How Israel Lost Its 'Total Victory' in the Gaza War - Opinion - Haaretz.com
"Total victory," so it seems, is something like the Israeli equivalent of King Arthur's Holy Grail. The prize, sacred and magical, with the supposed power to grant its holder strength, wealth, honor, and status – and in the Israeli case, plenty of coalition lawmakers who will be able to retain their Knesset seats – has vanished.
Everyone is in search of the grail of victory – the army and government, parties and factions, the right and the far right, the indicted and the suspected. They are searching and have failed to find it. A little more than five months ago it seemed within their grasp, but their stupidity has pushed it away.
That was on October 8, the day after the attack on the Gaza border communities (or perhaps it was the evening of October 7) when Israel went to war, not only with Hamas terrorists, but a total war. The Israel Defense Forces spokesman, a talking robot, reported that day on "thousands of casualties in Gaza … 426 targets attacked, tunnels, military infrastructure, scores of terror buildings [no less] 10 stories high …" and more and more. The air force that same day began its campaign of death and destruction that has seen no break till this day.
Thus, within 36 hours, without an iota of preparation and planning, without a clue about what its purpose was or an exit strategy, Israel embarked on a savage war – a war dictated by bile, delusions of grandeur, a wounded ego and its nakedness exposed. A sane country would not go to war like this. This is how you conduct a lynching.
The next day, October 9, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced a "total blockade" of Gaza – no water, no food, no electricity, no medicines would reach it. This was the moment when we deprived ourselves forever of "total victory."
If Israel had exhibited a modicum of common sense, it would have contained its raging passions. It would have looked to the restraint exhibited by Golda Meir after the Munich massacre, U.S. President George Bush after 9/11 and even the Iranians, who respond with a laconic "we will respond in the proper time and place" after every Israeli "assassination" or other operation against them.
Israeli troops in Gaza city in November.Credit: Ronen Zvulun / Reuters
If we had acted properly, Israel would have found itself in its favorite position of all – the victim, the persecuted, the sufferer, the unfortunate. And this time, for a change, there would have also been a fair amount of justice in that. The whole world would have felt our pain and flooded us with love. We would have been gladly invited to Eurovision. Hamas would have been deemed absolute evil; Israel, the absolute best.
But Israel is not given to common sense. Its instincts got the better of it again. It was more important to get an ego boost, distract everyone from the disaster, to delight the masses with a heaping dose of revenge. That's not how you bring about "total victory," it is how you acquire the mark of Cain.
And as the mountain of Palestinian corpses and ruined homes grows and grows, so does the mark of Cain on Israel's forehead. And when we have reached tens of thousands of victims, more than half of them children and women, Israel joined the club of ostracized, branded, leprous countries, a target for outrage, protests and sanctions, a country unwelcome in polite society.
Today, we cannot even dream of "total victory" (indeed, any victory) arising from this evil or even more so from this stupidity.
And the pinnacle of the grotesqueness is that the "Jewish state," which has been angry for years about how silent the cruel world was during the Holocaust, is now demanding loudly that the world keep quiet and not interfere in our work.