The rally for the release of the hostages. Only this clean new protest will not begin to be painted in the old colors / Reuven Castro
If you were to cut someone off from every occurrence on the streets of Tel Aviv, somewhere between the High Holidays, and bring them back to the same spot last night, their only question might be why the Capalists changed their shirts. For a moment it seemed as if those demonstrators against the legal legislation changed the slogan from "shame" to "now" and went out to demonstrate for, not sorry, actually against, or maybe... Wait, actually that's not accurate either, but let's leave the goal hanging in the air and try to get a little, with the necessary caution, into the emotional mechanism that this struggle encounters.
So far, the struggle for the abductees has been conducted with the utmost wisdom. It is true that from the very beginning, a few serial protesters were visible, for whom someone had moved the Ayalon Highway to the museum plaza, but in a cold calculation, the campaign managers realized that this color was not good for them and that embracing the families of the abductees with Mrs. Netanyahu, for example, was much more beneficial to them than the support of a few people wearing black shirts even in routine times, on the seam between opponents of the occupation and supporters of a ceasefire.
They recognized well that one room in the heart of the average Israeli is reserved for the abductees anyway, longing for their return and being moved with every hug of any of them to his loved ones, but in the other room there is a people who yearn to see the IDF win: not something that will end with some understanding that will be presented as a victory, but a victory-victory, the kind in which the murderous opponent bleeds to death. Such.
For this reason, they maintained a duality, on the one hand to keep the abductees in the consciousness at all times, and on the other hand not to be portrayed as trying to tell the government, let alone the IDF, what to do.
The rally for the abductees. Goal: Detachment from Kaplan/Reuven Castro
Between the Peace Interchange and the Museum Plaza
Until last weekend, it worked well – people who wish to see Yahya Sinwar beg for his life and Gaza turned into a parking lot, proudly wore discs that successfully symbolized the struggle for the abductees.
The campaign headquarters clearly identified the breaking point, which is not ideological, God forbid, but tactical, and decided to hasten the struggle so that it would beat perhaps one or two more times, meaning another 20 released prisoners, before the fighting resumed in full force.
That may be why among the thousands who flocked to the hostage square last night there were quite a few who seemed to have been forgotten on the outskirts of Kaplan somewhere in early October. I don't want to attribute to them, God forbid, a mindset of "demonstration, no matter what," but rather a prioritization of humane values, and yet last night's rally began to remind, especially among its participants (since the goals have not changed), of the demonstrations against the legal legislation:
a mostly well-established, older audience, voting center and left, hostile to the prime minister and drawing quite a bit of encouragement from the media coverage, especially with the line led by the only relevant channel in Israel (12), Through presenters and commentators who were committed to the issue from day one, such as Amnon Abramovich, Dana Weiss and Yonit Levy.
Since among the leaders of the struggle for the abductees there are quite a few people who understand the media well, perhaps this is the place to think about redeploying for the next stage, since the line they took yesterday, the one that makes it clear that every additional day in Hamas captivity is a great danger to the peace of the abductees, can be accepted by Israeli public opinion only if it means one thing: immediately suspend all negotiations and strike Hamas in order to hasten the next phase - and not the other way around: To suspend the war effort in order to exhaust the chance of this beat at almost any cost.
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Until the Q&A section, this was his best performance in the last two months. Benjamin Netanyahu last night/Screenshot, GPO
Me and Me and Me
If some of the participants in last night's rally began to be painted in the colors of Raq-La-Bibi, then almost simultaneously the man they vowed to overthrow addressed the nation. Netanyahu's performance last night was one of the most difficult to analyze.
On the one hand, it was Netanyahu's best performance since October 7: the black shirt, which was getting tired (and mostly looking like a "school uniform"), was supplemented by a "semi-combat" blazer. The body language was loose - and the text itself, if a few dozen different "me and me and me" biases were cleared from it, was all in right: expressing joy at the return of the abductees who were released, full commitment to continuing the fighting until victory, and launching a threat that seemed effective towards Hezbollah.
So why is it difficult to analyze Netanyahu's appearance last night? Because it seems that a little like all the important official players in this event, he too failed to understand the sentiment of the new Israeli.
Netanyahu celebrated the release of 110 of the abductees (86 of them Israelis) as if it were a huge achievement. This is indeed a huge achievement on a human level, but in terms of the balance of profit and loss of the campaign, it is only about reducing the damage of its first day.
