Sycophantic WSJ 'Interview' With Netanyahu Spells Disaster for Israel's Hostages in Gaza - Israel News - Haaretz.com
In the 14 months that have passed since the October 7 attack, Benjamin Netanyahu has largely refused to give any interviews to the Israeli media. The only exceptions were two appearances on Channel 14 – his own televised Pravda – where admiring loyalists gushed over him and were on the verge of giving him an on-air massage. Questions about his responsibility for the deep failures of that day, which led to the death of some 1,200 Israelis, weren't presented.
But even those two softball interviews were tough and demanding in comparison to the text published over the weekend on the Wall Street Journal's opinion page.
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This was presented as an interview with the prime minister ("Benjamin Netanyahu: The Inside Story of Israel's Victory"). In essence, however, it was a one-sided monologue with a few generous assists from the opinion editor to turn it into a coherent article. If the Channel 14 interviews were like hour-long, soothing treatments for Netanyahu, the WSJ text can be compared to a full day at the spa.
The Wall Street Journal has some of the best reporters in the world and has broken many important scoops during the course of the Israel-Gaza war. But this interview, notably, wasn't conducted by any of those reporters. We can only imagine the questions they might have asked Netanyahu if given the opportunity – questions that were painfully absent from the finished article.
A balloon with an image of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, during Saturday's protest in Tel Aviv.Credit: Kai Pfaffenbach/Reuters
Take, for example, this paragraph, which comes after a pompous and victorious statement by Netanyahu about his insistence on sending the Israeli military into Rafah despite concerns raised by the United States and other allies: "In Rafah, Israel cut off Hamas's supply route and later killed [Yayha] Sinwar, its chief. The Biden administration imposed a de facto arms embargo on Israel, delaying weapons shipments."
Besides the fact that it is not at all clear there was a "de facto arms embargo," something else happened in Rafah as well – something Netanyahu obviously chose to omit but that the WSJ should have mentioned: Israeli hostages who had been held there by Hamas were shot to death in August after their captors heard Israeli forces approaching and feared a rescue operation was underway.
One of those hostages was Hersh Goldberg-Polin, an American-Israeli citizen. His name isn't mentioned in the WSJ text. Nor is the name of any other hostage. The number of hostages taken by Hamas on October 7 is missing from the piece, as is the number of those still held in Gaza.
This could all be the result of an unfortunate coincidence, of course. But the article is a celebration of Netanyahu's "total victory" narrative – and the hostages and their families are impairing that account by refusing to join the party.
Israelis calling for the release of the hostages, in Tel Aviv on Saturday.Credit: Ohad Zwigenberg/AP
Their story, and Israel's failure to return them after 14-plus months of war, serves as a constant reminder of everything Netanyahu has been trying to erase from Israeli public memory. Instead of challenging him about it, the WSJ opinion page chose to play along.
There was also no discussion of his decades-long policy of strengthening Hamas, and his well-documented choice of seeing Hamas as a pragmatic partner, preferable to the Palestinian Authority. One of the hostages murdered alongside Goldberg-Polin was Ori Danino, whose father told Netanyahu in September: "With all due respect, sir, they were murdered in tunnels that you built ... the cement and dollars entered on your watch." A similar question wasn't presented to Netanyahu during the interview, so we'll never know how he might have responded.
The most disturbing part of Netanyahu's monologue, however, came at the very end when he briefly discussed the nuisance of the hostages still being held in Gaza. He declared that he won't agree to a deal that includes the end of the war in return for the release of all hostages. Instead, the prime minister explained, he's striving for a partial, short-term deal that will include the release of some hostages, but not all, and then a return to fighting with Hamas.
Einav Zangauker, the mother of 25-year-old Matan – one of the 100 hostages still held in Gaza – called this declaration a death sentence for all those who won't be included in any short-term deal. This may turn out to be true, but there's an even worse possibility: That by making this statement, Netanyahu will scuttle the negotiations entirely.
Einav Zangauker, left, mother of Israeli hostage Matan Zangauker, and his partner, Ilana Gritzewsky, protesting in Tel Aviv earlier this month.Credit: Mahmoud Illean/AP
Hamas' main objective in the negotiations is to secure an end to the war. Netanyahu's aim is to continue it, because he knows the Israeli public isn't as forgiving as the WSJ opinion page. Once the war ends, there will be growing pressure on his government to call a general election and to establish a state commission of inquiry into the October 7 failures.
Netanyahu would rather avoid all of that. In addition, he fears that a deal to end the war and return all of the hostages will cause the far-right elements of his ruling coalition to quit and leave him short of a majority in the Knesset.
The grim result is that my neighbors Tsachi Idan and Omri Miran, both fathers who were abducted in front of their young children 14 months ago, remain in some dark tunnel in Gaza, and even the little dose of optimism their families had over the past two weeks regarding a potential hostage deal is now slipping away.