A Half a Year of War and a Fateful Week to Come

Israel is a country on edge. We are waiting for an Iranian retaliatory attack. Our northern and southern communities continued to come under enemy fire over the weekend. Tens of thousands of Israelis have been dislocated from their homes for the past 184 days. A barbaric enemy is holding some 130 of our men, women, and children hostage in Gaza. We have suffered 1,490 confirmed killed soldiers and civilians since October 7, 2023. Many wounded soldiers have life-changing injuries, from burns to lost limbs.

The historically bloody month of Ramadan is not over. Eid-al-Fitr, which marks its conclusion, will be on Tuesday evening, April 10. Last night, Arab youths slept in tents near the Aksa mosque atop the Temple Mount, hoping to instigate a violent response from Israeli police.

In synagogues of almost all hues throughout the country, the liturgy of daily and Shabbat prayer services have been amended to include High Holy Day-like pleas for salvation.

Today's morning news brought more heartbreak. Four IDF commandos were ambushed by Hamas guerrillas overnight in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip. Terror attacks up and down the land of Israel incited by influencers on Palestinian social media continue unabated.

We seem to be treading water in Gaza with no implementable strategy on how to defang Hamas. An assault on Rafiah, where Hamas has its last major stronghold, has been kicked down the road.

We irrationally acquiesced to Gaza's humanitarian and public health crisis, which has so demonstrably sabotaged our overall mission. What did we think would happen if we allowed anarchy, hunger, and pestilence to reign? Pointing out correctly that the fault lies with Hamas does not offset images of ruin and suffering beamed across the globe and reverberated on social media – pictures that practically shout, "Blame Israel!"

Yes, the world is hypocritical. We knew that. In conducting the war, Israel is being held to standards imposed on no other country. The US might accidentally blow up a wedding party in Afghanistan. UK soldiers may have executed unarmed detainees. France may have committed war crimes in the Central African Republic. Russia has demonstrated a complete disregard for the rules of war in Ukraine. Chinese crimes against human rights are undisputed. All these render some brief chagrin, and then the pages are turned.

Not so with Israel. Granted, the IDF has made mistakes that have cost innocent lives, sometimes out of reckless disregard. Yet only Israel has been so unanimously pilloried and held in collective opprobrium as if our crimes were one of a kind in 21^st-century warfare. We, of all people, are charged with genocide when Hamas is explicitly committed in writing to genocide against us.

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 "Together we will Win" public transportation announcements notwithstanding, Israelis are fragmenting back to our October 6 lines. Last night, we witnessed big rallies against the Netanyahu government, the largest in Tel Aviv, insisting that he meet whatever demands Hamas is making to bring home our captives. In effect, such self-inflicted pressure calls for our unconditional surrender. Why would Hamas negotiate when all it needs to do is sit back and watch Israelis join the "international community" in demanding the Islamists get their way?

My desire to see Netanyahu go is second to none, but not at any price. Last night, an enraged Tel Aviv driver (a Bibi supporter?) apparently caught up in the anti-Netanyahu protest plowed into some of the demonstrators, leaving several people injured and at least one requiring hospitalization. Like, we need to start killing each other now...

Netanyahu has always been a master at the illusion of momentum, sometimes by talking tough (on Iran and Hamas, for example) while procrastinating on hard decisions.

He took the country to the brink before October 7 with a judicial putsch mainly designed to keep him out of prison and deconstruct the system that first put him at legal risk. So, yes, he can conflate his interests with Israel's. Likewise, regrettably, the world also thinks of Bibi and Israel as one.

His management of the war has been ham-fisted. Neither his bloated cabinet nor inner war cabinet seems to be operating systematically. From the outside, it looks like he and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are making all critical decisions. And that Benny Ganz gets to know about them at some stage. I imagine Ron Dermer probably plays the role of Netanyahu's Freudian peripheral id). The fact that Netanyahu, Gallant, and Ganz struggle to be civil with each other does not instill confidence in the essence of their decision-making process.

