Avigdor Lieberman took Hamas seriously – although pushing a paper with horrifying scenes upwards instead of assimilating the conclusions of the December 2016 analysis downward, towards commanders and soldiers, is a more important story. And to some extent, as the storming of the fence at the end of March 2018 and all the following months demonstrate, the perception of danger stemming from the Hamas threat was internalized by the Southern Command. But in conversations I had with him at the time, Lieberman complained that he didn't find "galloping horses" under him – referring to action-hungry senior commanders who needed to be restrained. I brought to him a perception, which today does not seem exaggerated, that in Hamastan Gaza, a mini-North Korea is being created.
Lieberman thought this was a bit of an exaggeration, and said: Within two years (three? four?) they are on the level of Hezbollah. But for some reason, Hamas has been scorned in recent years, and Hezbollah, with the same method of penetrating the fence, has been internalized by all elements as a serious danger. Neither Lieberman nor Netanyahu were able to sit in front of senior IDF commanders in an intimate conversation, analyze the situation and convince them of their security worldview. Lieberman resigned, and five months later his seriousness was put to the test: he could have joined a right-wing government (with the ultra-Orthodox) as defense minister. April-May 2019, for those who remember. But there were more important things politically than security issues.
In any case, the views of Lieberman, Netanyahu, and Southern Command Chief Eyal Zamir were put to the test on the fence on the eve of Passover 2018. They decided not to allow any infiltration beyond the fence, and with the help of snipers, the IDF stopped thousands of Hamas operatives from storming the fence. The price was dozens of dead. On the other side, not on our side. The next peak was on Nakba Day, in mid-May, a month and a half later. The IDF blocked the break-in attempts. IDF commanders said at the time that Hamas' intention was to break into and infiltrate the communities. Prime Minister Netanyahu said at the time that this was an existential threat. "The Hamas terrorist organization declares its intention to destroy Israel, and sends thousands to breach the border fence to achieve this goal." Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan sounded exaggerated at the time: in a public appearance, he claimed that the Hamas leadership was "spilling blood with endless Nazi wickedness."
At the center of the dispute between the political echelon, especially Netanyahu, and the military echelon and retired senior members of the security establishment was the question of the "existential threat." Immediately following Netanyahu's remarks about the demonstrations on the fence, called the "return march," the media automatically adopted this Hamas slogan, creating a terrible urgency at the entrance to the studios, and of course – learned reactions against the prime minister from the "Return" newspaper or the "Nakba" newspaper, the Israel Democracy Institute and all the usual suspects.
IDF Spokesperson
Ehud Olmert then appeared in the studio: "There is no existential threat to Israel, Netanyahu said groundless things." This slogan began to be heard about ten years ago by Bogi Ya'alon and others, such as Tamir Pardo, who said exactly what Olmert and Amos Yadlin said: "There is no existential threat to Israel, there simply isn't!" (November 2014, following Operation Protective Edge).
The existential controversy found expression in an article by Idit Shafran Gittelman and Tamar Brandes in the Israel Democracy Institute and in Haaretz. They expressed the scholarly ridicule, which was based on weighty moral preaching by Uri Avnery, Zeev Sternhal, B. Michael, Gideon Levy... Anyone else? "If so, Israel faces annihilation, no less," Shafran Gittelman and Brandes wrote at the time. We will soon see where the Institute for Democracy is striving here: "In the face of an existential threat, all means are legitimate. Go demand proportionality (!) from a country that is struggling for its existence." They also state that this is misleading: "The deception regarding the significance of attempts to cross the border, and the presentation of the situation as an existential threat, creates public legitimacy for the unlimited use of force." This, of course, is "a legally and morally impossible situation."
About three years ago, in a meeting of journalists with then-IDF Spokesperson Brig. Gen. Hedi Zilberman, the statement came out again: "There is no existential threat to Israel." At this point, impolitely, he was asked why he said such a thing. It has been clear to me for years that the security establishment does not understand the doctrine of popular warfare aimed at destroying Israel, according to which the PLO and Hamas operate. Zilberman expressed this view: This "existential threat" is that today it exists – and tomorrow it is not. And this does not exist in Israel, not even after the massacre and after the temporary occupation of the western Negev.
