It took much less time than I thought: at least 1,400 murdered, some of them people, children and the elderly who have not yet been identified due to the condition of the bodies, more than 200 abductees in the Gaza Strip, a formative war that will determine our ability to exist in the murderous space – all these are not enough to analyze the current reality in depth. The token fell on me at the press conference organized last night (Saturday) at the Kirya in Tel Aviv.
Three weeks late, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Galant and Minister Benny Gantz were kind enough to stand in front of a camera on one front in order to make a meaningful statement internally and externally about the cohesion of the leadership. Finally, the prime minister responded to the public's demands – and allowed journalists to ask him questions.
Netanyahu answers questions from journalists after his statement, last night // Photo: GPO
Instead of asking Netanyahu, who heads the cabinet and leads the army, about the northern front and the destruction of the threat from the north, about the depth and duration of the operation in the Gaza Strip, about the future of the evacuees and when they will be able to return to their homes, about the possibility of conducting a campaign between the political and military echelons in light of the level of trust that was fractured by the huge intelligence miss, what will be the future of Gaza the day after the war, and whether the United States has been given the status of superintendent of our future here in the Middle East, I witnessed a series of questions about "responsibility." Does Netanyahu hold himself responsible? Will he take responsibility? Will he lead a state commission of inquiry?
Question after question, Netanyahu evaded a proper response, failing to utter the phrase that the public longed to hear from someone who has led the country for almost a decade and a half: "I am responsible." He enters the event prepared. The answers were on a page in front of him, in handwriting that he had apparently scribbled down to himself even earlier in his acquaintance with the working souls. He knew that no one would challenge him from the right. No one will ask about the essence, only about Bibi. Netanyahu's spokesman, Topaz Locke, blocked me on behalf of Israel Hayom, just before I asked two unasked questions: about giving Abbas Gaza bayonets, and shortsightedness in conducting the northern campaign. Two questions to which he probably did not prepare answers in advance.
The prime minister and his people have become accustomed to this duplicitous game. On the one hand, they bash the media whenever they can for being biased, leftist and obsessed with Netanyahu; On the other hand, any possibility of challenging him from the right, where it hurts. His former associates say Netanyahu likes to testify that there is "only a wall" to his right, but the truth is that Netanyahu is not rooted in the right. As much as it is challenged from the right – for example, Avigdor Lieberman and Naftali Bennett – it completely leads to the destruction of the threat. It's most convenient to punch the media, and oh – how its people enjoy devoting themselves to each other. But essence – zero.
Gantz (right), Galant and Netanyahu in the joint statement, last night, photo: AFP.
Three weeks after that Black Saturday, I am horrified to discover that too many of us do not rise to the magnitude of the hour. Not Netanyahu, who tweets against the heads of the defense establishment while they are waging a shoulder-to-shoulder battle with him (apologizing and erasing Yeruham), and more than that, not the protesters, some of them, who are unable to quit. Every second tweet calls on him to resign, every third tweet with a headline goes by saying Hamas is deterred. Most miraculously, almost miraculously, among the military personnel who missed the information, who were captive to the conception that murdered us – these are free of bumps. With them, the text is fulfilled – now we fight, we will consider later. But with Netanyahu – oh, no. Those who have been calling for him to go for a decade with various excuses think it convinces someone when they swapped excuses.
Netanyahu will go as the heads of the army, Shin Bet and Military Intelligence will go. Because they failed, because no difficult questions were asked, because they fed the monster that devoured our children, because they saw Hamas preparing to strike at us, and they interpreted every restraint it has had over the past three years as deterrence. They will go because only new blood, freshness of thought and lack of guilt for failure can lift Israel from the ruins of the massacre. All those who did not see and did not know and did not ask are yesterday's people, and with them all those who still suffer from this disease that examines the past, present and future through only one prism: "Only not Bibi." After this terrible disaster, other leaders will grow up here who will see the nation and its future before them.
In a conversation I had last week with a military man, I managed to rise a little from the dust after he told me uplifting words: "There is a unity here of all the soul strength of the people of Israel – people came to serve people from everywhere, even people with exemptions from reserve duty. Everyone here is in the most beautiful ways possible. We have an army that knows what it wants, we have willingness and courage, and if necessary, willingness to sacrifice. Thanks to human strength, we believe that we will succeed and win. There will be a lesson here for the people of Israel and the neighborhood in which we live, something like this will never be done to us again."
A building set on fire by terrorists in Kibbutz Be'eri, photo: Oren Ben Hakon
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