Netanyahu: "We will not stop the war until we complete all its objectives"/Walla!
75 days after the disaster, the stage of disillusionment arrives. There will be no "victory picture." The last time there was such a picture was the Six-Day War. Entire albums of victory photos that ended in the Yom Kippur debacle. And creeping into the heart is the understanding that "eliminating" Hamas is an unrealistic goal in the short term. To eliminate an idea or ideology, monstrous as it may be, requires one of two things: exercising enormous power without limitations of time or loss, or patience, time and intellect.
We don't have the first ingredient. We are not the Allies in World War II, who dropped two atomic bombs on Japan and destroyed all German cities. We are a small country struggling for every shred of international legitimacy. Our prime minister is one of the most hated leaders in the world. It cannot prevent vital supplies of food, water, electricity, and fuel to the enemy in time of war. So we will have to go for the option of patience, time and intellect. And no, we probably won't launch a preemptive strike in Lebanon and we won't teach Nasrallah a lesson that will not be forgotten, and it seems that the residents of the northern border will return to their homes without Radwan's force being smuggled across the Litani.
There will be political pressure on Nasrallah, there will be clashes, the IDF will greatly reinforce its forces along the border, but no one can embark on the Great Northern War now. And when Biden said don't, he said it to us too, because the last thing he needs ahead of an election is a burning Middle East. And the terror in Gaza will not stop. There will still be rockets and more attempted attacks. After all, we went to Defensive Shield more than twenty years ago, and here the IDF still enters the refugee camp in Jenin and the Kasbah in Nablus at night. So that's what will happen in Gaza as well. What did Netanyahu say? That's life.
There will be no "victory picture." IDF Forces in Gaza/IDF Spokesperson
Having said that, it is important to remember: there is no room for sourness. The crude and wild attack by the "ministers" of the government, that is, a bunch of feeble-minded and hateful thugs on the IDF chief of staff, is part of the Bibist poison machine. The difference between Yigal Malka from Twitter and Dudi Amsalem from the cabinet is similar to the difference between Ronit Habivist and Miri Regev, meaning it's about semantics. The Gaza Strip has been neglected for 15 years. The leader who promised to topple the Hamas regime and dismantle the terror base in Gaza did exactly the opposite: fortified the Hamas regime, transferred hundreds of millions of dollars in cash to Hamas and financed its buildup. Therefore, anyone who expected that the IDF could dismantle what had been built above and below ground over many years within a few weeks was detached from reality.
No army in the world would have achieved the same achievements as the IDF has achieved in the past two months in the Gaza Strip, which is the most fortified, entrenched, dangerous and explosive place in the world, by a considerable margin from second place. In order to uproot Hamas' control capabilities and dismantle its military power, a long, thorough and expensive root canal treatment is required. The IDF succeeded in dismantling Hamas' power in the northern Gaza Strip, severely damaging its underground capabilities, placing one foot in the southern Gaza Strip as well, and toppling about half of Hamas' battalions. The IDF occupied Shati and Jabaliya and Shejaiya and Beit Hanoun and Shifa and Zeitoun, the IDF occupied and destroyed Hamas' security square and the tunnel city of the offices of Hamas leaders, the IDF killed dozens of brigade commanders, battalion commanders and commanders, proving that no one can stop it in Gaza.
The IDF did all this under horrific opening conditions, following one of the largest intelligence-operational failures in the history of any army. If we ignore the number of dead and killed on October 7, the blackest day in Israel's history, the number of IDF casualties is much lower than initially estimated and very surprising to external experts, especially the Americans. The IDF continues to work, attack and advance all the time. Get off the IDF's back.
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"Get off the IDF's back." Government Ministers/Flash 90, Jonathan Zindel
We need to let go of the army and let it work. Southern Command Maj. Gen. Yaron Finkelman does not intend to stop until the last Sanwar. All he needs is industrial quiet and backup. The IDF will soon move from phase two of the fighting (ground maneuver) to phase three, which is the transition to more focused activity on smaller forces, which will include the release of most of the reserve fighters in order to enable the economy to begin to return to normal. This transition will not be an easy challenge.
