Nothing has gone back to what it was after the 12-day war last June. You wouldn’t know it from the official news coverage or the political analyses, but among the public, the narrative had collapsed. You could see it in people’s eyes, in mid-sentence pauses, in heavy silences. Even the familiar claims of being “the region’s superior power” had fallen silent – not just among ordinary people, but even within the institutions that had always defended the government.
