Don't be the person arguing that Netanyahu just has bloodlust for Arabs.
I don't think Netanyahu has bloodlust for Arabs: I think he's far too cynical for that. I think he's a deeply corrupt politician under very credible threat of prosecution, who can stave it off by staying as PM. In order to stay as PM, he's cynically generating a permanent state of conflict to help put off elections, not least because it offers a chance his popularity might recover for when he consents to allow an election to occur.
He doesn't need to hate Arabs, he just doesn't care about them. Their lives are irrelevant, like ants, flies, or spiders. They can be killed in small amounts or large, it doesn't matter. They can have their homes stolen and destroyed, livelihoods wrecked, starved, traumatised, forced to march back and forth across a postapocalyptic wasteland as his army dictates, and that's all fine. That's where I think Netanyahu is. Actually, I think that's potentially how he sort of views his fellow Israelis too, except that his job requires him to keep them sweet so for pragmatic reasons he treats them better.
Some of the other members of his cabinet, and a healthy proportion of Israelis generally, they definitely do want to mass exterminate a load of Arabs. They say so freely, or behind barely disguised euphemisms.
They are attacking Lebanon for exactly the reason Iran is demanding they be part of the ceasefire, Hezbollah is a front of the war between Israel and Iran. Either its all part of the same conflict and violative of the ceasefire, or he's a genocidal maniac, but you can't claim both.
I don't think Iran and Israel are at war in the way you make out. I think Iran hates Israel for sure, and would happily have Israel destroyed for sure, but I don't think Iran is necessarily out to get Israel - Israel is more a means than an end. I think if Iran has a real enemy, it is Saudi Arabia.
Iran is Shia, which is the largest - if still small - minority sect of Islam (~10%). Iran is the only major Shia Muslim nation: Iraq is majority Shia by population, but Shia power was deliberately constrained by the post-invasion constitutional settlement to reduce the risk of it cosying up to Iran. Therefore, there's a huge Muslim sectarian issue, and let's face it, more radical Sunnis (in Saudi Arabia?) would like to convert the heretics. To some extent, it's just that Iran (Persia) was a major regional power and has the size and resources to be again, so there's historical friction as well as current rivalry with Saudi Arabia (maybe also Turkiye) for regional top dog.
Thus what Iran is really doing in Syria, Lebanon, the Palestinian Territories, Yemen etc. is I think not really about Israel at all - it's about attempting to secure influence and power across the region amongst fellow Muslims. Because everyone in the area hates Israel, influence is available by exploiting animosity towards it. It allows Iran leverage in all sorts of places it would otherwise struggle. Iran cannot play out in the sun with the other kids in the neighbourhood, because the other kids hate it. And we're not playing with it either, because we're friends with the other kids who sell us their oil and pressure us to exclude Iran. Iran can't directly compete economically, politically or militarily, so it goes asymmetric. What does it have left, except by scraping what support it can from the oppressed, repressed, angry objectors in all its neighbours? It is surely the best, practical option.
I want to stress, I do not have sympathies for the Iranian regime (I have a huge amount for its tragically abused population). But I think from a pragmatic point of view there is a major element of their actions which can be interpreted as essentially
defensive, because Iran is a threatened nation: as a religious minority, with better-backed rivals; that for decades it has been subjected to Western-backed coups, Western-backed repressive autocrats, Western-backed and Saudi funded invasions and bombings.
So I don't believe Iran is at war with Israel as such. It's that Iran backs certain groups that attack Israel, but Iran doesn't back them because Iran wants them to attack Israel, just because they give a way for Iran to have influence. When those terrorist groups attack Israel, they're mostly doing it on their own initiative. Israel is then given a clear reason to strike at Iran, because Iran definitely is backing terrorists that attack Israel.
If Israel didn't treat so many millions of Muslims extraordinarily badly, maybe it wouldn't generate so much retaliatory terrorism. But that's the Israeli strategy: "We steal your land and kill you, and if you resist we just kill you even harder". Actually, that's pretty much what the USA did to the native Americans, no wonder it has such an affinity for Israel.
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