A frightening and criminal war. Driven by a government packed with “criminal” extremists. Those according to which Biden is a supporter of Hamas, and vice versa. Those who hope for the death of the hostages still in the hands of Hamas and Islamic Jihad were kibbutzim and not settlers.
The dirty war of a “criminal” government
Hard concepts, argued with great analytical clarity Haaretz by two columnists from the progressive Tel Aviv newspaper.
Uri Misgav writes: “I ask you only one thing: that you stop playing with our minds. If Rafah is truly the key to our survival, why haven’t we attacked it until now? If we cannot ensure the security of the Western Negev without controlling the Rafah crossing, why did the army wait until this week to seize it? If residents of the Gaza border area cannot return to their homes without destroying the four Hamas battalions that are supposedly patiently awaiting their end at the hands of our troops in Rafah, why has this not happened until now?
The government and denizens of television studios seem to think we are all idiots. Maybe they’re right. If this is not the case, how can they dare talk to us about how critical it is to enter Rafah, about Israel’s security requirements and about the red lines that, even from the point of view of “moderate ministers”, it would be unthinkable to abandon?
Since January, the Israel Defense Forces have not undertaken any major operations, apart from a few days of fighting in the area of Al-Shifa hospital. The air force bombs while the ground forces remain stationary. Occasionally, soldiers are killed, sometimes by friendly fire. They get a photo and a short obituary in the paper and are forgotten. Forces have been reduced to a minimum. Four months! Meanwhile, Hamas had time to regroup, return to central and northern Gaza, and prepare for Rafah (or flee).
This is a scary and criminal war. In this, Chief of Staff Herzl Halevi is no less guilty than Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. His duty towards the soldiers and citizens of Israel is not only to follow orders, but also to bang on the table and tell the political leaders: “Enough!”.
The simple truth is that it only became so urgent to get into Rafah when a hostage deal was approaching. As Michael Hauser Tov reported on Haaretz On Tuesday, even before cabinet deliberations had begun, Netanyahu called for the Rafah operation to begin. His goal is to ruin any agreement and its consequences (a ceasefire, perhaps the end of the war). Everyone sees it and understands it, but they keep babbling.
The crazy Netanyahu has turned the perception of security in Israel upside down. David Ben-Gurion and his successors had outlined simple principles: fight the war on enemy territory, win it quickly, and use military results to achieve political objectives.
For a long time, the logic was considered self-evident: Israel is a militarily strong but small country, whose power is based on reserves. It must not allow fighting and casualties to occur in its territory or reserves to be mobilized for long periods. Israel cannot afford to burden its economy and home front with a prolonged war, nor to ignore foreign powers. On the contrary, Israel should use them to end the fighting to ensure its security and interests.
Netanyahu’s war has turned all this upside down. The enemy has invaded Israel – communities and bases have been attacked, soldiers and civilians have been massacred, kidnapped, raped and their property looted. The border region with Gaza has been destroyed and abandoned. The war lasted seven months (longer than the Battle of Stalingrad). Realistic and measurable objectives have never been defined. “Total victory” is not a goal and “ending Hamas rule” is impossible without a plan to replace it with the help of regional and international involvement.
Meanwhile, in the north of the country, Israel voluntarily cleared a safety strip by abandoning communities for the first time since the creation of the state. This week, a detached Netanyahu angrily asked the cabinet what the problem was in insisting on residents returning to their homes by September 1. “What would happen if they came back a few months later?” he asked. And all this when it is only the beginning of May and the Upper Galilee has been evacuated and subjected to repeated bombing since October.
There was a time when the consensus in Israel was that war is evil and that we should always seek to end it. For Netanyahu and his loyalists in the messianic camp – and, apparently, also for his generals and collaborators – the war is a good thing that must not end.
What’s clearer? When will someone stand up and refuse to continue to participate in the sacrifice on the altar of this madness?”
Militarized information
Chiam Levinson writes about it: “Why should we continue to pretend? The gang of Channel 14 TV and Benjamin Netanyahu’s die-hard fans would be very happy if the hostages died in captivity.
They don’t care if we invade Rafah or if Hamas survives. They want to attack the left. And if the left gets angry when hostages die, let the hostages die.
Does this seem like an extreme statement to you? What on earth has happened in the last seven months to make you think otherwise?
Because of our belief in goodness, it is difficult for us to accept that there are fellow Israelis and Jews who hate us so much that they are happy to die. It’s less unpleasant to think that it’s just something said in a moment of anger, rather than realizing that it’s actually the truth. They prefer dead hostages to happy leftists. They would be happy for Hamas to use violence against the left, violence that they themselves do not have the courage to use.
