Bibi’s Comically Terrifying “Red-Line Bomb”

Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, classmate of Sr. Romney, has outdone himself.

In what is now a legendarily cavalier portrait of recklessly reductive thinking on the topic of nuclear threat, Bibi holds a graphic poster of a simplistic bomb with a red line near the neck. It is meant to indicate his government’s breaking point where they will conduct offensive military action to stem the Iranian Threat.

Twitter user @BuzzfeedAndrew, comments on the viral image: “I didn’t realize nuclear bombs looked like the bombs from Super Mario”. Neither did I. We were wrong.

Importantly, even images as as inane as this one cannot be discounted. Surely, few people need the astonishingly facile if not out right condescending “red line bomb” graphic to understand the tense nuclear standoff between Israel and Iran. That said, we would be missing the point to write off the image as innocuous political posturing. Instead, this image belies the explosive mixture of political posturing, truculent rhetoric, callous indifference to the threat of enemy, and simplistic binary thinking that makes politicians dangerous.

Bibi appears to be stuck appealing to Israel’s right wing. The Kadima-Likud coalition broke apart only a short time after it’s inception. If this is the kind of posturing that wins the trust of Israel’s fear-mongering right, then it is doubly upsetting. First, it is a sad reflection of Bibi’s willingness to adopt the kind of tough-guy posturing that has no place in international diplomacy, especially diplomacy with major ontological significance for the people of both Iran and Israel. Secondly, the gesture’s presumed domestic audience itself comes off looking truculent and easily pacified by an unctuous leader, desperate for support. Cheering for a leader who holds up such inane drawings to the most important supranational assembly on earth does not incur good feelings from external onlookers.

Sure, it doesn’t look like Bibi’s Israel will not carry out any military activity without more international support. That is until they do.

The fact that this image is now in the beginnings stages of a viral meme is a source of uncomfortable laughter.