Right, so you finish your shift at an Israeli army base near Beersheba. You go back to the barracks, take your boots off, and there’s a mouse in the room you’re meant to sleep in. Welcome to life on the edge of the biblical plague of Israel – rodents, rodents everywhere. Givati Brigade soldiers say this is what was happening at their own headquarters in Sde Teiman. The Israeli army has an occupation problem inside its own HQ if you like – how quaint for them. And when the soldiers asked for help, guess who ended up paying for the traps?

It started in the offices apparently, one of the soldiers put the first sightings about eight months earlier though. A mouse getting at somebody’s lunch is the sort of thing you might tell your mates about. Then she said they were chewing through documents. Then the electrical cables. At some point you’d think an officer might ask why the local wildlife had been allowed to take over the rewiring and where were they all coming from?

By this soldier’s account, the brigade had been split across different sites. She and the others still working at headquarters felt nobody was properly looking after the place. She described rubbish lying about and pigeon droppings all over the base, so it seems no prizes for what was attracting them. There were still people coming in every day to do their jobs, in a building somebody was supposed to be keeping fit to work in ,all in an area already known to be affected by rodent problems believed to be linked to turning the Gaza Strip into a rats paradise as Israel has been doing through genocide for more than three years now. Well I suppose as long as the mice were in the offices, your Israeli soldier could at least shut the door at the end of their shift and go back to their room and forget about it.

Right, so on Monday the Americans started moving aircraft out of RAF Mildenhall. By Tuesday, at least fifteen had gone. Barely a month since their bombers left RAF Fairford of course, all in the name of security concerns that they have with regards to Iran, that is despite the fact all we know still to this day, is that were made is some men were caught with some petrol. But there’s something else Washington has left right where it is, and for that we need to look at RAF Marham. Our own Ministry of Defence says American-owned F‑35 parts went from there to Israel fourteen times. Then Labour suspended some arms licences over Gaza. Guess which programme got an exemption? Well, we all know that one don’t we?

Imagine that a shipment starts in an RAF station in Norfolk, but it passes through Heathrow, goes to Israel via Israeli cargo planes, and ends up in Nevatim, where Israel bases its F-35s. Heathrow, for God's sake. The place you go to catch a flight to Malaga was a stop on the way from a British air base to an Israeli air force base.

Well, back in November 2024, the Ministry of Defence told MPs that no F‑35 parts had gone directly from Marham to Israel since the suspension of other certain arms export licences had come into effect that September, even though, as we know the government refused then, as it has ever since to suspend F-35 parts from that. Britain was still sending parts into the same spares pool Israel draws from. A minister gets to stand up in the Commons and announce an arms suspension, even though it never went far enough. Lovely.

But there the story takes its turn.

Right, so one day, an Iranian diplomat was walking through Manhattan, minding his own business, when he encountered the mayor of the Israeli city of Bat Yam, who started following him down the street with a lawsuit no less, acting for all intents and purposes like a Middle Eastern knock-off of Dog the Bounty Hunter, just minus the mullet and the mace.

Why? Well, it’s a story of peak hubris, quite frankly. Bat Yam is asking Iran to compensate it for missile damage caused during June of last year, when Israel fancied its chances. The catch is that the money the mayor hopes to recover is connected to an unpaid debt Israel owes Iran.

A breezy $1.1 billion of it. Just loose change for Israel though I’m sure.

An Israeli city is asking to be paid. And the brilliant idea is to seek compensation from money connected to the very debt Israel has spent years refusing to pay Iran. You couldn’t have written the hypocrisy any better.

The mayor in question is Tzvika Brot, whose city as I said, was hit by a bombardment in June last year, and who has now come all the way to New York with a claim for damages. There is a whole delegation and a camera recording the encounter, while an Iranian official is still trying to get on with his day, and Brot is delivering legal papers as though he were auditioning for a show called The Apprentice: International Law Edition.

Debt collection transformed into a performance, with the mayor apparently convinced he’s the star attraction.

But follow the thread of this so-called payday, back to what Israel actually owes Iran here.