The perception that attrition, sowing fear and terror, and political and psychological warfare within Israeli society have proven themselves over the years and brought us closer to destruction has not been internalized. Netanyahu's statement in a May 14, 2018 speech that "Hamas sends thousands to the fence to destroy Israel" created a demand for political theorists to expose this cynical deception. One of them was a researcher named Jonathan Leslie, whose interview was translated in The Times of Israel on March 1 of this year. Jonathan Leslie argued that as prime minister, Netanyahu turned the Iranian threat from a technical security challenge into a moral crusade that evokes emotional memories of the Holocaust.
Did he overdo it? "Yes. I think this is a political tactic on Netanyahu's part, rather than a genuine belief that Iran is actively trying to bring about a second Holocaust." He added, of course, something President Barack Obama believed wholeheartedly: "Iran's image... It is based on invention, fear and emotion, not on historical events." At the top of the IDF, a similar belief was instilled. For some of them who reached the top of the political-intelligence-military interface, the escape from the security zone to the fence on the Lebanese border was perceived as the most important achievement in the past generation. Just to close the overall perception of our situation: "Our technological capabilities are dramatic... Cyber gives us wonderful fruits... In fact, there is no real existential threat to the State of Israel today," Alon Ben-David said in a lecture four years ago at a Jewish community in the United States.
"We will meet in the path of enrichment"
Five years ago, the IDF still understood the nature of the threat. By dispersing the storming of the fence in the weeks leading up to 7 October, the IDF had already internalized the morality of the preachers
On one of the days of the escalation on the fence, in May 2018, I spoke with a senior official from the Southern Command. At the time, the Southern Command was certainly very alert and aware of the danger: "Kibbutz Kerem Shalom is a kilometer from the fence," he said after there was a decline in storming the fence. "Although I haven't seen any briefings for mass slaughter, I invite you to the Kerem Shalom Tribune for observations of what's around. To see from the gallery the Palestinian masses and their ability to create violence and destruction at indescribable levels. What they did was not shoot themselves in the foot, but shoot themselves in the leg three times. It was clear to us that we would not allow any risk of this kind to approach the kibbutz fence."
He also said that one of Hamas' slogans during the assaults was: "We will meet on the path of enrichment." "The whole media narrative that they tried to instill in their people in Gaza in the days before the incident talked about reaching Israeli communities."
Leftist demonstration on the one-year anniversary of Cast Lead, 2010, photo: Coco
In the Israeli media, however, no one believed it when senior Southern Command officials said this. "The number of fatalities once again highlights Israel's longstanding failure – which State Comptroller reports noted in 2003 and 2017 – in developing non-lethal measures that will also be effective for dispersing demonstrations and processions from a relatively long distance," concluded Amos Harel in Haaretz. But better late than never.
In dispersing the storming of the fence in the weeks leading up to 7 October, the IDF had already learned the lessons of the State Comptroller, the lessons of the High Court of Justice and, in particular, the moral lessons of the preachers. He used crowd control measures, not live ammunition. The Southern Command's response this year is also related to a very negative process that took place in the General Staff's relations with the commands during the days of IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi and Military Intelligence Chief Aharon Haliwa. The command as a command body managing the local front has become hollow. The General Staff has become a kind of technological polit-bio, whose modern means enable it to take control of events from the Kirya in the most centralized and anti-military manner. Responsibility and authority were sucked upwards.
Revolving door
"The deportees will be returned," chanted those opposed to the expulsion of Hamas members in '92. Later on, too, there were those in Israel who sought to provide Hamas with an umbrella of moral protection against Israel
Just as the late Uri Avnery was the pioneer in conspiring and creating commitment between the PLO and the Israeli left, he was also the pioneer of the connection between the left and Hamas, which centered on joint struggles and legitimization of the organization. That was at the end of 1992. Prime Minister Rabin and Chief of Staff Barak tried to expel 415 wanted Hamas operatives from the country, among them many of today's top stars. Even Shulamit Aloni supported the move as a minister in the government. "Don't forget that Gush Shalom arose following the deportation of 415 Hamas members to Lebanon," Avnery told Tom Segev in a 2006 interview. "We set up a tent in front of the Prime Minister's Office. We sat for 45 days, also in the snow. After a year, they brought them all back. They invited me to Gaza and wanted me to greet (at the reception)."
