The Government Has Declared War on Israeli Citizens - Opinion - Haaretz.com
This government, which has brought Israel to unprecedented depths, which has isolated it from the majority of the enlightened world, which busies itself with infinite concern with the interests of its members and with unending talk and zero action with the needs of resident, nevertheless has two goals on behalf of which it is determined to fight.
While presenting the Philadelphi corridor as some kind of Maginot Line, it turns out that it is guided by two primary goals. The first is leaving the hostages to rot in the tunnels of Gaza while slandering their families. The government knows this goal runs counter to the entire Israeli ethos and is therefore linking the hostage issue to achieving some abstract and vague victory.
The second goal is purging the defense establishment's top brass and replacing it with government loyalists, measures that most Israelis view as illegitimate. The poison machine runs nonstop in service of this goal. Social media is flooded with videos showing the leadership of the judiciary and defense establishment sitting in jail as war criminals.
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If anyone has any doubt about such malicious intentions, the most recent cabinet meeting brought them to the fore. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir – an avowed fascist and Israel's greatest gift to global antisemitism – was praised by cabinet colleagues for making the Israel Police the police of Otzma Yehudit – Ben-Gvir's party, whose name translates to Jewish Power.
Environmental Protection Minister Idit Silman, a veteran party defector, claimed that all the talk about forming a national unity government stemmed from a desire to return Benny Gantz to the Defense Ministry "so that he, not we, will appoint the next chief of staff." That paragon of the rule of law, Transportation Minister Miri Regev, chimed in to exalt the criminal who is in charge of the police, gushing, "Way to go, Itamar!"
Benjamin Netanyahu, who sees the failings of the police under Ben-Gvir, said nothing, because the national security minister Ben-Gvir serves the prime minister's goal of destroying the rule of law from top to bottom.
The opposition demonstrates responsibility. Some of its members believe that during an "existential" war, criticism of domestic issues shouldn't be expressed. They don't understand that it's precisely the wartime atmosphere that enables the government to carry out fundamental, destructive changes to the institutions that are most essential to our existence.
The leaders of the defense establishment must not resign as long as a state commission of inquiry has not been convened. We cannot permit the anomaly in which Israel's leaders wash their hands of the failure while the heads of the defense establishment admit their responsibility and resign. No situation could be more grotesque than this, in which the person who bears responsibility for the failure of October 7, the strengthening of Hamas, the destruction of the police and the abandonment of the hostages and the residents of the north will appoint the heads of the defense establishment.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant must fight for his job. Public opinion would be with him. The Nissim Vaturis and Shlomo Karhis of Likud, who accuse Gallant of defeatism, are eating from the hand of a cult leader from whom all of the party's prior leaders fled for their lives.
Gideon Sa'ar messed everything up. He almost had Israelis convinced that his resignation from the government in March was over a matter of principle, and since then he appeared from time to time in order to denounce Netanyahu. But he has proved once more that no principle is sacred principle when you don't exist in the opinion polls.