2023 has been a terrible year, probably the worst in the history of the country. It was like that until October 7, and remained so after.
2024, which begins today, has significant potential to be different for two main reasons: First, because for the first time in years, Israel took the initiative into its own hands. Instead of reacting and defending, she went on the offensive. This requires the bloody price of Black Sabbath, but the bottom line is that this is a different Israel: in Gaza, and also in the north. What was will no longer be.
Documentation: IDF attacks Hezbollah infrastructure in Lebanese territory // Photo: IDF Spokesperson
In order to ensure that what really was no longer will no longer exist, the second reason must exist: that there will be a different state here, different from the one that existed here until the eve of Simchat Torah. A state that operates and operates together, not separately. A state in which the self replaces the self. A state in which the national interest takes precedence over personal and political interest. A country that is literally going from disaster to revival, as the name of the rehabilitation program in the south is.
Three months ago, everyone swore that it would be so: soldiers of all ranks, fighting shoulder to shoulder, and being killed shoulder to shoulder. And also the evacuees, and the permanent and reserve women, and the farmers, and the businesses that are collapsing.
He continues to run over the civil service with the polite refinement reserved only for him. Amsalem, Photo: Danny Shem Tov Knesset Spokesperson's Office
And there are those who have moved on, or rather: go back. Minister Dudi Amsalem, for example, who continues to run over the civil service with the refinement of politeness reserved only for him, or Orit Strock, who makes an elephant in a china shop look like a ballerina. He and she (and there are others) are working hard to make the united Israel of the war fall apart again, in the midst of the war, even though in doing so they are sabotaging the war, that is, harming the State of Israel.
The suspicion creeps into the heart that for them the war is a passing episode. More than a thousand dead, several hundred abductees, hundreds of thousands evacuated. Not a big deal. What does matter? Appointments and budgets, as if we were not there just a moment ago, with polarization and incitement and a country that reaches the brink of civil war and ceases on the edge of an abyss only because an external enemy arises on it.
Yesterday, a close friend, who was evacuated from a kibbutz near the Gaza Strip, advised me to ignore them and deal only with what and who matters: soldiers, abductees, evacuees, businesses. I would have acted as he said, if they were not harmful. Take Bezalel Smotrich and his remarks yesterday that only a few of the refugees in Gaza will return to their homes at the end of the war. Forget that it won't happen: There is no film in which Egypt (or any other Arab country) agrees to accept hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from Gaza. But I'm looking for logic: to say such a thing now is to undermine Israel's legitimacy to continue fighting, that is, to strengthen Hamas.
Deep in the campaign. Minister of Finance Smotrich, photo: Oren Ben Hakon
Smotrich is a wise man. He understands it for sure, and yet he says. Why? Because he reads surveys. Precisely the reason why Amsalem insists on continued political appointments. The assertion that "you don't do politics in war" no longer applies to them: they are deep in the campaign. And the state? Get along.
In this Sodom, Galit Distal Atabrian stood out yesterday. Until the war, she was one of the most devout instigators of hatred, as she put it, but since then she has done two things to repair the damage: she resigned after admitting that her office was fictitious and wasting public funds, and admitted that she had made a mistake.
The other partners in the campaign of destruction and venom that took place here until the war continue theirs. They are not only in a coalition, but they are confident in the justice of their path and are ready to take any means to realize it. It's a recipe for the fact that instead of 2024 being a year of correction, it will be a year of historic missed opportunity that may not be repeated. In response to Minister Strzok's question: No, there are no pilots who refrain from attacking Gaza for conscientious reasons, but there are many whose broken compass endangers the State of Israel.
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