When a government minister publicly calls for an entire country to burn, that's not emotion - it's policy said out loud. Israel's National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir declared that „all of Lebanon must burn" after four Israeli soldiers were killed in southern Lebanon. The words didn't slip out in the heat of the moment; they came from a man whose very job is security.

The soldiers died when their tank was hit near Kfar Tebnit in southern Lebanon. Among them was Lieutenant Colonel Dor Gedalia Ben Simhon, 32, commander of the 52nd Battalion of the 401st Armored Brigade. Behind each of those numbers stands a family, a mother, a home someone won't return to. That holds for the Israeli soldiers, and for the Lebanese civilians Ben-Gvir referred to as collateral.

The minister's full statement was even heavier: „For every tear of an Israeli mother, a thousand Lebanese mothers must cry." An arithmetic of revenge in which one side's pain is measured by the other's destruction. Rhetoric like this from the top of the government isn't just a threat - it's a permission slip, a signal to everyone that the limits of what's allowed have been moved.

Ben-Gvir stressed that the lives of Israeli soldiers and security are not up for negotiation, despite the recent agreement between the U.S. and Iran that was supposed to calm regional conflicts. And here's the trap: agreements get signed at the top, but the rhetoric on the ground undercuts them before the ink is even dry. What is a peace deal worth when a minister in the same government calls for fire - and no one pulls him back?