The war within the war: the witch-hunt against Netanyahu, Part 2

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opened his 4 September, second press conference thus:

Israel is experiencing days of horror, sorrow and rage. A week ago, we experienced such horror. Yesterday I visited in Ashkelon. The family of one of the hostages murdered in cold blood. A day earlier, I spoke to several of the families of these murdered hostages. It tears your heart out. I said to them that I'm sorry. I apologise that we, we didn't get them out. We worked so hard to get them. We were close, but we didn't and they changed the torment from our families worried about their loved ones, to families grieving for their fallen beloved. That sentiment I know, because I belong to that family. But it's a horror.

During questions, a Sky News reporter had the gall to get the Prime Minister to put back on screen the map of Israel highlighting the distance from Gaza to various Israeli cities, and proceeded to ask:

You said at the beginning of your speech that Hamas and others in the Middle East want to wipe Israel off the map. You have literally wiped the West Bank off that map. Is that official policy now, that the West Bank doesn't exist?

Netanyahu, barely concealing his irritation, rejoined:

The Dead Sea it's not shown in the map. I didn't show the Jordan River. I didn't show the Sea of Galilee. I was talking about Gaza. There is a whole issue of how to achieve peace between us and the Palestinians in Judea and Samaria. That's another press conference. I'd be happy to do it to wipe out some of the misconceptions and the slanders and lies that are directed at us.

Your hatred for Jews and Israel has to be genuine for you to not be moved by a lifelong fighter speaking of his people's anguish in a breaking voice and on the verge of tears, but unmoved this pack of wolves remained. To borrow the infamous words of apartheid South Africa's Minister of Justice, Police and Prisons, Jimmy Kruger, after black leader Steve Biko was beaten to death in police custody in September 1977: it left them cold.

Netanyahu's audience was not journalists, but hacks, propagandists and witch-hunters. On such an audience the Prime Minister lavished his hasbara:

We enabled now massive vaccination of polio. We want 90% of the people of Gaza vaccinated. I think 200,000 were vaccinated today. We've put in a million tons of food, a million tons of aid, 700,000 tons of food. That's unheard of. For Hamas, every civilian death is a strategy; for us it's a tragedy...

and so on and on. The world heard such talk countless times and it makes not a blind bit of difference. Israelis simply refuse to believe that they do not understand people who are not Jews. My friend, Rafael Castro, wrote a powerful essay on just this obstinacy. To paraphrase Jonathan Swift, you cannot be reasoned out of something you have not been reasoned into, no matter how accurate the data, animated the gestures or passionate the voice. When they bombarded Netanyahu with provocative questions, they already knew what answers they would elicit.

In The Ethics of the Iron Wall of 1923, Ze'ev Jabotinsky addressed himself directly to a future Benjamin Netanyahu:

We all demand that there should be an iron wall. Yet we keep spoiling our own case, by talking about "agreement" which means telling the Mandatory Government that the important thing is not the iron wall, but discussions. Empty rhetoric of this kind is dangerous. And that is why it is not only a pleasure but a duty to discredit it and to demonstrate that it is both fantastic and dishonest. (My emphasis)

What did Jabotinsky mean by "the iron wall" in this context? He meant, quite simply, "not [being] amenable to any Arab pressure." If a non-Arab power champions the interests of the Arabs, then, naturally, the iron wall sets itself against such pressure, too.

Since 1973, especially since 7 October and particularly since the IDF laid siege to Rafah, Prime Minister Netanyahu has provided an object lesson in the consequences of ignoring Jabotinsky. In Part 1, though critical in places, the thrust has been to support Benjamin Netanyahu against the evil forces within Israel that are arrayed against him. But it would not be fair to either the Prime Minister, Israel, or my readers to simply leave it at that.

On 1 September 2024, Prime Minister Netanyahu gave a press conference to the Israeli media (discussed in Part 1). Three days later, Netanyahu gave essentially the same press conference to the international media. While both sets of media were hostile, the Israeli media were also infantile. Israeli social critic Yishai Fleischer commented on Netanyahu's second press conference, "[again] to explain his position on why Israel should continue the fight in Gaza and how the presence of the IDF in the Philadelphi Corridor is a must."

Gadi Taub wants Israel to permanently hold the Philadelphi Corridor, as well as the Netzarim Corridor. He understands the strategic political significance of the Gaza Strip and openly talks of the need to annex, to begin with, the northern third of the territory, which includes Gaza City, the rest militarily occupied until annexed. For Taub, the Israel-Gaza War is not merely an Israel-Hamas issue. He is perhaps unique among Israelis in seeing the imperative of Israel annexing what her enemies call "Muslim land", in this case Gaza, Judea and Samaria and southern Lebanon, and understands why this is imperative. Jabotinsky insisted that all of Eretz Israel be restored to the Jews, not for irredentist reasons, but as a matter of practical security.

