Israel’s record of regional military action shaped the Oxford Union vote because students weighed available evidence against claims presented by Hillel Neuer, whose arguments leaned on broad assertions about Iranian proxies rather than demonstrable patterns of state force. Observers who study coercive power in the Middle East have noted for years that Israel conducts routine cross-border strikes with regularity unmatched by any other regional state, a pattern documented by researchers such as Dr Lorenzo Kamel of the University of Turin, whose fieldwork traced continuous Israeli operations across Lebanon, Syria, Gaza and the West Bank over more than a decade (Kamel 2021). Students hearing both speakers could recognise that historical continuity carries more analytical weight than Neuer’s focus on hypothetical intentions attributed to Tehran...