Gone Fishing - Back before the first rains

 

Why I am Not Out Protesting to 'Bring Them Home Now'

 

I’m not protesting today. I am not blocking main traffic arteries.

Before October 7th, I spent months demonstrating against Binyamin Netanyahu’s judicial putsch. Even then, I never blocked traffic because it is illegal. I do not want to get arrested, and I do not want to be responsible for keeping someone from their urgent appointments. Why punish motorists?

Since the war began, I see no justification for stretching police resources by holding protests. 

More to the point, I am not demonstrating because I do not want to meld two distinct causes:  (1) bringing the government down and (2) “Bring Them [the Israelis kidnapped by the Palestinian Arabs in Gaza led by Hamas] Home Now.”

Elections first: Yes, I want elections, but so long as the Netanyahu-led Likud, the Hardal parties of Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, and the Haredi parties of Agudat Israel and Shas hang together, I see no path to bringing down this government. If anything, the "Channel 14" la familia crowd will point to “leftists” protesting in wartime and harden the government’s resolve.  

Who in Likud even wants to stand up to Bibi? Anyway, of the handful of Likud MKs who don’t owe their places in the Knesset to Netanyahu, which is going to resist the Magician of Cesearea? Yuli Edelstein? Nir Barkat? Yoav Gallant? All three repeatedly chickened out. Most of the rest are brown nosing Bibi drones.

Like you, I oppose the Netanyahu-Hardal-Haredi government. Under Netanyahu, the Likud is irredeemable; rotten to the core. Hardal is messianic apocalyptic. These parties want Temple Mount sacrifices, Gaza re-settlement, and pop-up nonstrategic settlements in Judea and Samaria. They would like to make believe there are no Palestinian Arabs and that, anyway, we have no obligations to them. As for the Haredi parties, they want us to embrace the sanctity of parochial draft dodging and the blessedness of their insular, cultish mores. 

Blame yourselves if you voted for Likud or one of the “religious Zionist” parties or God-forbid the haredim. This was the axis Netanyahu promised all along: Likud, Hardal, + the haredim.

Now, let’s turn to the matter of the hostages: “Bring them home now!” should be read as capitulate to Hamas at any cost.

Hamas is not offering to release Israeli hostages in return for a ceasefire. Hamas is demanding an end to the war, a complete withdrawal, and, therefore, an IDF pullback from the Philadelphi Corridor. Caving in would renew the free flow of weapons and materials from Sinai into the Strip. Obviously, after disengagement, we should never have given up the Philadelphi Corridor. Plainly, we should have taken the Philadelphi Corridor at the beginning of this war, not long months into it. But we have, presumably, belatedly shut the spigot that made October 7th possible.

Far worse, “Bring them home now” hands Palestinian Islamists precisely what they asked for on Day One, namely the release of hundreds of Arabs justifiably incarcerated in our prisons. Netanyahu released Yihya Sinwar himself in an earlier trade that put the needs of the few over the safety of the many. Repeating Netanyahu's mistake, which had cost us hundreds of lives leading up to October 7th, would be reckless in the extreme.

 “Bring them home Now!” not only hands Hamas a victory, it encourages another October 7th either from Gaza or the West Bank or Lebanon – or, maybe, all three fronts. It encourages the Shi'ite Arab Houties in Yemen and the Shi’ite Arab militias in Iraq.  It will encourage Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which is building up in Judea and Samaria. It will embolden Hezbollah to try something like October 7th using its tunnels in South Lebanon. And it would send a clear signal to our arch-enemy Iran.

After 275 days of war, massive dislocation of Israeli civilians – north and south, nearly 1,600 Israelis killed, and God knows how many life-altering wounds suffered by our soldiers, not to mention our collective national trauma, “Bring them home Now!” raises a white flag that says: we are yielding. It is an invitation to kidnap more Israelis later.

And not incidentally, bring who home now? Does Israel even have a list of who is alive and who is dead? What normal country negotiates without knowing what it is bargaining about? 

Ceasefire now? No thanks. Fuck the Hamas. Fuck the Hezbollah.

Netanyahu has failed to tell the families of the hostages the painful truth. He has strung them along. And Israel's anti-government media is committing malpractice by not spelling out precisely what Hamas expects in return for the hostages.

Our prime minister also can’t bring himself to acknowledge that Hamas has to be replaced by some other Arab entity in Gaza, and the only possible alternative is the repulsive PLO. Thus, thanks to this benighted government, we have wasted lives and time with a Biden-like refusal to acknowledge harsh reality. The Gaza vacuum works against us.

Netanyahu told us we should let the PLO collapse in the West Bank as punishment for their lawfare campaign against us. It felt good to do so, I admit. Yet, now, the West Bank is militarily more dangerous than at any time since the Six-Day War. We actually need to use warplanes to pacify West Bank refugee camps. And for all his bluster and all his obsequious groveling to Trump, Iran is closer to a deployable nuclear weapon than ever. 

We need to acknowledge reality – if it is not too late – and work with the “moderate” Arab states to salvage the hideous PLO.

The irrational, ideologically driven policies of this government and Netanyahu’s relentless commitment to putting his personal interests first have brought us to a bad place. Indeed, to October 7^th. That said, falling into the enticing “Bring Them Home Now!” trap only exacerbates our problems. It’s not what you want to hear, it’s not what I want to write, but this is no time for mass-delusion.