Remember October 7th
The release of hostages seemed fanciful on October 7. The people of Israel still have the great spirit of fighting will and unity on the front. It is a perishable resource that should not be wasted
At this stage, two days before the end of the ten-day truce, Israel's problem is what technique to return to the offensive against Hamas. On 7 October, no one believed there was a way, other than total surrender, to return the hostages. Something along the lines of releasing all Palestinian terrorists from prison. The situation in which many of the abductees were released under military pressure was beyond imagination. Israel was not far from releasing some of the hostages through a direct military rescue operation. She obtained the release with a marginal extra cost for prisoners and minors without blood on their hands.
But releasing the hostages is also Hamas' technique to halt the IDF's military momentum in the Gaza Strip. This is the technique to channel Israel into a ceasefire, in which the public indulges in the release of the abductees and forgets that Yahya Sinwar and Hamas continue to maintain their rule in Gaza. In the lexicon of security crises there are all kinds of responses connected to morality.
There is a moral counteroffensive (Hamas tried this following one of the Israeli bombings at the beginning of the operation); There is a "moral panic." As its name suggests, it is an emotional response of a moral tinge designed to place someone in a position of superiority over others, since he is unwilling to bear the ugly high price of eliminating terrorism (the elimination of three Islamic Jihad commanders with their families); And there is moral nausea. Anyone who so quickly forgets the crime and humiliation of October 7 is invited to hear the testimonies of police officers who questioned witnesses from the massacres and other unimaginable acts. They appeared this week before the Knesset Committee on the Status of Women. The testimonies were drowned in the non-stop media hysteria of the operation to free the hostages. A company that, after less than two months, is ready to move on to the agenda is in serious trouble. This can provoke moral nausea.
Release of hostages
The memory of October 7 must guide us. But in the meantime, Israel has entered a trap that is a trap prepared in cooperation between Sinwar and President Biden and Secretary of State Blinken. A halt to the fighting, an unlimited ceasefire, and the release of all the hostages as bait for Israel, which will be willing to pay any price for it. That's where they're trying to lead us. The Mossad chief's incessant stay in Qatar is not a good sign. Qatar is Hamas, Hamas is Qatar. If what Yigal Carmon has said in recent weeks is true, Israel has the means to pressure and threaten Qatar. The head of the Mossad should not sit there and bargain with them.
The people of Israel still have the great spirit of fighting will and unity on the front. It's a perishable resource. It must not be wasted. The IDF fears that fighting in the next phase of the southern Gaza Strip and mopping up Jabaliya will be more difficult, perhaps much harder. The feeling is that things went easy and that Hamas did not fight with the intensity they expected, or did not want to fight. On the other hand, why should they turn Khan Yunis and the southern Gaza Strip, which is more spacious and sparse, into a fortress where they will fight to the last bullet? It is unclear how many terrorists were killed by blowing up tunnels and sealing the tunnels' many shafts. The southern metro is smaller, while the highway tunnel from Egypt to Gaza, under the Philadelphi route, is operational. Or not? No information has been provided on this strategic issue.
The spontaneous reception for the convoy of freedmen on their way to Hatzerim base, photo: EPA
Regardless of the approximately 7,1 terrorists killed in our territory on 500 October and in the days that followed, is the number of terrorists killed in action in Gaza only 5,300 (and another thousand, as stated), or 1970,<> as the competent bodies in the IDF estimate? Assuming that this is the high number, this is a very serious blow to Hamas. But that's still not what King Hussein did to the terrorist organizations in Black September, with IDF flank protection that deterred the Syrian army from intervening, and backed by an American naval force. This was the successful model of <> with a president like Richard Nixon and a national security adviser in Kissinger. Next to them, Biden and Blinken appear to be tirelessly engaged in sabotaging Israel's vital war effort against Hamas.
