12 Israeli children were killed by a Hezbollah rocket on Sunday and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatens…Israel.

12 Israeli children were killed by a Hezbollah rocket on Sunday and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatens…Israel.

“Strike in Israeli-controlled Golan Heights kills at least 12 and threatens to spark a wider war,” warned Tia Goldenberg and Bassem Mroue for the Associated Press on Sunday.

“A rocket strike Saturday at a soccer field killed at least 12 children and teens, Israeli authorities said, in the deadliest strike on an Israeli target along the country’s northern border since the fighting between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah began,” reported the duo from Tel Aviv, Israel.

“It raised fears of a broader regional war,” they added, if unnecessarily.

While Hezbollah has denied responsibility for the attack, Israeli officials aren’t buying it.

“There is no doubt that Hezbollah has crossed all the red lines here, and the response will reflect that,” Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz told the press. “We are nearing the moment in which we face an all-out war.”

“Outside the fantasy world of the press, everyone knows exactly whose rocket it was, including Hezbollah, which announced the launch targeting an army base near Majdal Shams on one of its Twitter channels — before it realized who’d been hit by mistake and began furiously denying they had anything to do with it,” noted Matti Friedman disdainfully for the Free Press. “The Israeli military released the type of rocket (an Iranian Falaq-1 with a 50 kg warhead) and named the Hezbollah commander responsible for launching it: Ali Muhammad Yahya, who runs a rocket squad in a sector just across the border from the Druze town.”

“Twelve Murdered Children — and a Middle East On The Brink,” Friedman worried for the Free Press on Monday. “By doing everything possible to avoid conflict with Iran, the White House has emboldened the Iranian proxy system now attacking Israel from all directions.”

“For many months it has been said that Israel is ‘on the brink’ of all-out war with Hezbollah,” Friedman recalled. “It’s been repeated so often that the phrase has lost its urgency. I wrote it myself here in January after spending time in the eerily depopulated swath of the country just north of my parents’ town, Nahariya, in easy rocket range near the Lebanon border.”

“But with the deaths of the children playing soccer — their mass funeral is underway as I write these lines — and the wounding of more than 30 others, ‘the brink’ was either finally reached or actually crossed,” he added.

The strike on Golan Heights is one of a few regional hotspots threatening to boil over since Hamas terrorists attacked Israel on October 7, 2023.

“Turkey’s Erdogan issues open threat to invade Israel,” reported Lazar Berman on July 28, 2024 — the same day as the Golan Heights rocket strike.

“We must be very strong so that Israel can’t do these things to Palestine,” raged President Recep Tayyip Erdogan during a poorly-timed political speech on Sunday. “Just as we entered Karabakh, just as we entered Libya, we might do the same to them. There is nothing we can’t do. We must only be strong.”

This latest threat is a major escalation from Erdogan’s usual posturing.

“War of words as Erdogan says Turkey could intervene in Israel’s war on Gaza,” fretted Al Jazeera on July 29. “Turkey is again comparing Netanyahu to Hitler while threatening more than a trade ban for the first time.”

“Erdogan, who has consistently issued strong rhetoric during Israel’s 10-month war in Gaza, made the suggestion that Turkey could intervene militarily in a speech to his ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party on Sunday,” reported the outlet.

When he was visiting lawmakers on Capitol Hill last week, and addressing a joint session of Congress, Israel’s President Benjamin Netanyahu laid the widening war at the feet of Iran.

“In the Middle East, Iran is virtually behind all the terrorism, all the turmoil, all the chaos, all the killing,” Netanyahu told D.C. lawmakers.

“Last month, I heard a revealing comment, ostensibly about the war in Gaza, but about something else,” Netanyahu warned his audience. “It came from the foreign minister of Iran’s proxy, Hezbollah, and he said this: ‘This is not a war with Israel. Israel is merely a tool. The main war, the real war, is with America.”

“Iran’s regime has been fighting America from the moment it came to power,” Netanyahu noted. “In 1979, it stormed the American embassy, it held scores of Americans hostage for 444 days. Since then, Iran’s terrorist proxies have targeted America in the Middle East and beyond. In Beirut, they killed 241 U.S. servicemen. In Africa, they bombed American embassies. In Iraq, they supplied explosives to maim and kill thousands of American soldiers. In America, they actually sent death squads. They sent death squads here to murder a former secretary of state and a former national security adviser. And as we recently learned, they even brazenly threatened to assassinate President Trump.”

“But Iran understands that to truly challenge America, it must first conquer the Middle East,” continued Netanyahu. “And for this it uses its many proxies, including the Houthis, Hezbollah, and Hamas. Yet in the heart of the Middle East, standing in Iran’s way, is one proud pro-American democracy — my country, the State of Israel.”

“So, when Israel fights Hamas, we’re fighting Iran,” he said. “When we fight Hezbollah, we’re fighting Iran. When we fight the Houthis, we’re fighting Iran. And when we fight Iran, we’re fighting the most radical and murderous enemy of the United States of America.”

(contributing writer, Brooke Bell)