After 700 Days of War, Israel Is in the Hands of an Evil and Indifferent Government - Israel News - Haaretz.com
The evening before the protests near the prime minister's residence in Jerusalem were due to get underway, Benjamin Netanyahu pulled an old-new trick from his well-worn bag: "A government commission of inquiry, with the powers of a state committee of inquiry." The timing, of course, was no coincidence. It was designed to assuage the growing anger of the hostage and bereaved families and the great majority of the public who support the second option, while at the same time giving the media non-protest news to cover.
The motive behind his calling for a hybrid panel is no less transparent. He wants to avoid a successor government forming a state commission of inquiry that the Supreme Court president would chair, by law.
Netanyahu pointed to as precedent the Winograd committee, which investigated the events of the Second Lebanon War (events, not "failures," as Channel 12 News noted). It is hard to imagine him testifying before any committee that isn't manned by the panel of Channel 14's "The Patriots," so the proposal is unlikely to merit a headline beyond the first day. Ehud Olmert, the prime minister during Second Lebanon, feared a state commission, so he opted for a government commission.
But he wasn't trying to evade responsibility; otherwise he would not have appointed Eliyahu Winograd, a former Jerusalem District Court judge, to head it.
Any rookie lawyer (and Olmert was surrounded by first-rate lawyers) knew who Winograd was. The most rigorous, thorough, stern-minded, honest-as-nails judge there was, an example and role model for his colleagues. He was not someone who would make assumptions. So did the composition of the committee – legal scholar Ruth Gavison, retired generals Chaim Nadel and Menachem Einan, and political science professor Yehezkel Dror – the crème de la crème. When Netanyahu appoints a committee at anything close to that standard, we will be happy to report it. One thing we can be sure of: Whoever is named to it will have to receive Sara's stamp of approval.
But there's no guarantee of this. Consider State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman, the prime minister's peon, who forgot to whom he owed his high position and wrote an important and incisive report on the government's disgraceful post-October 7 performance. The response was brutal: "The comptroller's report deals with footnotes that are devoid of real importance." However, it unwittingly revealed the true face of the critic himself, who referred to the suffering of the hundreds of thousands of citizens cited by Englman as a "footnote." The report confirmed what we already knew, namely that if it weren't for the vilified Brothers in Arms organization and many other volunteers who filled the vacuum left by the government, the situation would have been much worse.
Friday marks 700 days of the war that began as a justified response to a terrible act and then morphed into a political-and-personal war of deception. It has been 23 months, 900 dead, thousands of wounded and disabled and 20 hostages who remain chained and tortured in Gaza tunnels. An evil government whose nature is alien to human and Jewish values is prosecuting the war. It is racing like a madman to conquer Gaza at a terrible price in blood, while neglecting and endangering those for whose sake soldiers are there.
A person shields themself from a water canon as people take part in a protest demanding the immediate release of all hostages held by Hamas and calling for the end of the war in the Gaza Strip, in Jerusalem, Wednesday, Sept. 3, 2025.Credit: Leo Correa,AP
Meanwhile, a car in Jerusalem went up in flames after a protester allegedly lit a trash can next to it. "Terror!" shouted the same cabinet ministers who would never utter a single derogatory word about the hundreds of Jewish terrorists in the settlements who routinely set fire to Palestinian cars and homes (or the Shin Bet headquarters in Binyamin). "Fascist phalanxes!" Netanyahu growled in a video he put online. In psychology, this is called projection. After all, there is no more appropriate description for his government than a fascist phalanx.
He revealed his true self in this video – all the hatred for the hostage families and for the hundreds of thousands of good citizens who demonstrate weekly across the country. Again the whiny, pathetic outbursts – "They are threatening to murder me, the prime minister," "They said they would surround my house, the prime minister's house, with a ring of fire," "They almost burned a security guard to death near my house."
Oy oy oy.
And how he waxed poetically about the burned-out car of the reservist, Capt. Yoav Bar-Shai (whose repair costs were more than covered by a crowd-funding campaign that protest activists launched). The man who, without batting an eyelid, sends tens of thousands of regular and reserve soldiers to risk their lives, breaks down in grief at the sight of a burned-out car, and takes the opportunity to do what he knows best – incite and slander.
Bar-Shai is the grandson of Yaakov Neeman. The hypocritical and tendentious compliments that were showered upon him didn't stop him from visiting the protest tent, taking a photo with Hagai and Anat Angrest and with Vicky Cohen, and to express his support for their fight.