In the north, Israel is demonstrating superiority that Hezbollah did not expect. About a week ago, with almost no resonance in Israel, the IDF assassinated five senior commanders, including the commander of the Radwan force.
Eyes on the target
The elimination of Hamas is within reach and has the power to restore Israel to its former status in the Middle East, and even bring it to a stronger position of power than in the past
Prominent voices are heard in the press, from which it can be understood that the goal of the Great War is the overthrow of Benjamin Netanyahu. In Haaretz, not a day goes by without some writer repeating this. The phenomenon can be included in the "moral nausea" department. One step below the goal of toppling Netanyahu, returning the hostages - now!
But Israel will not be able to escape its fate, which is to destroy Hamas. This is an achievement that is within reach and has the power not only to restore Israel to its former status in the Middle East, but to bring it to a stronger position of power than in the past. That is why everyone, including the Americans, wants to prevent Israel from continuing the fighting. Egypt, Jordan, Russia, Iran – they all want Israel dwarfed, dependent, haggling over the execution of the sentence against it.
Yechiel Leiter, who lost his son Moshe three weeks ago, said this week in an interview with JNS' Carolyn Glick that Prime Minister Netanyahu had sworn to him twice, "I will not stop until I destroy Hamas."
"I believe he's going to do everything in his power to make that happen," Leiter said when Glick questioned the issue. It's worth listening to Yechiel Leiter, who comes from a position of moral clarity, perhaps crystal clear moral clarity. He marks the issue of a truce for the release of hostages as the price of national unity. "In order to implement the goal of the operation to eliminate Hamas and Sinwar, unity must be maintained. If we fail like what happened in the first and second Lebanon wars, with demonstrations against the war, the situation will be extremely difficult. But we must maintain the goal of eliminating Hamas."
Yechiel Leiter, father of Maj. Moshe: "In 1945 there was no doubt about the defeat of Nazism. Victory over Hamas must be without doubts. Everyone must know in the end that there is no more Hamas. It's organized evil. If we lose, all Western civilization loses. It's a struggle against barbarism."
Among the families of the abductees there are also men and women who are unable to bring themselves to the plaza of the Tel Aviv Museum, which was kidnapped for the "Liberation Now!" movement. They simply recognize the same faces and intentions of the pre-war "protests." But Leiter is correctly stating, and he made sure to convey a message in this vein to President Biden, who comes from the same city where Yehiel Leiter, Scranton, also grew up. "In 1945 there was no doubt about the defeat of Nazism. Victory over Hamas must be without doubts. Everyone must know in the end that there is no more Hamas. It's organized evil. The Nazis tried to cover up traces of mass extermination. If we lose, all Western civilization loses. It's a struggle against barbarism."
The Nazis tried to conceal evidence of their crimes and cover up traces; Yahya Sinwar and Hamas are also trying to cover their tracks, and they are doing so in an original way, with the cooperation of the hysterical media. Sinwar met the hostages. Free the hostages. Maybe he was holding a child's hand. Israeli intellectuals, including Holocaust scholar Omer Bartov, and Israeli leftists categorize the October 7 massacre as an explosion of the occupation before us, and what Israel is doing is not a war against a barbaric organization, but retaliation in response to the massacre. It is also a sophisticated way of obscuring the traces of Hamas and the Palestinian murderers. I would not put the desire to oust Netanyahu in this poor category, but as an understandable human response to distract attention from the horrors to which one cannot be exposed, let alone internalize, and to channel the horror into a petty human stature suitable for everyday politics. Focusing on the prime minister produces hypnosis, as if everything goes on as usual.
