IDF Spokesperson: The purpose for the coming day - to evacuate all the residents of the envelope 8.10.23/IDF website
At first it was clear to every Israeli: it was only a question of time. Yes - thought almost everyone in his home - there was an omission, whoever should have been identified fell asleep on guard duty, we were hit painfully, but it's really only a matter of time before the IDF arrives and responds to the bastards with one epic blow.
There is hardly an Israeli, except perhaps on the extreme fringes of the left, who has not envisioned the crushing counter-blow: the bunker-busting bomb that would lift Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Deif up the storm to heaven. Towers are collapsing in Gaza, after this time no one will take into account whether a foreign communications network has been established there or perhaps someone has made sure to put two swings in the yard to attract children.
There isn't an Israeli who hasn't watched the frustrating scenes from Gaza during the holiday and thought that here, or tu tu, the blow would come. Instead, many blows came, but in the opposite direction: Hamas turned out to be an effective and sophisticated guerrilla organization.
Remember the Sayeret Matkal of yesteryear? The stories we grew up on? From the hijacking of Cherbourg ships, through the "Spring of Youth" to the assassination of Abu Jihad in Tunisia? About the air force that flew all the way to the nuclear reactor in Iraq? It was the IDF we expected to appear immediately, an IDF that would change the direction of the campaign, an IDF that would show it only the technological advantage we have over the enemy, but also the human advantage.
Pictured: A senior reserve officer who still remembers the initiative/Shlomi Gabbay
Instead, we discovered that the spirit of the "unit" had shifted to the other side. With all the aversion to the horrific acts, it is impossible not to admire the initiative: here a house is taken over, there is a police station, the IDF announces that control is in its hands - and here another squad has emerged.
Israeli civilians have been besieged in safe rooms for more than 24 hours, Israeli civilians are marched in humiliation marches inside the Gaza Strip – and the IDF is knocking on the door, bombing landfills and dunes, at a stage when many Israeli citizens are asking themselves (albeit exaggeratedly) how is it possible that there is still one Gazan alive? Just unimaginable.
Look at the ranks of IDF commanders - and just don't believe it. At best, it was the political echelon that stopped them from acting – at first (perhaps) so as not to collapse the emerging agreement with the Saudis, and then out of fear for the fate of the hostages, dozens of whom were kidnapped to the Gaza Strip. At worst, they just can't. Meanwhile, while Hamas does whatever it wants, the Israeli citizens' trust in our biggest consensus, the Israel Defense Forces, has been eroded to the point of pain.
The fact that he is unable to provide us with any protection has been learned by the residents of the communities near the Gaza Strip in a way that is neither cruel nor more painful. In the north, too, they have already understood the lesson – and those who can have already left the line of confrontation, knowing that there is a good chance that no one will protect their security at the moment of truth that they wish they would not come.
The "strongest army in the Middle East," as they called it until yesterday, the one that, as we know, is "prepared for any scenario" (a phrase repeated in every holiday interview conducted by military correspondents with brigade commanders and generals), turned out to be an empty vessel: perhaps only the reservists, those who flooded the recruitment centers and gathering points (after receiving a personal example from reserve generals such as Israel Ziv or Yair Golan, who turned out to be much more effective than their subordinates), They will save us (also) this time, like exactly 50 years ago.
Perhaps then we will finally realize the enormity of the horror and bury our dead: bereavement, terrible as it is, is not foreign to us. This is the feeling of abandonment that we will find difficult to deal with long after the battle is over.
- More on the subject:
- Idf
- War in the South
- Operation Iron Swords
- Surprise war in Gaza