After the repetitive recitals of the hollow slogan of "total victory," and after the shofar in the TV studio, next will come "share it" messages. Then car stickers and billboards. Will we have to endure this until the elections, with the person chiefly responsible for the Gaza-border communities Holocaust – the one who financed Hamas and shattered our national security – being presented as an amalgam of Winston Churchill and Judah Maccabee?
The worst leader in Israel's history, and one of the worst in the history of all nations, excelled all his life in one field: engineering consciousness. He could have served as an excellent propaganda minister in any fascist dictatorship. Books would have been written about him, his methods would have been taught in universities. He has used one or another of these methods since the day he entered politics.
There is no positive campaign without a parallel negative campaign. Just like in his early years, when alongside "Making a safe peace" he launched another campaign, "Peres will divide Jerusalem." The "total victory campaign" has been intertwined with an extensive, sickening underground campaign against the families of the hostages.
This week, I asked a few people involved in contacts over a second hostage deal what Netanyahu wants. They all gave exactly the same answer: "We have no idea."
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Knesset this month.Credit: Olivier Fitoussi
I asked them: Is the tough image he's projecting, and the provocative clips, meant to help move ahead toward a deal or to make sure there is no deal? "We have no idea."
It would be one thing if he was deceiving Hamas. That would be legitimate. But he is hiding his intentions from his most senior partners, Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, who saved his ass by joining forces with him. Now he is working behind their backs.
In private conversations, Gantz and Eisenkot's confidants are extremely critical of Netanyahu. As one put it, "Instead of being conducted in secret, a sensitive issue such as the hostage negotiations is conducted through press conferences and video clips. The Egyptians, who are playing an important role, are subject to insults from Smotrich [who accused them of responsibility for the October 7 massacre] and Bibi is behaving like a campaigning politician, not like a statesman who seeks the greater good."
People demonstrating for the release of the hostages outside defense headquarters in Tel Aviv Thursday night.Credit: Itai Ron
One assumption does not change: The most important thing for Bibi is preserving his 64-seat bloc. At any given moment there are hundreds of fighters in elite units, the best of the best, who are willing to risk their lives for the release of a hostage or two. What is Netanyahu willing to risk? Certainly not his dangerous coalition of extremists and messianic settlers. What a sharp contrast between bold, principled people and an egotistical, cynical, cowardly prime minister.
Why have you remained there? I asked a senior figure in Gantz's National Unity Party. "If we leave now, we would be abandoning ship," he replied. "There are the issues of Rafah, the northern Gaza Strip, the confrontation line, and of course the hostage deal. We must be present at all those junctions. People think we have no influence, but that is not true."
I said to him, it sounds like you are describing a lost battle with an irresponsible prime minister who's got ulterior motives. "It's not completely politics with him," the senior official said. "There is still something left to work with."
Sources involved in the negotiations that took place in Paris and Cairo paint a picture different to the one depicted by Netanyahu's public statements. He has said that Israel will not return to Cairo if Hamas doesn't climb down from its delusional demands, but in back channels, drafts are nevertheless being exchanged. There has even been some positive movement reported, something that couldn't have happened without contacts.
If the talks yield an outline that the three negotiators – Mossad director David Barnea, Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar and Maj. Gen. (res.) Nitzan Alon – recommend that the political leadership accepts, and Netanyahu rejects it for reasons that appear irrelevant ("base," coalition, etc.), the leaders of the National Unity Party will not be able to remain silent. That will be the decisive moment.
Gantz and Eisenkot have stated clearly that if a hostage deal is rejected for political reasons, they will leave the government. If that happens under such circumstances, mass street protests are likely to erupt.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Minister Benny Gantz at a war cabinet press conference in December.Credit: David Bachar
Netanyahu's decision this week not to send working teams to Cairo may well be reasonable under current circumstances. But his conduct and the political and personal constraints in which he is trapped cast a long shadow over him. He has maneuvered himself into a situation where he is under suspicion and the presumption of innocence is not guaranteed.