Arrogance at dawn
The weakening of intelligence is, among other things, the result of degeneration and even the closure of sub-units under 8200. Because of falling in love with high-tech, the Arabist element has eroded
Regarding intelligence. Important issue but not the main one. As in 1973, the failure is primarily an operational failure, with blind and deaf intelligence being one component of a process that suddenly leads to the collapse of a tree on the boulevard on the roof of a car and its partition. Anyone who has seen the 20-something minute film about the supreme heroism of three Nahal Battalion fighters on the outskirts of Kibbutz Kerem Shalom understands that the problem begins with the fact that basic military procedures were not carried out along most of the front line on 7 October. For example, "alert at dawn." The Nahal patrol sergeant did carry out and received a warning from his battalion sergeant about the infiltration of the terrorists. In Kan 11's film, the battalion commander can also be heard saying over the radio: "This is war. We are at war." Understood immediately. In '73, it also took very senior commanders to understand this simple thing. In any case, Staff Sergeant Levinson with driver Tito and midfielder Shai (son of former minister Yizhar Shai) fought fiercely, eliminating dozens of terrorists, perhaps 50, alone, and allowing the farm and the other soldiers in the kibbutz defense to organize for nearly an hour. All three were wounded, Shai fell in battle. The question is what happened in the outposts and communities in the northern Gaza Strip, why did they sleep?
The process of weak intelligence leading up to October 7 is the result, among other things, of the degeneration of sub-units and even the closure of units sheltering under the roof of 8200. The unit was AI-oriented, and the Arabist element that had characterized it in the past was weakened.
But it is enough to see the arrogant self-confident figure of Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliwa, head of Military Intelligence until October 7. Just because he's still sitting in the chair doesn't mean anyone takes him seriously. Ostensibly, he is Eli Zeira's character, with much less charisma. But the big difference, as far as I know, is that Zeira, the head of Military Intelligence in '73, did not have journalists close to gnawing grains from his hand. He was also an intelligence man, and General Haliva is not an intelligence man. During and after the war, he did not engage in press briefings from morning to night. The experience that emerges – of the head of Military Intelligence who is close to the senior military correspondents and friendly with them, who is connected and connected to famous people, social figures and central figures from within the media, advertising and business oligarchy – clearly depicts a state of degeneration, of decay at the top. This also explains the desire of those close to Haliva and other security chiefs to create an image of a corrupt prime minister. Corruption at the top of the security ranks is fundamental. Coalition funds, completely legitimate, against increasing budgetary pensions. The image of Ahreleh Yariv as a model for a wise intelligence man, always apprehensive, modest and delving into details, has passed away from the community.
The comparison between the default stages in 1973 and the default stages of 2023 reveals many similarities. In April-May '73, the IDF went on alert following a warning of war, it was called the "Blue and White Alert". However, the alert was not wasted, the IDF promoted special operations units, established additional units and greatly improved defense lines in the Golan Heights. On Passover this year, according to one report, Hamas planned to carry out its attack, but the IDF received a warning, prepared and Hamas canceled the plan. In May, the targeted killing operation was carried out against senior Islamic Jihad figures, and we were impressed by our intelligence and surgical capabilities. This parallels the massive air exercise the Air Force prepared for the Syrians on September 13, 73, a little less than a month before the outbreak of the war. We shot down 12 planes for the Syrians, and what could be more "deterrent" than such a display of superiority. The deception through exercises on the fence is well known, it is similar to Tahrir 41 in a small way. The distinction that existed in intelligence between Islamic Jihad, which is being beaten, and Hamas, which is supposedly deterred and averse to governance, was a very central element in Israel's deception.
Within the structure of Unit 8200, not only did Counter W. investigate and think that Hamas was preparing an attack along the lines of what was actually carried out, there was another, very veteran opponent who supported her position. Within the unit loops, it is highly doubtful whether all this reached the ears or eyes of Unit Commander Y. The head of Military Intelligence and former IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi indeed made an amazing revolution in the intelligence apparatus, the fruits of which we are eating today in the fighting in the Gaza Strip. But Military Intelligence has become a target manufacturing plant, as some call it. The mind that is supposed to read non-digital situations, which is supposed to connect dots and connect phenomena in different arenas, was stored in a place that is too hot and humid.
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