Then left-wing petitions in favor of Hamas began to appear, of course out of opposition to draconian measures against freedom fighters (a bit extreme perhaps): "The deportees will be returned," the petition shouted, with long columns of signatories from the best youth. "The expulsion is a blatant violation of human rights and Israeli and international law... It sabotages the chances for peace in the Middle East. We call for the immediate return of the deportees (Haniyeh, al-Zahar and the rest)." Signed, for example, Uri and Rachel Avnery z"l, Eva Illouz, Adi Ophir, Zehava Galon (!), even Cheshka Drin-Drabkin signed and Hillel Mittelpunkt signed by Yigal Schwartz and many more. In order not to fall behind, Peace Now immediately organized a demonstration on Saturday night. What Shabbat? The one yesterday, tomorrow or 31 years ago.
Following the fence incidents in May 2018, which continued until 2020 in the form of fires and incendiary balloons, Prof. Zeev Sternhell wrote: "The weekly killing on the Gaza border is a barbaric act, which shows society and the army acting in its name naked: everything is allowed to us. Like Elor Azaria... Even the young people in uniform who massacre unarmed civilians on the Gaza border are the children of all of us."
"Kibbutz Kerem Shalom is a kilometer from the fence," a senior officer in the Southern Command told me in 2018, after the decline in assaults on the fence. "Although I have not seen briefings for mass slaughter, I invite you to see from the gallery the Palestinian masses and their ability to create violence and destruction at indescribable levels."
B. Michael, one of the fathers of the cynical decadence of the '73 war generation, wrote: "Shame on those who are not ashamed of the despicable fence... A temple of iron wires surrounded by a worse death strip than the Stasi along the Berlin Wall." And Amira Hass ends the praise: "The perimeter fence separates the brave from the heartfelt." Avnery wrote that he was ashamed of the IDF, and asked if he and his comrades belonged to "the same human race" as the soldiers who fired. The beginning of neutralizing the fence as a checkpoint and stopping line lies in the moral media assault against the IDF.
Once again, I got to confront Anshiel Pepper on this issue at a press conference in England. He boasted about the excellence of his paper. The fact that his newspaper served Hamas' psychological warfare, focusing on a man in a wheelchair who was accidentally shot and signaling to readers around the world the line that Israel was committing war crimes on the fence, did not bother him. This was a lie, and so did the newspaper about Hamas' intentions and concrete goals. The huge story of turning American campuses into Chernobyls of anti-Semitism has completely disappeared from the paper's writers. Perhaps because of their contribution to the problem as an engine of hatred in itself.
Fast recovery
The IDF is successfully carrying out a ground operation in Gaza that, until a week ago, seemed to be a plan prevented by an insurmountable psychological barrier. It can also happen in Lebanon
In the midst of the October 7 disaster, there is an equally big, but still not comforting, story: the IDF's rapid recovery. The IDF talks about the rapid mobilization, the blocking of the Lebanese border almost immediately after the outbreak of the war, the reconquest of the western Negev as territory, and the elimination of Islamo-Nazi terrorists in communities within three days, that prevented Hezbollah from joining the onslaught on Israel. The detection and surveillance measures employed in recent weeks, including the rehabilitation of the cameras and their placement in more protected locations, are bringing good results against Hezbollah. Any mission assigned to the IDF in Lebanon – it will carry out. For example, conquering the territory as far as the Litani and standing on the line forever. In Gaza, the IDF is successfully carrying out a ground operation that, until a week ago, seemed to be a plan prevented by an insurmountable psychological barrier.
And the main thing we forgot: there is an existential threat! "Netanyahu is an existential threat to Israel. He must resign now," declares Boogie Ya'alon, Yair Golan and Tamir (apartheid) Pardo.
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