pattern. Before the fall of Assad, the very groups now running Syria that Israel is arming groups against, Israel supplied aid to, the very jihadist-linked former Al-Qaeda factions, that brought Assad down benefitted from Israeli aid. It was not about building peace. It was about bleeding Syria dry. One leader down, another in place, but the destabilisation just continues.
So when Chikli calls Syria part of the new axis of evil, he is not identifying a new danger. He is admitting what Israel has long pursued: permanent destabilisation. Syria is not to be rebuilt, not to be normalised, not to be a neighbour with which peace is possible. It is to remain weak, fractured, and endlessly bombable.
The excuse is crumbling here too though. Israel’s safety has been defined as someone else’s permanent instability. Syria’s past overtures are buried. What remains is rubble — and a state rebranded as “Iran in miniature.”
And then Turkey. This is where the whole “axis” charade tips into absurdity. Because Turkey, whatever Erdogan says, is not just another critic. It is one of Israel’s lifelines. Around forty percent of Israel’s oil imports flow through Turkey’s port of Ceyhan. Israeli and Turkish companies trade goods, energy, and technology. Even at the height of shouting matches, the oil tankers keep on docking.
Erdogan is loud, he’s a two-faced fraud though. He has called Israel’s campaign in Gaza genocide. He has declared Jerusalem a Muslim city. He hosts Hamas officials. At the United Nations he casts himself as the voice of the Muslim world. But his words are not tanks rolling across a border. His threats are not blockades on oil shipments. They are speeches as the oil keeps flowing.
So how does Israel square this contradiction? Chikli’s answer: ideology. Erdogan, he says, dreams of a neo-Ottoman empire with Jerusalem inside it. He claims Erdogan has openly called for Israel’s annihilation. In Chikli’s framing, genocide accusations become annihilationist threats, rhetoric becomes war plans, speeches become existential danger.
But this explanation falls apart the moment you hold it up. Neo-Ottomanism in Turkish politics is about influence, trade, soft power, regional posturing. It is not about marching into Jerusalem with janissaries. Erdogan’s talk of genocide is a moral charge, not a military blueprint. By inflating it into a plan for Israel’s destruction, Chikli is repeating the same move Israel has used for years with Iran: turn rhetoric into apocalypse, criticism into casus belli.
The problem is that this time, the mask slips too easily. You cannot buy nearly half your fuel from a state and insist it is plotting your annihilation. You cannot run oil pipelines through your supposed existential foe and keep a straight face while crying “axis of evil.” People aren’t that stupid and they take Israel’s words with bigger and bigger grains of salt.
That is why Turkey’s inclusion feels really desperate. Qatar can be demonised for hosting Hamas. Syria can be demonised for housing Hezbollah supply lines. But Turkey, a NATO member and Israel’s oil supplier, is harder to fit into that box. But Chikli squeezes it in anyway, stretching Erdogan’s speeches into proof of an empire-building plan. The lunacy is obvious, and the desperation really should be plain to see.
When you step back, the pattern is a familiar one. Israel has moved from pointing to one great villain — Iran — to inflating every critic into a new Iran. Qatar is not a mediator, it is a terror sponsor. Syria is not a broken neighbour, it is an Iranian corridor. Turkey is not a trading partner, it is an empire-builder with Jerusalem in its sights.
This is not strategy. It is an attempt to keep the old story alive after it has fallen apart. For decades, Israel’s propaganda rested on a single figure: Iran as the existential threat and the mastermind behind everything. Everything could be justified in relation to Iran. Strikes in Syria? Stopping Iran. Assassinations in Lebanon? Stopping Iran. Lobbying in Washington? Containing Iran. The story was clean, coherent, and easy to sell. It became very familiar to all of us in the West.
But that story has collapsed. Western publics now see Gaza not as a battlefield but as a genocide. The International Court of Justice has accused Israel of committing the crime of crimes, as has the UN now. The International Criminal Court is pursuing warrants for war crimes. Egypt, Qatar, Turkey — once cautious, even complicit — are now openly accusing Israel of sabotage and aggression. Western allies whisper doubts about arms sales. The excuse of “self-defence against annihilation” no longer works when mediators get bombed, aid is blocked, and starvation is used as a weapon.
That is the backdrop to Chikli’s speech. His “axis of evil” line is not the confident naming of new enemies. It is a desperate bid to stretch the old Iran playbook across every critic. Inflate rhetoric into danger, turn condemnation into existential threat, justify whatever comes next. Please feel sorry for Israel, the worlds eternal victims. But the trick is breaking down. The excuses are crumbling. The mask is slipping.
So, has Israel identified its next targets? On one level, yes. It has already acted. It bombed Doha. It plotted in Cairo. It batters Syria on a daily basis and now arms militias there. It demonises Erdogan even as it takes his oil. Chikli’s speech merely gives a name to what is already happening, but also reminds us of exactly of what Israel is actually doing, so all he deserves is abject condemnation and he can shove his desperation for sympathy where the sun doesn’t shine.
But on another level, no. This is not a coherent strategy. It is flailing. It is the scream of a state losing its grip, multiplying enemies because its story has collapsed. The danger, of course, is that words like these can harden into actions. Bush’s “axis of evil” speech set the stage for Iraq. If Israel insists on treating Qatar, Syria, and Turkey as annihilationist enemies, it may yet act as though that fiction were real, we know they’re capable and we know they’re desperate and we know the US will keep arming them.
Yet even if it does not turn into further action, one thing is already clear. Israeli propaganda no longer convinces. The excuses no longer hold. Israel has not mapped its future with this speech. It has revealed its present — a state lashing out at mediators, neighbours, and suppliers alike, because the old mask has fallen and the world can finally see what lies beneath and it is ugly and it is depraved and it will be opposed.
Certainly a great deal of that is being reflected in Israel’s economy, because much as Amichai Chikli might be seen now to have put his foot in it, so has Netanyahu, only his words just tanked Israel’s economy badly and the investors are fleeing. Get all the details of that story in this video recommendation here as your suggested next watch.
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