There is a situation in which at this stage Gantz and Eisenkot will resign from the war cabinet and leave Netanyahu there in the cuckoo's nest he built for himself. There is a situation in which at this stage a protest will break out here, the likes of which have never been seen before. In the midst of all this, the IDF will have to continue the war effort and prove to Yahya Sinwar that no, he did not come to rest and comfort and did not succeed in saving his life, because we are still deep in his throat and we will not let go of him until his last breath, soon in our days.
At the end of this month, we will celebrate one year since the swearing-in of the government of destruction, the worst and most dangerous in Israel's history. They spent the first 10 months dismantling the "Israel" brand. They did it with determination, talent, creativity and tenacity. The executors were (and still are) Yariv Levin and Simcha Rothman. The spirit, the spirit of Netanyahu. He succeeded in doing what no one had done before: mortgage state assets to the most extreme elements. Entrust the most sensitive issues to the most disturbed pyromaniacs. Break down what's left into tiny molecules and appoint the least qualified and incompetent people to the roles they are the last to succeed in.
When they stormed our democratic institutions, they were warned that it would bring destruction. There is no expert who did not warn them. From all countries, in all languages, in all fields and professions. Economists, jurists, intellectuals, science, society. But they ignored it. Military Intelligence issued 3 warning letters stating that our enemies believe that we have weakened and may exploit this for a multi-front campaign. Netanyahu snorted contemptuously. When asked about this on Channel 14, he explained that "there is an exaggeration here." IDF officers who came to the Knesset to brief Likud members before the vote on abolishing the reasonableness grounds were left alone. The defense minister gave a strategic warning speech and was fired. This did not interest the band of savages at all. They covered the judicial system with a fleet of bulldozers, and the state treasury with a fleet of Brinks trucks. Then everything exploded.
Will stay in the cuckoo's nest he built for himself. Netanyahu/Flash 90, Miriam Elster
I have no idea how all this will end, but history has already published the verdict: This is the worst Israeli government has ever been. In 50 years, in the "Rise and Fall of Zionism" class at some college of history, the lecturer will tell the students that the man who brought about the destruction is Benjamin Netanyahu. Not Oslo, not Beilin, not the Disengagement, not Sharon and not even Tzipi Livni. The signatory of all this goodness is Netanyahu. He built everything, he created everything, he burned down the club with its inhabitants. He fulfills his wife's prophecy in that tape from 2000, in which she shouts at a Likud activist named Shimshon Deri, something like, "We will leave abroad and the country will burn." In the meantime, unfortunately, only the son has left for abroad. They are still here.
They are screaming and screaming that politics is forbidden now. We're all together now. Why are you harassing Bibi, this is a prime minister in wartime. More of these howls are being heard, and the son of the prime minister during the war, Yair Netanyahu, the exiled leader who returned to his kingdom, yesterday liked a tweet by a senior member of the poison machine, who stated: "You know, on October 7 we were in the midst of a military coup orchestrated by Herzi Halevi. He did not inform the prime minister of the attack scheduled to take place on Simchat Torah morning. The coup is neither over nor complete. The army commander and the defense minister prevent the public security minister from entering a military base... I will hire a military junta."
It should be emphasized: Yair Netanyahu is the strongman in the Netanyahu family home. In second place is the wife. The father lags in the honorable third place. This is how decisions are made there, and it has been published and demonstrated on many occasions. When he likes a tweet like this, it's not a slip. It's a calculated campaign. When his father was asked at a press conference (about three weeks ago) about the conspiracy theories according to which the IDF and Shin Bet collaborated with Hamas to topple the unfortunate Bibi, he mumbled a quarter sentence ("There are no conspiracy theories") and moved on. Because that's the method.