Seven months after the start of the war, the only glue that holds the members of this cult together remains an unfathomable hatred for everything they consider “left-wing”, a word that they don’t even know how to define and which they instead wrap in slogans like ” they don’t want a Jewish state” or “progressives”. What else but that hatred unites right-wing secular people, right-wing LGBTQ people who buy babies from surrogate mothers abroad, right-wing serial adulterers, ultra-Orthodox religious Zionists, Netanyahu’s slaves, ultra-Orthodox Jews who avoid military service and security hawks?
What do an inarticulate imbecile like the columnist Jacob Bardugo, obedient slaves of Yair Netanyahu like the journalist Moti Kastel, idiots like the host of Channel 14 Boaz Golan and the director of an ultra-Orthodox religious Zionist television station like Netanel Siman-Tov? What thread unites them?
No pain, just indifference. According to them, the hostages were kidnapped and that was it. It’s their problem.
Attack the left. Show it to them. They should all be blown up. October 7 was a catharsis for these people. Look, so many Israelis have been killed and we are still Bibi supporters, despite everything. This is how we strike the internal enemy.
For them, the prime minister is a divine figure. He is the strongest man in the Middle East, in the entire world, in the entire universe. He is a visionary, a strategist, an inventor.
They would be happy for Hamas to use violence against the left, violence that they themselves do not have the courage to use.
But at the same time, his followers see him as a weak and helpless man. He can’t do anything. The army controls him, the Shin Bet security service rebels against him, his legal advisors ignore him.
This macho man is trapped in his office, a gilded cage. He can’t move a pencil without a committee of lawyers. Why accuse him? The failure of October 7th? Come on, he wasn’t woken up in time.
Ok, we get it. They will take responsibility when Yair Netanyahu has a job. But from October 7th, what do they want?
On the surface, these people should have been the first to support Bibi in any deal to bring the hostages home. After all, the “loyalist camp” believes in the mitzvah of ransoming prisoners. These people of national honor should have handcuffed themselves to the prime minister’s temporary residence on Gaza Street in the name of the sanctity of Jewish lives.
But, very slowly, they distanced themselves from the hostages and turned it into a left-right issue, because they understood how much this infuriates the left. Just look at the people participating in Yinon Magal’s popular panel show on Channel 14 “The Patriots”. Many on social media suspect he is diving into the world of pharmacology. Well, he is under the influence of something much more powerful: hate.
Now the watchword is “Rafah” – in fact, this is the new code word for their exalted spirituality. They support an operation in Rafah. I checked and found that, for a long time now, the Light of the Nations has promised that an operation in Rafah will come. At any moment.
On March 10, Bardugo bluntly declared on television: “With absolute certainty, Israel will operate in Rafah in the next month, because there is no other way. No Israeli leader can preserve the State of Israel without destroying the four Hamas battalions.”
Two months have passed. Will she be able to get rid of her bibiism? No, because “Rafah” is not an operational plan. It’s nonsense, like a campfire that needs a constant supply of wood and, when the wood runs out, you throw in pieces of plastic, deodorant containers – anything smelly and damaged. The important thing is that something expresses hate.
Part of this hatred is contempt for the cultural identity of most of the hostages, members of the kibbutzim. In the eyes of the loyalist camp, they are not worthy of living because they truly sanctify human life and refuse to carry the flag of the other side: sacrifice for the country at any cost. In their eyes, the demand to bring the hostages home is an expression of weakness.
It is impossible to ignore the two death reports announced on Friday: Elyakim Libman, a security guard at the Nova rave party on October 7, the son of a former head of the Kiryat Arba Regional Council in the West Bank. Libman saved many lives at the festival, until he was sacrificed. Only recently did it become clear that on 7 October he was killed and not kidnapped. Libman is a hero who chose to save the lives of others rather than his own.
Dror Or’s death was also announced. Or’s family experienced the modern Holocaust. The terrorists attacked their home in Kibbutz Be’eri, killed their mother Yonit and kidnapped their children Alma and Noam, who now learned that their father is no longer alive either.
Israel was founded to prevent events like this: barbarians attacking Jewish communities, undisturbed as they massacre, torture and rape. This happened under Netanyahu’s leadership, but his followers don’t care.
I searched the Bibi-ists on Almost nothing. No pain, just indifference. According to them, the hostages were kidnapped and that was it. It’s their problem.
Let the other side block the Ayalon Highway in Tel Aviv a thousand times. The Bibi-ists will be convinced that those who want the hostages to return home want to usher in the end of Israel. For this reason it is forbidden to express empathy, lest it be thought that, in the end, there is some understanding for the statement that the Israeli government’s conduct of the war was a total failure and, yes, a total failure also regarding the hostage issue.
But what does it matter to them? The situation is fantastic. Total victory. Bibi in power. Remembrance Day has passed. Iran is about to destroy us. Despite the left and its anger, Iran will have the bomb!”.
Final gloss: we had newspapers in Italy with straight backs like Haaretz.
