Oh my son, my son - what did the polls do to you?/Photo processing, Noam Rivkin Fenton
It will be remembered as the evening when "Benni made Bibi", that is - gave a statement to the media that was a model of one in the mouth and one in the heart.
We will soon return to Bnei Gantz who is above the trust of his soldiers, as he who was in the not too distant past the Chief of the General Staff of the Israel Defense Forces, but first of all a few words about those who are, at least in part, his potential voters.
The media has dealt a lot with the non-religious Israeli attitude towards the Purim celebrations in the 19th century: the need for a little joy - if only for the children, in view of the ongoing grief and anguish since their world was destroyed in Simchat
Torah. Due to the heavy weight of these, it seems that at least one central tribe among the Israelis was gripped by despair, not about what happened, but about what would happen. Because even those who drank until they didn't know and clung to the refuge from ourselves offered by the holiday of Purim, woke up this morning with a particularly bad hangover. One that didn't laments the recent past, but fears the distant future.
He understands that peace, at least as he wished for, will no longer exist. He is tired of understanding the other side, which supports the October 7th massacre in unimaginable percentages. He does not buy the sleep of professional "peaceniks" who explain to him that the Palestinians, for the most part, support the massacre because they do not know what took place in it (they support it precisely because they know much more than we do what exactly happened) - and when he turns his gaze inward, the despair grows:
corruption is at its peak, the trial is skewed, the burden is on the public serving in the reserves And the taxpayers will only increase - and even the dream-window that he made sure to always keep open, in the form of some kind of relocation (even if he didn't intend to realize it seriously) is closing with a rising wave of anti-Semitism.
Tried to protect democracy, dreamed of re-location.
The dream is over, the window is closed/Yenon Shalom Yatah
Kaplan doesn't live here anymore
Being an educated tribe, partly even established, he did not raise his eyes in supplication to the sky (which is never harmful, but as he knows: he did not help grandma and grandpa in the ghetto) but on what he could do.
The support group that Kaplan Street provided him on Saturday nights until October 7th (he didn't go there just in the hope of stopping a corrupt gang from finally taking over the country his parents founded, but also - and perhaps mainly - to draw encouragement from seeing how many more like him remained) closed, and his Kaplan became According to polls, those who include Benny Gantz, Gadi Eisenkot, Yair Lapid and Avigdor Lieberman, can form a government that will be a magnet for every Israeli who is not ultra-orthodox and who is not racist.
Judging from many conversations with members of this tribe, the hatred for Netanyahu among them has increased since the start of the war, from a bitter political opponent, one about whom they said: "For my part, he won't spend even a minute in prison in the end, just let him go," Netanyahu became their hatred, one that their life journey will be, Even after he is overthrown, don't even allow a side alley to be read in his name.
They pinned their hopes on Benny Gantz, the man who, according to every poll, should take the upcoming elections, had they been held now, almost by walking.
The problem is that since they accused the other camp of being satans, they didn't notice who they were walking after.
Yesterday, the disillusionment began: Benny Gantz, the one whose more enthusiastic supporters saw him as someone who, in the moment of truth, rises above political considerations and goes under the stretcher - and his somewhat less enthusiastic supporters saw him as an icon who is capable of being a candidate for compromise, made it clear to them that just like Netanyahu, he craves power.
I mean, the only difference between him and the man he pretends to replace is that he still blinks when he lies.
Benny Gantz's statement sounded belligerent: "We will not allow, we will not agree, we will not accept, we will not give" and more, while it is actually a letter of surrender, a tactical move whose goal is to bask a little more in the flattering light of the polls, until something unusual happens that will make it clear to the public in Israel that the era of Netanyahu is over.
What scares Gantz?
It is possible that the news that the day he retires, hundreds of thousands will return to Kaplan and be met by a police force full of Ben Gvir.
What used to be unusual incidents of a stun grenade being thrown at demonstrators or a horseman trampling it with their hooves, will become live fire.
There will be victims in the soul - and this whole "almost civil war" will be on its head, as a result of which the polls that reflect the Israelis' hope for unity (whether it is possible or imagined) may also be reversed.
at an exclusive discount
The Israeli company that invented hair removers does it again
In collaboration with Epilady
Soldiers in Gaza: We pray for their safety, but do nothing so that they can start civilian life/IDF Spokesman
More than four months out
I remember the last months of my regular service, the counting of days, the blackening of the squares on the belt, the joy at the rank of sergeant, which we used to say was "one rank above major general" as it was preparation for citizenship, for the big trip, for the real life that is around the corner. If someone had informed me that my dreams of liberation were punished by "four months on the way out", I might have shot them.