The strongman in the Netanyahu family home. Yair/Reuven Castro
Let's learn the method through a fresh example: Not long ago, my colleague Yinon Magal posted on Twitter a letter written by someone who identified himself as "a reservist and father of a soldier in the 13th Golani Battalion." Isaac Nativ his name. The letter was addressed to the IDF Chief of Staff and was written after the terrible battle in which 10 Golani fighters fell, including 13th Battalion Commander Tomer Greenberg, a hero of Israel. I jump with you straight to paragraph 7 of the (long) letter: "Many questions are prying through the air and do not give rest regarding the specific battle in which the battalion commander fell along with other soldiers from the 13th Battalion. Why was it that before the purge by Golani soldiers, the compound was not bombed from the air or flattened literally? Could it have been possible to prevent unnecessary risk to soldiers' lives? Is it appropriate and proper to fire and dismiss pilots who do not respond immediately to assistance to ground forces that shed their blood on the ground? Do the IDF's values include the simple value that the lives of our soldiers take precedence over the lives of the enemy, its supporters and collaborators? Is the army today behind Benny Gantz's immoral policy of 2015 to abandon and endanger Golani soldiers?"
Avi Benyahu, former IDF Spokesperson, referred to Article 7 on Twitter. "What I understood from this clause," he wrote, "is that the pilots are once again 'exiled' and that there are those who refuse to attack ground targets and must be ousted, and that Benny Gantz is a traitor and cares about the Arabs and not the IDF soldiers, and it is inconceivable that he will have 39 seats and Netanyahu much less." To Benyahu's tweet I added a tweet of my own in which I wrote that "this is not a worried father, but a despicable father."
The next day, 3 reserve pilots called me (separately). People I've known for years. Full mobilized from October 7, attacking Gaza around the clock. They were shocked. Paragraph 7 of the letter brought them back to that obscene video from the period of the regime coup, in which IDF fighters in the midst of fierce fighting are seen asking the air force for assistance but the pilots refuse and abandon them in the face of fierce enemy fire, all because of the reform. That video was the toxic sludge bottom of the Bibist barrel. I thought, naïvely, that war had removed this spirit from the world. Wrong.
The pilots are once again "pus." IDF Pilots / Reuven Castro
One of the pilots, the most naïve, asked me if I knew the father who wrote the letter. "I have to meet him and talk to him," he told me, "I want to explain to him how wrong he is, what coordination there is between us and the fighters, how we don't budge from them and what close and massive cover they get, what brotherhood there is between all the troops in this war." I told him that he was naïve, that my experience had taught me that such a letter was written by someone who did not want to speak, did not want to hear and did not want to understand, but mainly wanted to discredit.
"Do me a favor," the pilot urged me, "we are all Israelis, I will not give up on anyone, I will do anything to meet him." So I made an effort. I got Yitzhak Nativ's mobile number and called. I introduced myself. I said I wanted to talk and try to understand. Before I could even figure out who was against whom, the shouting began. Why did I call him despicable, and who am I anyway, and he has a son in the 13th Battalion, and he is even a company liaison, and he knows everything, and what right and what not. I tried to explain to him that what he had written was baseless. There is no procedure by which the Air Force refuses to provide cover for ground forces. That the reality on the ground is the opposite. That he spilled the blood of pilots who have been fighting for two and a half months. I tried to tell him that some pilots had asked to talk to him, to explain to him, to point him out for his mistake. But I could barely thread a word (or shout).
I also wanted to explain to him that the vicious blood libel against Gantz, according to which he prefers the lives of terrorists to the lives of the Golanchiks, is an even more despicable urban legend than the libel about the air force. But I couldn't. The conversation turned into a battle of wild shouting. He didn't listen to a single word. I passed on his cell phone number to the pilot and wished him good luck. Later I found the name of Yitzhak Nativ on Google as well. This is a person who lives in Yitzhar (which is perfectly fine). It turned out that he has a son who was detained in administrative detention and interrogated by the Shin Bet. This son's lawyer is Itamar Ben-Gvir. His son's name has been made public and there have even been demonstrations by far-right activists on his behalf, but I don't want to mix names here. I also believe that the son Nativ referred to in his letter, who serves in the 13th Battalion in the Golani, is not the son who was arrested at the time. In any case, I share our prayer that this son and all the other boys return home safely (after they kill Sanwar and all his friends).
