Israel at War - Recriminations - Netanyahu Must Go

Early Sunday morning, Army Radio began reading the names of the 500 dead from yesterday’s Pearl Harbor-like attack by Hamas Gaza on Israel. Over two thousand were wounded. The number of Israelis – men, women, and children – taken captive by the enemy is unknown.

The final number of dead from yesterday will go higher as the fog of war lifts and bodies are recovered.

Some 24 hours after the initial attack, the security situation in two kibbutz settlements on our side of the Gaza border is unclear.

Hamas managed to occupy parts of Israel within the Green Line for the better part of a day. That is something no other enemy has achieved since 1948.

Day two of the 2023 war has dawned.

I hear this is not the time for recriminations. I beg to differ. At the very least, let's put the cards on the table.

Binyamin Netanyahu is responsible for our predicament. When the situation stabilizes, he should resign. 

The heads of the IDF and security services repeatedly warned him that his putsch to transform Israel into an illiberal majoritarian democracy and the vehement mass opposition it was engendering was undermining our deterrence. Yet he plowed on. 

He formed the most extreme insular government in Israel’s history. Not since Oslo has the national consensus and esprit de corps been so undermined.

Seeing their leaders in the cabinet emboldened Hardal messianics to dance their way up, around, and into the Temple Mount. The Palestinian Arab leadership exploited this reckless behavior to argue that the Jews were “storming” their holy shrines. In recent weeks, they tied up the army with midnight visits to “Joseph’s Tomb” in Nablus. These pilgrimages require an incursion into an enemy city, invariably leading to clashes and casualties.  

The most right-wing government in Israel’s history lost control of the security situation inside the country. Violence in the Arab sector spiked. Spitting and other attacks by Hardalim and other ultra-Orthodox louts on Christians became routine. The government was obsessively focused on changing the regime. Nothing else mattered.

It shoveled millions of shekels to the Haredim and to runaway settlement building. 

Netanyahu was scheming to find legislative ways to institutionalize Haredi draft dodging.

He lied about stopping Iran from getting nuclear weapons. For all intents and purposes, the mullahs can now put an atomic bomb together within two weeks.

He bet on building up Hamas to the detriment of the PLO. He gave the green light for Qatar to deliver suitcases stuffed with millions of dollars into the hands of the Islamists.

And, of course, he released from prison all the prominent Hamas chieftains who went on to rebuild the terror infrastructure in Gaza and the West Bank. 

He was derelict in repeatedly appointing unqualified defense ministers who failed to ask the right questions about our Maginot Line along the Gaza Strip.

He is accountable for the intelligence failure of Israel being caught with its pants down precisely 50 years after the Yom Kippur War. He has to answer for the military being so stretched that it could not push the invaders out for a full day. He is liable for not addressing the nation on a timely basis.  

As soon as it is propitious, Binyamin Netanyahu and his incompetent government must go. 

Until then, he should bring in Yair Lapid and Benny Ganz and create an emergency war cabinet. 

When this is over, we can get down to more substantive recriminations and a State Commission of Inquiry.