Anyone who looks at Netanyahu not with the eyes of a fan, but also not with a hostile look, that is, asks himself: What is this shrewd salesman trying to sell me this time? He could have received a pretty good answer last night, in the form of the narrative that will lead Netanyahu all the way the day after (which on the tactical level he will try to distance as much as possible, on the timeline, from the events of that Shabbat):
There was a terrible blunder that is mainly the fault of the defense establishment, the one that operates from the defense minister down, through the heads of the organizations and IDF commanders. I took command and since then I have been leading the campaign - first of all to reduce the damage, In the form of releasing as many abductees as possible until the final victory.
This may also be the reason why Netanyahu appeared last night separately from his defense minister, who was already marked as a hostile witness before the commission of inquiry (in other words, we can clearly see the fact that family consultations are no longer subject to hours in separate time zones).
We were moved by the pictures of the abductees who met with their loved ones. Now is the time for some such pictures as well. Gaza Yesterday/Reuters
Between dead Arabs and living Israelis
So why does even Netanyahu's best public appearance in recent times leave the feeling that he is not entirely at the event? Well, if Netanyahu had wandered around the streets of his country a bit and met with Israelis who were not carefully selected to serve as extras, he would have discovered that the most important thing for them now is not to back down. Don't stop for a moment.
For a significant portion of the Israeli public, he would have discovered, even the ceasefire, which lasted about a week and was accompanied by the moving scenes of Israelis returning home, was a concession that the soul of the new Israeli found difficult to contain.
To take these words to their most extreme extent, it seems that perhaps for the first time in all of Israel's campaigns, "the people" demand pictures of dead Arabs more than they are moved by pictures of living Israelis.
You can call it disillusionment, you can call it invective, what you can't do is deny this new sentiment, which crosses political camps that were true until October 6 and even analyzed Golda Meir's legacy using "just/just not Bibi" tools.
This is perhaps why it is impossible to assess what a day child will be in this strange act in which all the main actors seem to fail to understand the audience's new tastes: the Americans, for example,
demand humanity and proportionality from us. If humanity is expressed in a warning to civilians (and even in this regard, there is a huge gap between the Americans and the Israeli street, which no longer knows innocent people in Gaza, as far as most of us are concerned, they are all dead), in securing a humanitarian corridor and in providing food, medicine and fuel, so be it. But as for proportionality? Here already the Israeli desire (not of the government, of the citizens!) is still for a manifestly disproportionate blow, which may cause the Arabs – not only in Gaza but also in Beirut – to be very much left to their own devices.
Even a demand to think about the day after, for example, something that bothers the Americans very much, is not on the agenda of the Israeli, for whom the day after could begin with the transfer of Gazans to Qatar, for example.
Same sea. Gaza the Day After, Submission Proposal/IDF Spokesperson
The will of the people? Sea view!
Hamas and Sinwar still do not understand this sentiment, which is entirely (as far as they are concerned) the fruit of the phenomenal success of that murderous attack. The Israeli until October 7 wished mainly for peace and quiet in which he could add to the gripe about the cost of living while flying abroad four times a year. The new Israeli is willing to sacrifice trips abroad forever – and only to see Sinwar's head impaled by a satshef at the end of an IDF rifle.
And last, the Israeli leaders. When Netanyahu rejects future rule by the Palestinian Authority in the Gaza Strip, he is talking to his imaginary base, the one to his right – not realizing that the new right in Israel is also composed of a few "PHRs." Do you want to talk to us about the day after? Give us such a victory picture that you don't need to read the caption underneath it to understand it.
To talk a little about the day after, the one in which Netanyahu and Gantz will compete (unless there is an amazing plot twist) for public trust, Netanyahu proved last night that when it comes to politics, he is several levels above his rival.
In Gantz's appearance last Wednesday, he identified a desire to break the unity government, but also hesitation whether an outrageous budget (even in the eyes of Likud voters!) was enough to break the leverage that carried him up in the polls.
Netanyahu recognized, and acted immediately, to appropriate for himself, and only himself, the conduct of the campaign (from the return of 86 Israelis home to the resumption of hostilities), in the hope that by the time it is over, some Israelis will forget his responsibility for the failure that led to its conflagration.
So what's the problem? Here's something Netanyahu himself may not yet understand: By appropriating the conduct of the campaign, he is committing to goods that he may never be able to deliver. The people demand a view of the sea, while the most Netanyahu can provide is a ceasefire backed by a political agreement.
In other words, something that even a huge production on the Washington-Riyadh axis cannot train.
- More on the subject:
- Abductees
- Gaza War
- ceasefire
- Benjamin Netanyahu