In the autobiography he published shortly before the last elections, Netanyahu presented the Gilad Shalit deal as a victory over Hamas because they gave in to his stubborn insistence and agreed to exchange the Israeli soldier for a smaller number of terrorists and without any "whales" – namely the worst terrorists.
That is what he wrote about the release of 1,027 terrorists, among them Yahya Sinwar, in exchange for one soldier. How does this square with his public protestations that Israel will only release three Palestinian prisoners for each hostage and statements such as "we won't release thousands of hostages"? He refrained from explaining how the price tripled between his tenure as prime minister and that of his predecessor, Ehud Olmert.
Neither did he mention what really motivated him to accept the Shalit deal. Everyone knows his history, but luckily there are enough pairs of eyes examining his every present action, and the families of the hostages are not letting up their public pressure on him. They must continue to do so despite the "friendly advice" that they stop, first from Sara Netanyahu, then from her husband and now from Bezalel Smotrich.
Netanyahu with Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich in the Knesset this month.Credit: Noam Revkin-Fenton
"The talks in Cairo are going well," says a figure familiar with the contacts. "The proposals put forward by Israel received a positive response from the Qatari prime minister, the head of Egyptian intelligence and the head of the CIA. Anyone who thinks that the Israeli team went to Cairo just to listen doesn't know what they're talking about. You don't send the Mossad director to be a stenographer.
"It was convenient for Netanyahu to present things this way to get Ben-Gvir and Smotrich off his back," said the source. "He is so afraid of his partners that he wouldn't even agree for there to be an official statement on the progress made."
The main dispute right now is over the length of the pause in the fighting during the first phase of a deal in which women, the elderly, the sick and wounded would be released. "The IDF needs a long pause no less than Hamas does," a cabinet minister told me, "It needs to rearm, organize [for the Rafah offensive], allow the soldiers to get refreshed and to release reservists before they are sent back in. After all, an assault on Rafah would again require the entry of several divisions into the Gaza Strip. The lull can also be used to reach agreements with the Egyptians and the Americans."
Israeli soldiers in Gaza.Credit: IDF Spokesperson / AFP
There is a majority in the war cabinet in favor of a deal. Gantz and Eisenkot's position is well known. Arye Dery is on the same side and Ron Dermer is also close to their thinking and would support a long pause on the condition that the war is resumed. Yoav Gallant's position sways but is closer to this group. Netanyahu is the most extreme for reasons that we all know.
The dynamics in the cabinet are tense, not only because of a lack of trust and the exclusion of ministers from the National Unity Party. Except for Dermer, no one trusts the prime minister. Even Dery – who has had more of a share than anyone in maintaining Netanyahu's long rule – is said to be fed up with the new Bibi, and even more so with Ben-Gvir and his gang, who terrorize him and distort the moral compass he once had.
According to NBC, Biden called Bibi an "asshole" and complained that he makes his life hell. On one of the occasions that Ariel Sharon spoke of him very unflatteringly, Netanyahu replied to the person who told him about Sharon's comment: If I wasn't like that, I wouldn't have gotten where I am today.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken meeting with Israeli war cabinet ministers Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot in Tel Aviv last week.Credit: Mark Schifelbein/AFP
The Washington Post reported this week that Biden, together with Arab countries, is promoting an ambitious plan to establish a Palestinian state that will be announced within a few weeks. The plan is supposed to be part of a grand regional initiative that will include an end to the war, a hostage deal, normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia, a reform of the Palestinian Authority and security guarantees for Israel.
Without Israel, however, there is no future for this plan, and there is no partner for it in Israel. Opposition to such a plan goes way beyond the Bibi-ist bloc. If it does progress, it will mean a rapid end to the coalition.
Any hint by Netanyahu that he is considering even starting a dialogue on the matter will scare away Smotrich and Ben-Gvir. (The former has already demanded that the cabinet be convened to issue a decision against the report.) On the other hand, the publication gives Netanyahu what he loves most: a foundation for a negative campaign.
Three episodes from the past week: Transportation Minister Miri Regev, on one of the most expensive of her unnecessary trips, shows a little sensitivity to the people back home and admires a tunnel in India.
