Do you not see anything wrong with that statement?
The existential threat in the Middle East - to its non-compliant neighbours - is the nuclear-armed Israel.
Ask any Arab/Muslim in the region how they feel living in the shadow of the nuclear threat Israel poses. Without any oversight of its ever-expanding nuclear capability to boot, as it refuses to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty having denied that it has any nuclear bombs. Or that they could be - and are - bombed any time Israel feels "threatened" or says it does. THAT is living in existential fear.
Clear attacker and defender? Yes, Israel is the clear attacker, attacking yet another sovereign nation without provocation, while negotiations were still underway. Even if negotiations had failed, Israel would not have had the "right" to attack based on unsubstantiated, contradicted claims. Israel attacked opportunistically because the U.S. under Trump is weak, destroying Iran is a long-term goal, and Israel needed "shade" from the horrors unfolding in Gaza and change the subject.
Israel does not have the right to defend itself by killing thousands of innocents through flouting the laws of war and humanity doing so. What it has committed in Gaza is orders of magnitude beyond "self-defense". It is a horror and an outrage, an absolute stain on us as human beings. If you do not see that then you will probably see the planned and foretold ethnic cleansing by starvation and terror as simply "voluntary emigration" and a "humanitarian" gesture. In which case you and I may as well each be from a different planet, that is how much our views diverge.
Israel has destroyed Gaza, large parts of Lebanon and Syria and continues to bomb and occupy parts of those sovereign nations. It will de facto annex those territories it occupies and eventually fulfill the dreams of its founders and religious fanatics to create the Land of Israel/Greater Israel. This is not how a modern nation bound by rules and norms behaves. It's how a land-hungry self-absorbed and selfish nation acts. Were it any other nation than Israel it would have been smacked down in its colonial/imperial expansionist, religio-fanatic ways and behaviour.
A nation that can only sustain itself by attacking and terrorizing its neighbours, oppressing and stealing the land of its natives, and impoverishing and making into refugees millions of human beings is a nation that needs to reform, do some serious soul-searching or face the consequences sooner or later.
Will it? Doubtful. That bothers those of us who believe in humanism and universal values like "freedom", equality, human rights and all those other things us liberals are supposed to hold dear.
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