"There is brotherhood among all the troops in this war." IDF Fighters in Gaza/IDF Spokesperson
I ask myself why Yinon Magal posted this letter on Twitter. Magal talks to the IDF and follows the war. He knows very well that the Air Force provides the ground forces in this campaign with cover that has never been provided by any air force to any army in any war. He knows that there is no way for a pilot or pilots to say "no" to a request for help or to bomb a combat force on the ground inside Gaza. So why does he publish such a thing, in the midst of a war?
The answer is simple: because that's the method. Sickle himself disapproves of what is written there. I think he mumbled it here and there. Even when he interviewed one of the viewers on his Channel 14 program who said that "the brothers in arms are the Muslim Brotherhood," there was a certain note of reservations about the panel afterwards (although there was also applause). The method is to plant the information in the public's consciousness, publish the letter, the statement, the conspiracy theory, the blood libel, and then disapprove with a wink. This is how the consciousness of the public and the viewers is poisoned.
Article 7 becomes a headline, it travels the web and becomes the alternative truth, the cousin of the conspiracy, the stepsister of fake news, the entire tool of the poison machine. What we get in the end is the chilling fact that about a third of the public believes that there are traitors among us who helped Hamas take over settlements and IDF bases and slaughter our soldiers, women, children, elderly and civilians en masse on October 7.
Another example? The cabinet meeting that was leaked to all the media this week. The crazy quotes from it, which included a massive assault by unbridled ministers on the chief of staff during the war. My uncle Amsalem asked, "How were we surprised by this tunnel?" and Miri Regev quickly added that "what is the joy of exposing a tunnel, what happened while we were sleeping, there is such a movie," she added, "while you were sleeping."
The next day it turned out that the IDF had reported to the political echelon about the strategic tunnel that had been exposed four years ago this week. That is, those who need to know knowledge. So why did the attack dogs receive the order to blatantly lash out at the chief of staff for exposing the tunnel? In order to continue the work of tattooing the IDF, in order to continue the shooting range on the chief of staff, in order to continue to prepare the ground for Netanyahu's campaign for survival, according to which he is not guilty of anything, he is never guilty of anything, it is simply because they did not tell him, did not warn him, did not pull on the lapel of his coat or, alternatively, deliberately hid from him, sacrificed the entire Gaza envelope, Hundreds of soldiers and hundreds of civilians, just to hurt him.
The method - plant the information and make reservations. Yinon Magal/Screenshot, Channel 14
Netanyahu's race to escape responsibility will not succeed. Not this time. Everything is transcribed, photographed, certified, recorded and absolute. Yesterday, Gidi Weitz published in Haaretz what Netanyahu said at the State Audit Committee in 2017. He detailed Hamas' entire plan to surprise Israel with a surprise combined land, air and naval attack, the plan to infiltrate a huge number of terrorists, kill and kidnap, and take over settlements and bases. Netanyahu knew everything. Knowledgeable, and belittled. The attempt to hold on to Oslo will also not succeed.
It's not just that he was elected in 1996 on the tact of continuing Oslo in a safer way ("Making a Safe Peace"). He also performed. No one forced him to meet Arafat three months after he entered the prime minister's office, to return Hebron (which Peres refused to do before the elections), to go there, to return another 13% of the territory, to give the Bar-Ilan speech, to negotiate a permanent agreement based on a Palestinian state along the 67 lines with Mahmoud Abbas, and on and on.