The preemployment retiree in Miami, Yair Netanyahu, is caught by a Daily Mail photographer on the balcony of an apartment in a super-upscale complex. His eyes are tired as he clutches his herbal tea. In one photo an anonymous friend is by his side, though not pictured are two security guards who so far have cost Israeli taxpayers over a million shekels ($277,000).
MK Galit Distel Atbaryan at the Knesset Education, Culture and Sports Committee salivates over the Hamasniks – their fanaticism, barbarism and murderousness, not to mention their "Allahu Akbars" while shooting Jews and burning homes with the Jews still inside.
In an impassioned appeal that could have come from a mosque in downtown Khan Yunis, the Sapir Prize winner describes her admiration for the "new Nazis" (in the words of her mentor), for their burning faith – in whose name they raped, slaughtered and kidnapped.
Likud MK Galit Distel-Atbaryan in the Knesset in November.Credit: Noam Revkin-Fenton
"They're proud of their deaths, of their poverty, of the suffering they're going through, because they have Allah. We've been cut off from our roots," she laments. "Judaism is dynamite! Metaphysical, spiritual, logical. We're sitting on a diamond, but we bury it!" she says, using that metaphor despite the thousands of fresh graves dug across the country.
Distel depicts the current generation, the one that's fighting, getting killed or losing limbs, as completely ignorant, an empty vessel with no values. In the background, somebody shouts out "exactly." Educated guess: He's ultra-Orthodox. She too, we learn, is becoming more observant. She has just kept Shabbat for the fifth straight time.
This "new ignorance," a syndrome suffered by many members of the Netanyahu bloc who brandish their "lost" Judaism and are full of flattery for fundamentalism, fits Distel well. She's a court jester disguised as a pseudo-intellectual.
The "new ignorance" also jibes with the way the Bibi-ists went on the defensive for the ultra-Orthodox this week after the publication of a new conscription bill raising the burden on the non-Haredi communities that already serve.
Capitulation to the ultra-Orthodox and the settlers is the glue that holds Netanyahu's coalition together. Haredi lawmakers are masters at exploiting this situation, and Netanyahu is a master at surrendering and paying with resources he doesn't have. His relations with the ultra-Orthodox prove that there is no greater capitulation than capitulation to the idle.
But the army's needs won't disappear, nor will the conscription bill. The issue of the draft, or should we say institutionalizing evasion and placing an ever-heavier burden on those who serve – could become the biggest rift in the Netanyahu camp, a rift that no spin or slogan will close.
On social media, Ofir Akunis' appointment as consul general in New York has been labeled an exile. This is a misunderstanding; it's actually an escape (a voluntary transfer) from the dead zone that's the Likud Knesset slate.
For someone who spent a few terms in the cabinet, the role of consul general is pretty junior. Danny Danon, for example, was exiled from a similar position to UN ambassador, a role he filled successfully. Akunis has been demoted. But when the house is burning, you don't argue about the rescue vehicle that gets you out.
Ofer Akunis, the incoming consul general in New York, in the Knesset late last year.Credit: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90
The serving ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, completes his term this summer. This week, Channel 13 News reported that he wants the job of ambassador to Washington by year-end. Erdan has been mentioned as a possible successor to Netanyahu, but he's reluctant to return home because he knows that Bibi isn't going anywhere, and that he'll eventually leave scorched earth behind him.
That, by the way, is the reason another potential successor, former Mossad chief Yossi Cohen, won't be joining Likud for the moment. Cohen will run first at the head of a non-Bibi-ist right-wing party, with the option of a hookup with Naftali Bennett, for example.
From what I've been able to find out, the situation with Erdan is more complex. Two weeks ago he was in Israel and held various political meetings. He told one interlocutor that he was interested in the job in Washington.
He told somebody else that he planned to return to Israel in the summer but wouldn't run in the Likud primary; he'd wait until the Bibi era was over. According to a third person, he wouldn't rule out joining one of the new right-wing parties that have been talked about.
Erdan's case is the latest proof of the theory about serious Likudniks: If you want to keep your sanity, you're better off far away from the killing field known as Netanyahu.