I guess the mentality among regular soldiers today is a little different. They understand the situation and mostly agree (as if they had a choice) to the punishment meted out to them. What they are less prepared for is the reality that awaits them after those four months, the reserve order that is already waiting for them (in contrast to the almost sacred procedure of not calling for civilian reserves in the first year after their release) in the form of 90 days, if not more, in Gaza or on the northern border
. This order means that they will not be able to start their lives as young citizens, they will not be able to commit to studies or serious work, since these will be cut off by Order 8 after only a few months of citizenship. This is not "four months on departure", but a delay order for any combat soldier who wishes to open the citizenship chapter It
is
doubtful that even the "decision makers" as they are commonly called (at least in the case of the Netanyahu government, their art is not to decide) understand the terrible significance of extending the mandatory service and increasing the burden of the reserves.
In order to push the end a little further, they cling to the argument according to which "even if they mobilize all the ultra-Orthodox tomorrow, it still will not absolve us of the need to honor the burden now."
This is true, but it is also cheap demagoguery.
It won't help because the exemption from service has reached scandalous proportions, it won't help because someone is sleeping on guard duty - but if we just postpone and postpone and postpone over and over again, it won't help not only those who were supposed to leave the gates of the Bekoum today and suffered four months on the way out, but also those who enter At its gates today and look at the lengthening queue for the exemption of our "Orthodox brothers", Aalek Achim.
When they say "we will die and not enlist" we fantasize about a compromise, just as we dreamed of peace with the Palestinians/official website, Itay Ron
No compromise and no jail
Those who seek to extend more time, either in the name of the survival of the government or in the name of preserving the flattering results in the polls, are worse in my view than those who declare "we will die and not enlist".
Why?
Because all that talk about "recruitment by consent" as the only alternative to filling imaginary prisons with ultra-Orthodox (even so there is no room in them even - and of course to differentiate - for Hamas terrorists) is intended to obscure the Israelis.
Just as we began to believe the Palestinians, who until now some of us made assumptions about them as if they were mentally retarded children, every time they made it clear to us that there was nothing to talk about and no one to talk to and everyone was interested in destroying us, whether in one fell swoop Hamas style or piece by piece, as the Palestinian Authority did, so we must believe Now to "die and not enlist".
I do not pretend to understand the ultra-Orthodox's soul, but to accept his words as they are - there is not and will not be an effective blueprint for consensual conscription, but only inclusive routes designed to pass the time and secure budgets even without conscription.
What is the solution?
What proved to be effective in the days when Israel had a finance minister who understood who he was dealing with, whether they called him Netanyahu (2003 version), Lapid (2013 version) or Lieberman (2022 version): the abolition of allowances pushed more and more ultra-Orthodox men into the workforce.
Withhold a living from those who don't enlist - and see how they also reach the BCOM.
It is true that this is a long process that requires combining sanctions against some with benefits against others, but in the end most of those who are registered as Yeshiva students will be convinced (you can already agree that only when few are really engaged in learning Torah - surely at the level of potential to become great in it?)
Gantz is presumed to know this, after all, he was Chief of Staff at a time when they tried to implement an outline of increasing quotas for recruiting ultra-Orthodox - and he knows better than anyone that even the few who do enlist are not exactly ultra-Orthodox But more mustards.
trooper troops.
When you hear even him defending Gantz's losing position in the studios, you realize that there really is no more hope/Reuven Castro
Blues for the uniform wearers
His meandering speech last night, which revolved around denying millions of Israelis who serve, work and may have even considered voting for him, was the height of opportunism that would not embarrass his bitter opponent.
The fact that people we think are honest, like Hili Trooper for example, were sent to the studios to defend this losing position (to hear Hili Trooper hide behind the procedure and explain that it was not Gantz who gave the government an extension of a few more months but "the judicial system" - and not to believe: Icha There was a faithful call to you already know what), brought many Israelis to true despair.
When this is the alternative to Netanyahu's rule, one can understand the depth of despair that gripped a mainstream, perhaps the most central and important part of Israeli society - its civil, security and economic backbone, the one that was certain that the future belonged to it, until it realized that it belonged to Itamar Ben Gabir, Yair Netanyahu and Shlomo Karai.
Until yesterday he still had hope for change, until last night he believed that it would come, even if not easily.
From now on his feeling of suffocation will turn into shortness of breath, or to paraphrase the same sentence about the short and shadowy man, say from now on:
when a tall man does low politics, it is a sign that the country is sinking
.
More on the same topic:
Benny Gantz
The conscription law
Benjamin Netanyahu