Plainly, we need a new government led by a different prime minister. But Netanyahu won't go, and his ruling Likud Party (the only mechanism for getting rid of him without new elections) is a hollow shell with no one left to stand up to him and certainly no one of a caliber capable of replacing him.

We do need elections even in wartime – America held elections, including for president, during WWII.

However, raucous rallies against Netanyahu in wartime have melded disparate issues: opposition to Haredi draft-dodging, support for caving into Hamas on a terrorists-for-hostages exchange and demanding new elections. All this while the country is literally under enemy fire. It is confusing, divisive, and counter-productive. 

If Benny Ganz wants new elections, he should withdraw from the government. 

For now, disorderly anti-Netanyahu rallies have only solidified support for him, maybe because they are transparently not spontaneous. Granted, neither were the anti-putsch rallies before October 7, but then I figured the ends justified the means.

Not coincidentally, the New Israel Fund is spending heavily (including on a booklet distributed in the weekend papers by its latest front group, "The Israeli Initiative") to use this war to push for a Palestinian state. The problem is that polls show that the Palestinian Arabs have no interest in a demilitarized state alongside Israel and no desire to recognize the right of the Jewish people for a national homeland.

Haaretz, the post-Zionist newspaper that punches way above the weight of its minuscule circulation, carried a valuable article this weekend by Shlomi Eldar. The piece was full of color and insights into the Palestinian mindset. He traveled to Cairo to interview Gazan elites who found refuge in Egypt's capital after October 7. About a week before the war broke out, rumors were circulating in Gaza that something big was afoot. Israeli intelligence would have picked these up, too, but likely discounted their import since they ran contrary to the accepted idea that Hamas did not want war. A few Hamas-connected Palestinians got out of harm's way just in time. Those who had no advance warning (mainly Fatah people who maintained a transactional relationship with Sinwar) but still made their way to Cairo (a costly and challenging feat) are understandably embittered at Israel. But what is revelatory is what they told Eldar about Yahya Sinwar: If he emerges from this war in a position to fight again – he will organize another October 7 because a messianic apocalyptic vision drives Sinwar. In other words, if a stake is not driven through this devil's heart, many more will yet die.

If you are marching for a unilateral and unconditional Israeli ceasefire, your interests and his are strangely aligned.

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Israel is basically alone, divided, and at war. Our fair-weather allies have deserted us. Lord Cameron, the British Foreign Minister, let it be known that UK support for Israel is not unconditional, a risible statement coming from Whitehall, which, if I'm not mistaken, has not voted with Israel at the UN in the Securiy Council since the war began.

The Biden administration is struggling with itself. Its "progressive" elements, backed by Democratic Party leftists, are chomping at the bit to throw Israel under the bus. I sense that the president and Secretary of State Anthony Blinkin understand that America will be the big loser on the international stage if Israel can't defend itself – if Iran and Hamas can reasonably claim victory in the war that began October 7. Still, this is an election year. It is easier to jump on the Hamas pickup truck and make "Netanyahu's Israel" your scapegoat than do some soul-searching about your own policies. I am thinking about the open border with Mexico.  

Also in Washington, "Pro-peace and Pro-Israel" (LOL)  J Street, which consistently toes the PLO line, has helped to orchestrate Jewish support for an arms embargo on Israel. The New York Times and Washington Post are serving as J Street's enablers with breathless revelations presenting America's arms "pipeline" to Israel.

In the face of all this, much of the pro-Israel American Jewish community, save for the modern Orthodox vanguard, is hunkering down. US Jews seem bewildered by what they read in the media outlets they trust (foremost the NYT) and bedeviled by the tsunami of anti-Israelism and antisemitism that has swept through American cities and campuses. It is easy to blame Netanyahu, everyone's bogeyman. While he may be blameworthy for vandalizing Israel's image, his essential decision to take away Hamas's capability to attack us again enjoys broad support in Israel. 

So, after half a year of war and with a fateful week ahead of us, Israel is on edge. As ominous as the week ahead looks, this much I grasp: No Israeli wants it to end with Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran seen to have won the war.