On video: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a statement in Kirya 29.02.24/le
The panic was visible on Benjamin Netanyahu's pale face yesterday.
It was no longer a routine press party of "absolute victory" for sure and the dispersal of the daily spin.
It was a real alarm.
He realized the potential in Yoav Galant's announcement the day before.
He rushed to try to promote the evil of the tribulation, but he had nothing to sell, except stupid slogans and hysteria.
Netanyahu is the histrionic son of the historian.
Yesterday he dared to compare himself to three giants: David Ben-Gurion, Menachem Begin and Levi Eshkol.
When I heard it, I hoped that an earthquake would not occur, a direct result of these three turning over in their graves at the same time.
David Ben-Gurion, Netanyahu said yesterday, rejected the international pressure put on him and announced the establishment of the state!
Yes, Bibi.
You really are the modern Ben-Gurion.
It's a shame you forgot to include in the speech who, among others, were those who put pressure on Ben-Gurion.
You know that this is a group of revisionists led by your father, Prof. Ben Zion Netanyahu, who bought a huge full-page ad in the New York Times, calling on Ben-Gurion to say "no" to the partition proposal.
This is a bad proposal, this is a disastrous proposal, it is impossible to maintain a state within these borders, they argued.
"He had nothing to sell," Netanyahu/Government Press Office
Basically, they were right.
But Ben-Gurion knew that we would not have another chance.
You have to say "yes" first, and then we'll see.
That's what he did.
He repelled international pressure, ignored the ads of the revisionists, gathered support in the People's Council and announced the establishment of the state.
How lucky we were that Ben-Gurion was there, and not Netanyahu.
Because what we saw yesterday at the journalists' party was a hollow leader, empty of any content, who clung with all his might to the remnants of his image as "Mr. Security".
He had no answer to Gallant's statement.
All he tried to do was try to prevent elections.
Elections, he said, mean defeat for Israel.
Elections, he said, mean the fulfillment of Sanwar and Nasrallah's dream.
I am afraid that Netanyahu is not with us.
If he had been in the business, he would surely have known that Sanwar and Nasrallah's dream had already come true.
Sanwar succeeded in humiliating Israel, occupying bases and settlement points and turning the Gaza Strip into a disaster area.
Nasrallah managed to evacuate all the settlements on the line of conflict while sitting safely in the complacent Beirut.
Right now, they have no more dreams.
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Lucky that Ben-Gurion was there and not Netanyahu/AP, AP
Why do elections mean defeat for Israel?
If it was possible to vote last Tuesday, why wouldn't it be possible to vote on any Tuesday this coming October, or July?
Does he really think that the IDF will continue to operate in Gaza in October as well? And if so, why should it interfere with the elections?
Panic screamed from Netanyahu's throat yesterday. He was caught red-handed. The recruiting crisis has reached its final stage at the worst possible time for him. And after October 7th, the public cannot be smeared anymore, nor the High Court.
Netanyahu is now facing reality with empty hands.
The full-on right-wing government is an experiment that did not go well.
The operation failed and the patient died. Yes, Netanyahu promised yesterday to distribute land to discharged soldiers.
When I heard it, I couldn't believe it could be.
He really doesn't remember already making that promise, a decade ago?
It is spread in the headlines of the newspapers of the time.
It was fulfilled just as the promise to lower fuel prices in the last campaign was fulfilled.
And just like the promise to stop terrorism has come true.
And like the promise to return the reigns.
All of these lie in a secret site somewhere, a huge cemetery of Netanyahu's promises whose burial place is unknown.
Why do elections mean defeat for Israel?/Reuven Castro
When this column was written, the first pictures arrived from the difficult event in Gaza, where thousands of starving Gazans attacked humanitarian aid trucks that were supposed to reach the northern Gaza Strip.
In the riot that took place there, according to the reports, dozens of Gazans were killed, maybe even more.
And of course the finger of blame is already being pointed at Israel and the IDF. Both because it is a conditioned reflex, and also because there is no one else to point the finger of blame at.
I intended to open the column with this story, although the details are not yet clear, for a simple reason: for months the heads of the Israel Defense Forces have been pushing "L" and the Shin Bet at the "political level" to hold a discussion and make decisions about "the day after" in Gaza. Pushing and pushing. Netanyahu is not ready. It's not important. It's not urgent. It doesn't interest him. These are all excuses. The truth, everyone knows Netanyahu is a captive, a hostage of the most extreme elements in his government. He is not ready to discuss the day after because he knows that the conclusion will be that an address must be produced. That is, a type of responsible adult who will receive the keys to the civilian administration of the Strip and will be able to spare Israel the burden, the burden and most of all the responsibility. But Netanyahu doesn't want an address. He knows that the address must be Gazan and he knows that if it's not Hamas, it's the Palestinian Authority, or a body affiliated with it somehow. And the phrase "Palestinian Authority", he refrains from mentioning. It might wake up Ben-Gvir or Smotrich.