Most Israelis balk at annexation, finding the idea immoral, unthinkable, as if it offends against some partition agreement. They will not even pray on their own Temple Mount, the heart of their religion and eternal capital, let alone take it. "Next year in Jerusalem" means nothing if not having the Temple Mount, as they have hoped for centuries. It is a dream that remains unfulfilled, not because of Arabs, but because of Jews. They do not understand that every time a Muslim prays on Temple Mount, he negates Israeli sovereignty over that holiest of Jewish places, for his prayer on Temple Mount is an act of war, because they do not appreciate the mind of an enemy that loves death more than he loves life. Loss of what Allah has bequeathed him, the world, especially the part his jihad had already conquered, is the greatest loss, loss of Islam itself being inconceivable.

To most Jews, these people just got carried away by a crazy slogan. Such Jews, Yishai Fleischer included, do not take Arab Muslims seriously. Gadi Taub and Mordechai Kedar are exceptions. Most policy-makers, especially military strategists, are a very long way from grasping that the prospect of death does not deter such an enemy; on the contrary, it animates him. What turns his life into living death is to be responsible for loss of "Muslim land". This they fear as the ultimate humiliation. Whether Israel annexes all of Gaza at once, or just the Philadelphi and Netzarim Corridors for now, Hamas will suffer a humiliation and a crippling defeat, because for them, humiliation signifies defeat.

Netanyahu does not understand this. By his own admission, he opposed the evacuation of the Philadelphi Corridor in 2005 for security reasons, implying that he did not oppose the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Gaza, and the handover of the territory to Muslims. Note that Netanyahu says nothing about Jewish return to Gaza. One has to listen to Netanyahu the way one listens to a Muslim, because it is all taqiyya. Netanyahu talks about the evacuated communities of Northern Israel returning home. How is that supposed to work, exactly, when his negotiators are demanding Hezbollah withdraws to 10Km from the border, after the terrorist organisation has been sitting pretty right on the border since August 2006 in violation of UNSC Resolution 1701 that confined it to north of the Litani river, 25Km from the border? Israel is rewarding Islamic terrorists for ignoring UN resolutions, while Israel imposes restrictions on herself that do not exist in law!

The conflicts with the terrorist armies surrounding Israel are still characterised as as "border disputes" by the international community, a characterisation that Israel acquiesces in. The depth of this ignorance extends even to renowned Islam critic Daniel Greenfield, according to whom, "Hezbollah will claim any territory it gets and attack anyway because that is what Islamic terrorists do." While it is true that Islamic terrorists claim any territory they can get and keep attacking anyway, it is not true that they do it because they do it. One expects better of Greenfield. They do it because it is an Islamic imperative that they restore to Islam all lands formerly ruled by Muslims. When the Houthis fire missiles at Israel, there is no prospect whatsoever of their getting their hands on a single inch of Israel. They are simply helping to drive the Jews out of "Muslim land". When Muslims drive non-Muslims out of a Sharia-targeted neighbourhood France, Germany or the UK, build a mosque in Australia or buy a commercial property right next to a pig farm in Texas, they are doing exactly the same as Hezbollah and Hamas: physically claiming or reclaiming the world for Islam, because it is all theirs.

When 1701 was adopted, it was guaranteed to fail because an Israeli diplomat, Tal Becker, desperate to find a "diplomatic exit" from the war, had proposed it. In what might go down as the understatement of the century, Becker described the Resolution as "far from perfect." Hezbollah knew beforehand that no one was going to enforce 1701, as it was a defeat for Israel engineered by Israel. Negotiation is how Israeli leaders sell capitulation to their citizens. Netanyahu is no different.

At the end of Prime Minister Netanyahu's 1 September press conference, a journalist from Le Monde asked the Prime Minister what, for him, defines victory over Hamas. Netanyahu replied:

I would define the end of the war in Gaza when Hamas no longer rules Gaza. We throw them out. I would define the end of the war in World War II when the Nazis no longer ruled Germany. To do that you need to have a military victory. You have to have also the political victory to destroy their governance. We're out to destroy the military capabilities of Hamas and the governing capabilities of Hamas, and we're well on our way to achieving both. That is total victory.