On March 6, 1997, new Prime Minister Netanyahu attended the cornerstone laying ceremony for the Yitzhak Rabin Center in Tel Aviv. The murder was still fresh. Netanyahu then made a series of conciliatory decisions, including the return of Hebron. Here is an excerpt from his speech (full speech at the State Archives): "We inherited a process in a state of dying. We could have let him die, especially after the Palestinian forces' rifles were pointed at our soldiers and killed them. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin stated that such a case, of the use of weapons against us by the Palestinian police, would put an end to the entire Oslo process. But my decision was determined: to revive the process, not only because I promised the voters to continue it, but because I wanted, like all the people of Israel, to bring about a secure peace."
I don't know what would have happened to the process had Yitzhak Rabin not been assassinated. There is a chance that he would have stopped Oslo and taken care of security. I do know what happened after Rabin was assassinated and Netanyahu was elected in his place: He revived the process, stamped it with the stamp of the national camp and declared his commitment to the two-state solution. All this, even he will not be able to erase from the pages of history.
Netanyahu revives Oslo/image processing process, Reuters
It is impossible to end this column without referring to the horrific incident from a week ago, in which IDF fighters shot dead three Israeli abductees who managed to survive 70 days in Hamas captivity, managed to free themselves (their guards were apparently killed), managed to write two signs ("Three abductees"), meet a sting dog and tell his camera that they were abducted Israelis, and went out at IDF soldiers shirtless. With a white flag, and still shot dead.
Tactically, there was a terrible omission there. The kind of thing that happens in war. The soldiers did not act as expected of them and violated the open-fire regulations. They don't shoot those waving a white flag. Still, this incident must end at the command level. The soldiers need to be hugged. They had no ill intent. Vice versa. They are there, risking their lives and fighting, precisely for this goal: to save the abductees. They will endure this horrific event until their last day. This is a heavy enough punishment. It is impossible not to tear up at the mother of kidnapped Yotam Haim hugging the fighters who shot her son and holding their hands. From these materials a victorious nation is built.
It is also impossible to ignore the clear connection between the Elor Azaria affair, in which a soldier shot a dying terrorist lying on the floor 11 minutes after the end of an attack, in Israeli-controlled territory, and the execution of Yuval Castleman, a heroic civilian who neutralized terrorists, despite taking off his shirt, begging for his life, kneeling and endangering no one in Jerusalem, the capital. We are sliding down a disastrous slippery slope at the bottom of which we will find ourselves living in a jungle of guns, guns and people eager to trigger and kill.
Most of the shares in this bankruptcy belong to National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and his excessive arms obsession. Having said all that, it is also impossible to ignore the strategic failure that led to the killing of the three abductees last week: the fact that no combatant on the ground was aware of the possibility of meeting Israeli abductees in one of the alleys of Shejaiya, Jabalia or the other hornets in the Gaza Strip.
Yotam Haim, Samer Tlalqa and Alon Shamriz, who were abducted to the Gaza Strip and shot accidentally/documented on social networks according to section 27A of the Copyright Law
The General Staff Negotiations Unit is on the ground for just that. Division commanders received clarifications that the ground maneuver could expose and release abductees in surprising situations. These alerts do not need to be explained or issued at all. Logic is enough: when you squeeze 4 armored divisions into Gaza and start maneuvering, you rock the ship, shake the tree, start a fire in the ant nest. It is clear that kidnappers will be killed, hiding places will be exposed. Every IDF soldier had to walk around knowing that every character he encountered could be a terrorist, but could also be a kidnapped Israeli who fled for his life.
The fighters who shot Yotam Haim, Alon Shamriz and Samer Fouad al-Tlalqa didn't think about it. They weren't aware of it. No one took care to explain to them that in the midst of all the scenarios, situations and reactions, one must pay attention to this possibility as well. The IDF admits this mistake. There are not enough words in the Hebrew dictionary to describe the deep sadness and shock of the most senior commanders in the sector over this terrible event. Hopefully, at least now, awareness of the issue has increased. It's a shame that it cost the lives of three Israeli heroes, but it's a war, and disasters of this kind happen in war. And now, we have to raise our heads, wipe away the tears and win.
- More on the subject:
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