In recent weeks, the head of the Shin Bet reported, the chief of staff also reported, other senior officials reported to the cabinet that Hamas is taking over the distribution of food and humanitarian aid flowing to Gaza.
This is an event that threatens to damage and perhaps even dismantle Israel's military achievements in the Gaza Strip, achievements that we paid for with the blood of our best sons.
This also did not motivate Netanyahu to take real action in regards to creating an alternative to Hamas on the ground.
Palestinian deaths after the introduction of humanitarian aid/documentation in social networks according to Article 27 A of the Copyright Law
One of the main difficulties arose in the introduction of aid to the north of the Gaza Strip.
The trucks were stopped on their way north, by armed Hamas operatives. This created a situation where the north is desolate and at real risk of a humanitarian crisis and starvation. With no alternative mechanism, the IDF embarked on a pilot in which trucks enter from Israeli territory through enclaves in the eastern Gaza Strip and from there move to the northern Gaza Strip. With the help of the IDF. This is exactly the pilot that led to Thursday's disaster.
"Those who think they can control Gaza the day after, those who dream of a new Jewish settlement in Gaza, those who do not understand the event and do not understand that it is impossible to rule through clans or gangs, received a lesson today A painful reality," a senior cabinet official told me yesterday, "The document that Netanyahu presented to the cabinet a few days ago is a hoax, accepting Israeli civil responsibility for the Strip is an act of absolute stupidity and resounding stupidity, we may cause the US and the other countries that are trying to help to take a step back And leave us alone to eat what we cooked. This is actually what happened now around the trucks. And now go explain to them that it wasn't us, that the intentions were good and that Israel is capable of managing civilian life in the Strip and feeding 2.5 million people."
"Accepting Israeli civil responsibility for the Gaza Strip is an act of absolute stupidity."
IDF in the Gaza Strip/IDF Spokesman
Anyone who enters the depths of the security system and the bodies attached to it, understands that there is no magic solution.
Foreign rule cannot be imposed on the Strip.
Just as the Americans failed to impose rule on the Iraqis or the Afghans, just as we failed miserably in our effort for a "new order in Lebanon", the same will happen in Gaza.
All the professional forums that discussed the issue and submitted proposals to the cabinet, reached the same conclusion.
There is an institution in Gaza called the "Civil Committee".
This is the only body that is not Hamas.
His disadvantage is that he receives his salary from Ramallah.
This is an existing body that contains technocrats and officials, not terrorists.
This body knows how to manage civil life in Gaza and it is possible to build a mechanism on it that will be strengthened by international factors, in Egypt and the Emirates and Saudi Arabia, and perhaps also Europeans, who will be able to produce some solution that will be able to establish some address that will take care of the distribution of humanitarian aid, cleaning, health, education and policing.
Netanyahu stopped everything.
Not because he doesn't want to.
Because he can't.
The terror of Ben-Gvir and Smotrich is greater than all other considerations.
When he finally submitted his plan for "the day after", it mainly included Israeli security control and probably civilian control as well, through a civil administration.
Well, this civil control turned into a mini-pogrom around supply trucks on Wednesday night.
What Netanyahu did not understand in the good, he will now understand in the bad.
Expected.
That old formula: pay an exorbitant price, eat the stinky fish and get kicked out of town.
Yoav Galant's statement on the conscription law is an earthquake.
The shockwaves and its aftershocks will only get stronger and stronger, until we reach the concrete wall that awaits the Netanyahu government.
That wall didn't pop up there overnight.
It keeps building, solidifying, and intensifying, throughout the years of the saga since the expiration of the Law of Tal.
The High Court has already made it clear that there will be no further extensions, there will be no time-outs, there will be no more winks. The time has come to decide. Now it's not just the High Court.
Now this is also the reality that awaits the Netanyahu government down the road.
painful reality
The terror of Ben-Gvir and Smotrich is greater than all other considerations/image processing, Yonatan Zindel/Flash 90
The meaning of the words of the Minister of Defense, that the system he is in charge of will not put on the Knesset table a law that will not be acceptable to all factions of the coalition, is much greater than the political significance of the event.