World casino
Next month will mark two years since the greatest political and security disaster in the history of Zionism. The hostages who remain in Gaza, it appears, won't get back before that. Some of those who counted among the living will probably have moved by then to the blackest of black columns. The prime minister will pretend to be pained, but in his heart, there will be joy and satisfaction – he has survived politically for two years. Who would have believed it? "We must continue to lead," he said at a cabinet meeting this week – to lead, not to bring back the hostages.
Displaced Palestinians fleeing from northern Gaza Strip move with their belongings along the Sea Road, in central Gaza, Thursday, Sept. 4, 2025.Credit: Jehad Alshrafi,AP
Survival, staying in power, has become a psychosis with him. He is not only gambling on human lives but on Israel's strategic standing in the world. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich's talk about annexation and sovereignty is angering Egypt and Jordan, but the prime minister says nothing. The Abraham Accords with the United Arab Emirates are in danger, but the prime minister says nothing. Europe, we lost a long time ago. When countries take steps against us, he reprimands them. "The Belgian prime minister is weak," he said this week. Once, he used that fascist slogan to describe himself as "a strong leader for a strong nation." The problem is that while Netanyahu gets stronger, the nation is getting weaker. The main thing is that we have Fiji and Zambia on our side.
Israel's standing in U.S. public opinion and in Congress (as U.S. President Donald Trump acknowledged), and even in the Republican party, is no less troubling. Everything that Mr. Statesman touches breaks down, is destroyed. Like a drunken D-9 driver, he is careening ahead on a destructive path, even destroying his own handiwork. Anything that will give him another week or two in power is valid.
Netanyahu is a high-stakes gambler who uses the credit line of others. He gambles with the public's money, their lives and their futures. When they finally realized that he had tapped his international credit, he bet all the chips he had left on Trump. Since then, he has been working with him while trying to lead him on. Since the egotistical and megalomaniac president has no filters, we can see at any given time how Netanyahu is manipulating him, mainly through his deal-busting envoy, Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer.
Team Israel Premier-Tech's Italian rider Marco Frigo (C) rides next to pro-Palestinian demonstrators at the start of the 12th stage of the Vuelta a Espana, on September 4, 2025.Credit: AFP/ANDER GILLENEA
One of these concerns the number of live hostages. Like the "fewer" remarks made by Sara Netanyahu, the media-obsessed president occasionally echoes such estimates before the cameras. The other is his fanning sentiments of revenge against Hamas, while downplaying the issue of the hostages as the top priority. Since the release of American Israeli Idan Alexander, it seems the president no longer cares about those still in Gaza.
Trump wasn't in office during the previous rounds of "defeating Hamas" or "total victory." Go explain to him that before the occupation of Gaza City, we had the Morag and Philadelphi corridors, Rafah, etc. The question is why he isn't pressuring the prime minister to do the only thing expected of him – to launch a diplomatic effort to create an alternative to Hamas.
Perhaps Netanyahu, who is much more sophisticated than Trump, is still cultivating the "Gaza Riviera" delusion, talking enticingly about American business prospects – not to mention Trump's.
Apart from Trump, before whom he prostrates himself, cowers and declares eternal loyalty, nothing touches Netanyahu. Not the rising anger against Israelis and Jews all over the globe; not the growing boycotts and sanctions, which are already seriously harming us economically and academically; not the desire of his own people to end the war, nor that of the reservists being called up this week to fight for nothing. It is all in the name of a cynical and bloodthirsty government, headed by an empty vessel.
An Israeli soldier directs a tank near the border with Gaza, in Israel September 4, 2025.Credit: Amir Cohen/ REUTERS
Sane Israelis who want their normal lives back have very little to hope for. They look around and find little to cling to before the flood of madness sweeps us all away for good. Their hopes lie with those defending the rule of law, primarily the attorney general, the High Court of Justice and the chief of staff. The latter curses the cabinet that appointed him and tries to keep his head, while protecting his post and his values as best he can.
The optimists hope that someday, preferably soon, Trump will also come to his senses. This will only happen when he realizes that the cumulative damage Netanyahu is causing him outweighs the benefit. The next round in Gaza, with or without an assault on Gaza City, is supposed to be the last in the current tango between the two leaders. Netanyahu, the Ofer Maximov of politicians, is betting all his chips in the Trump casino.