The ultra-Orthodox are currently in a system frenzy and are calculating their end, or the end of the government backwards.
Their mistake is that they don't realize that this time it's real.
It's not a spin, it's not a drill, it's not trolling.
The IDF really needs fighters. The IDF needs ultra-Orthodox.
The debate surrounding this statement raged in the sky on October 7.
That black Sabbath was the most precious wake-up call in the history of the Jewish people.
It cost 1500 dead, thousands of wounded, hundreds of thousands of refugees, two security belts (within Israel) and enormous economic damage.
The meaning of this wake-up call is simple: the current IDF is small for Israel's security challenges. The army urgently needs the addition of thousands of fighters each cycle. This is a fact. It is already here. The choice is to lower the enlistment age to 16, to import fighters from Thailand or to recruit the sector that isolates itself from the privations of this world. In the meantime, the IDF is forced to increase the burden on those who are already carrying it: the regular service has been extended, the reserves have been extended (4 times), the exemption age has been sharply raised.
In any other country the mobs would already be burning the streets.
We have a war.
We don't have the privilege to burn anything now, except Hamas (and if there are no choices, then Hezbollah too).
But this war will end someday.
After her we will have to do what we have not dared to do since 1948. This time, we will have no choice.
There is no power that can stop it.
Not even the ultra-orthodox.
This is simple math.
in numbers that do not converge.
Those who continue to expand in Judea and Samaria and increase the daily friction with the Palestinian population know that the IDF will have to keep at least 25 battalions there at all times (usually even more).
On October 7, it was proven that the Gaza Federation is small on Gaza.
The threat posed in the north is intensifying and it will be necessary to double the forces that hold the line from the head of the Nakra to Hamat Geder (including the Golan Heights).
This war will end exhaustingly, and we will have to do what we have not dared since 1948/IDF spokesman
The IDF will have to establish 2 more regular maneuvering divisions and 3 or 4 more reserve divisions. Double the number of tanks. The same goes for new infantry brigades, combat helicopters and all the logistics in between. And these are not plans for the distant future. These should be plans for tomorrow morning The ultra-Orthodox must understand that this time it's not a political event. This time it's an existential event. Until today, the debate has been carried on comfortably because everyone believed that even if the ultra-Orthodox mobilized, the army would have nothing to do with them. We argued, with a wink. Yes, yes, we said to ourselves, right away There will be infantry battalions here on the purity of the ultra-Orthodox.
Well, the army has something to do with the ultra-Orthodox.
And how he has
The ultra-Orthodox recruitment cycle is around 12 thousand young people.
Around 4,500 to 5,000 of them do study Torah.
Several hundred recruits.
Around 7,000-6,000 dodge.
In total, from the age of 18 to the age of 26, which is the age of exemption, there are 66 thousand ultra-Orthodox youth.
There are 120 battalions.
It's a game changer on steroids.
Even if only half of them will enlist (and the other half will learn), it's a tremendous tie-breaking event.
Even if only some of them end up in combat or supporter positions, that will be enough.
This will allow the IDF to release for combat many recruits who today arrive in other places.
The ultra-orthodox must understand that the political fire that is now raging in the coalition is hardly a charcoal barbecue compared to the forest fire that is raging in the security field. We have reached the watershed. You cannot deceive anymore, you cannot turn a blind eye. In our eyes and we must not look down. It is over. The age of evasion must pass from the world.
The army has something to do with the ultra-Orthodox.
And how he/Reuven Castro has it
Netanyahu will try, as usual, to square the circle or round the square or some other charlatan.
Because what about him and the security needs of the country?
He is in the matter of the security needs of the coalition.
His highest interest is to maintain the alliance with the ultra-Orthodox.
keep the country?
That Gallant, Gantz, Eisenkot and a friend of theirs will break their heads.
Netanyahu is convinced that the country will not survive without him, so the most important thing is to keep him.
He will already protect the country.
He didn't update software, Netanyahu.
He doesn't understand that the public realized on October 7 that it's not that the country won't survive without him, the country barely survived with him.
He is the one who dragged us to October 7th.
He is the one who ignored all the warnings.
Who didn't turn to him?
Eisenkot's warning speeches have already been broadcast over every screen.
Lieberman's warnings.
The pleas of the heads of the IDF. Gallant's strategic warning, following which the Minister of Defense was fired in one of the most criminal acts ever committed in Israeli politics.
So here, Gallant warns once again. Let's see Netanyahu fire him again. Netanyahu is among the Egyptians here. He knows that on this issue there is a rare consensus (around 80%), and this consensus is against him. He has no option to start dismantling the nests of resistance. He cannot send the IDF to be the consul in New York, in order to preemptively torpedo a rebellion in Likud.
He cannot offer the High Court a rotation. He is convinced that Galant and Gantz are coordinated and he is now racking his brain to find out if this coordination is also, with a wink, coordinated with the ultra-Orthodox. Because in the end, only elections will be able to extend the exemption and the budgets in a few months. And what will happen next- So? Then there won't be Netanyahu, there will probably be Gantz and with him the ultra-Orthodox know how to get along.
No, I'm not saying this is the picture of reality. I think it's the picture of Netanyahu's paranoia. His hatred for Yoav Galant has crossed new heights in recent months. It's mutual. Galant understood that with Netanyahu He's done, anyway. That the situation is irreversible. It's helped him decide that this time, for a change, he's just doing what's best for the country. He did that Wednesday night. The snowball got its push and is now rolling down the slope. On its way to crash at the bottom of the mountain , he may bury quite a bit.
Netanyahu's hatred of Galant has reached new highs/Ministry of Defense
Something happened this week.
Channel 14 exposed the "Sim affair".
I mean, he didn't really reveal, because this story was rejected by the censorship, a sweeping (and justified) rejection since October 8. Every military reporter or senior commentator knows the details and never thought of violating the censorship order so blatantly. But Channel 14 plays Probably a different game, on a different field. When your essence is the legacy of the Netanyahu family, you are allowed.
Someone was sitting there and said that on the night between October 7th and 8th, "a thousand Israeli signals" were opened by the Nuh'ba fighters, which could indicate intentions invasion of Israel.
According to the channel, the Chief of Staff knew but did not inform the Prime Minister. The same someone, who is not a journalist at all, but close to the Netanyahu family (well, these are the threshold requirements on Channel 14), added that this story was revealed by Reserve Major Israel Ziv at some conference In Tel Aviv.
In short, you must have already understood. The real victim of October 7th is Bibi. Our Bibi. Not the murdered, not the raped, not the mutilated, not the burned. Not the fallen fighters, not the thousands of wounded, not the refugees and not the humiliated. This is Netanyahu that he didn't know anything. If he knew, he would have saved us all by now somehow.
The host of that broadcast, Shimon Riklin, who was also never a journalist, demonstrated journalistic sensibilities here in the style of Amit Segal, attacked the bloody piece of meat, repeated the information in a loud voice and became Him to the echoing scope. Within a minute and a quarter, the entire poison machine woke up and pounced on the Chief of Staff.
To complete the grotesque, the Prime Minister's Office rushed to join the celebration and announced that Netanyahu did not know about the sims story at all until he heard it in the media.
That is, on channel 14. That is, from the lady close to him himself.
This was not an accidental event.
It was a planned event.
Someone came to the conclusion that Netanyahu is unable to shirk responsibility for October 7 at the required rate.
Maybe even the other way around.
He fails to drop the entire case on the heads of the security forces.
even the opposite.
The more he tries to escape from this guilt, the more it burns in his wake and is smeared on his face every time.
What to do?
Exposing sensitive intelligence information, the most sensitive possible, causing heavy damage to the security of the state, kicking censorship, kicking the rules, sticking a knife in the Chief of Staff's back, and waiting for the next survey. Why do
I think this is planned? Because the one who revealed the information was careful to point out that Israel Ziv said that in front of her. Had she revealed the information in complete good faith, without knowing that it was a classified detail that should not be published, she would not have been careful to wave her alibi in real time. By the way, the alibi is irrelevant. A statement by an individual that the censors reject in a closed conference does not constitute "whitewashing" of that individual There is a difference between a live broadcast on a public channel and a statement at a closed or private event.
According to Channel 14: The Chief of Staff knew but did not inform the Prime Minister. Herzi Halevi/IDF Spokesman
And there is something else: in-depth polls conducted last week showed that not only does Netanyahu fail to reduce the number of people who believe he is the main person responsible for the incident, but the opposite.
After he painstakingly managed to get that number down, it pops up again.
The Agam Analytics Institute, under the direction of Nimrod Nir at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, conducts in-depth surveys among the Jewish public in which public attitudes are examined on a long and detailed list of issues.
The sample is larger than usual (1400).
The polls were carried out once a week since the beginning of the war and recently the dose was reduced to once every two weeks.
On the question of responsibility for the October 7 failure, Netanyahu was stuck for quite a long time around the 48 or 47 percent who believe that he is responsible, compared to a lower number who believe that the main responsibility lies with the heads of the security system.
In the previous survey, the shift that Netanyahu was hoping for finally occurred: the number of those who think the government is responsible dropped from 47% to 43%, while the number who think the security system is responsible rose from 35% to 40%.
Bibi apparently started to develop expectations.
But then the new survey came and everything went backwards: it "increased" back to 47%, the security system dropped to 38%.
From this to the conclusion that the public needs to be told new things so that they understand that Bibi did not know (as usual) and is not responsible (as usual) for anything and nothing.
And here came the "exposure" on Channel 14.
Netanyahu bounces back in the polls/Flash 90, Yonatan Zindel
Of course, what I describe here is circumstantial only.
This is not legal proof and everyone is entitled to their opinion.
But we also need to sort out the details and the facts: on the night of October 7, there was a whole series of "indicative signs" that woke up the system.
The Chief of Staff held telephone consultations, the head of the Shin Bet went down to the Shin Bet headquarters, the commander of the Northern Command abandoned his vacation in the north and rushed south. One of these signs was the same act of opening Israeli signals. The thing is, a very similar act was done in the past and an exercise was held as a result. This is called a "weakening sign".
There were other signs. Sharper than the signs. Even in front of them, there were "weakening signs". The Shin Bet did not want to rock the ship and carry out actions that Hamas would detect, so as not to burn vital resources.
It should be understood that intelligence is a complex, sensitive and vulnerable event.
In World War II, Churchill made difficult decisions when he did not evacuate the population from cities that were about to be bombed or did not take countermeasures against the German submarines just so that the Germans would not suspect that the Allies had cracked the enigma.
This is not to excuse anything, but only to understand the mindset and decision-making of the night of October 7th.
Above all, there was the damned conception that blinded the eyes of the heads of the system.
A concept according to which Hamas is deterred.
This concept had something to base it on.
That's how it is with concepts.
The problem is, there was no one who would step out of the box, look around and realize that the king was naked.
The army did not prepare at all for a Hamas invasion.
The maximum was an attack.
No one imagined a swarm of 3,500 Noachba terrorists rushing towards the bases and surrounding settlements.
No one imagined the terrorists of Noah'a rushing towards the envelope/Flash 90, Abed Rahim Khatib - Flash 90
The work of the State Commission of Inquiry that must be set up after the war will be easy.
Everything is written.
There is no wall without an address.
The story is that all the heads of the security system understand their personal responsibility for what happened here.
They have acknowledged it, accepted it and have no intention of entrenching themselves in their position after the wrath (and scorn for the next world) has passed.
The only one who shies away from his responsibility and is ready to burn the entire country down to throw it on someone else, is Benjamin Netanyahu.
This, and more: the failure of the heads of the security system was unintentional.
They were wrong big time.
They were grossly negligent.
They made a fatal mistake that not only ruined their careers, but caused the deaths of thousands.
With Netanyahu, the story is different.
His failure, his wrong conception of Hamas, his policy to contain Hamas and the flow of billions of dollars in cash from Doha to Gaza, was a planned act.
giving directions.
No, he didn't know it would cause disaster, but he was warned.
He understood the risk.
He heard Lieberman, he heard Eisenkot (in the past year), he heard Haim Ramon, he heard Gideon Sa'ar, he heard the heads of the Shin Bet who offered him 6 times to take down Sanwar and the entire top of Hamas. He listened, understood and refused. At the level of awareness, Netanyahu's failure is more serious than the failure of the heads of the security services.
On October 7, he collapsed. His functioning was minimal for a whole day. Shock, shock, astonishment, despair and panic, these mingled around him and emphasized the fact that today is not in the prime minister's working environment And if there was one man you would appoint deputy gardener for not moving casually in a remote town. He scoffed at all the warnings, scoffed at all the warnings, ignored all the writings on all the possible walls. When it all blew up in our faces, he claims that again, he didn't know. This man didn't know any He never spoke. There was no one to pull the lapel of his coat to explain to him that the site in Miron could produce a disaster. There was no one to whisper in his ear that Israel does not have a firefighting system worthy of its name, until the fire in Carmel. There was no one to reveal to him that the coup d'état weakens the army and harms the immune system of The state. There was no one to point out to him that weakening the IDF could cause a disaster.
There was no one to convince him that if you raised a monster on your southern fence, the monster might attack you when it felt ready.
And of course, there was no one to warn him that releasing 1027 terrorists in exchange for a single soldier is a disaster.
Especially when among the freed there is a dark type who goes by the name Yahya Sanwar.
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War of Iron Swords
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