This exchange came at the end of a highly-strained press conference focussed on the captives and the Philadelphi Corridor. Yet, the Prime Minister is quite wrong on two counts. Firstly, the end of WWII required, in addition to the destruction of Nazi military and governance capabilities, also the destruction of its economic capabilities as well as, most importantly, the foreclosure of any possibility of ideological revival. The former two, granted, were prerequisites for the latter two, but it is the latter two, economic and ideological destruction, that finished off both Nazi Germany and Kokka-Shinto Japan for good.

Ideological perpetuation consists in each indoctrinated generation being able to indoctrinate the next, thereby precluding doubt from cradle to grave. Once this cycle is established, it takes at least two complete generations to break. In Nazi Germany, this was relatively easily accomplished, because there had not been sufficient time to raise a complete generation of Nazis, people who would be unable to conceive of anything but Nazism. Japan had more than half-a-century's worth of complete generations whose stamp was on every aspect of society. Eradication of the ideology would require somewhat more drastic measures. The people surrounding Israel and who can readily be turned to seeking death in the killing of Jews, have had fourteen centuries of such complete generations. It does not seem as if Prime Minister Netanyahu knows what he is up against.

Secondly, how Israel defines victory is irrelevant. Never mind what we think of as victory. What matters is what they, i.e., Hamas, Palestinians, Arab Muslims, think is victory, and hence, defeat. They determine what we have to do to bring about their defeat, and so our victory. No matter what grandiose declarations we make on the decks of ships, if they do not recognise that they have been defeated, then they will remain at war and they will keep fighting, even if they are only able to attack again in a thousand years. We still pay for the mistake of the Crusades in only defeating the Muslims on Christian, rather than Muslim terms. As far as the Muslims are concerned, they were never defeated, and they are fighting the Crusaders to this very day.

During the press conference to the international media, Netanyahu said:

It's clear. Gaza must be demilitarised and it can only be demilitarised if the Philadelphi Corridor remains under firm control and is not a supply line for armaments and for terror equipment.

More important than what was said here is what was not said. Yishai Fleischer picked up on it.

What he's not willing to say ...is that the only way to really take care of this place, is by Israel actually governing Gaza. If we don't govern it, then the jihadists will. So he's saying, we have to govern the Philadelphi Corridor, because that's the porous entrance way of all the armament, the money for the Hamas and all that. That makes sense. But what about the rest of it? You want that whole society to be suckled on the milk of anti-Semitism? No! We have to control that small piece of land within our small piece of land. (My emphasis)

There is another interpretation to "Gaza must be demilitarised." It is that the IDF will confine itself to only the Philadelphi Corridor, leaving a sanitised Gaza with a nominally disarmed Hamas, its ideology perfectly intact, and still pilling the strings. Keep in mind that everyone in Gaza is Hamas, even if the are oppressed and dissatisfied with the services. That's the Muslim way. Fleischer is very close to this interpretation, when he asks, "You want that whole society to be suckled on the milk of anti-Semitism?" but he will not get there, because he refuses to countenance the possibility that Muslims think differently.

It is easy to put Netanyahu's reticence down to a politician's economy of words. He clearly does know what he is not saying and he is not saying it for clear reasons. Whether one agrees with him is another matter. The need for these corridors, Phileadelphi and Netzarim, becomes considerably stronger when one looks beyond their immediate military significance. Former IDF spokesperson, Lt. Col. (Ret.) Jonathan Conricus is more forthcoming than the Prime Minister. The slippery diction of the politician, makes way for the narrow focus of the military technocrat:

It doesn't matter so much if (sic - whether) you are in Philadelphia, if you go back, if you leave it, if you can return. What matters is what are the military plans for when you are there. What are the engineering activities and what are the military activities? Because [just] sitting on top of Philadelphi Corridor is pretty useless. You can control the Rafah Crossing, which is important, but that is not where the bulk of weapons came in.

This much Netanyahu knows. The question is whether he is playing politics again. To elaborate as Conricus does below would simply pin him down too much.

What you need to do is a significant engineering operation where you basically have to dig a big canal or a tunnel across approximately 14km say from the southern part of the Gaza Strip all the way up to the ocean and do it deep enough, let's say 50-60m deep. But unless Israel has intentions and plans and military engineering that is tasked to do that, then sitting on top of Philadelphi isn't really the important topic.

If the annexation and dissolution of Gaza is to proceed in stages, then the annexation of Northern Gaza, the Philadelphi and Netzarim Corridors, together with the digging of a Philadelphi canal are but stage one. Gadi Taub envisages the transformation of the local culture through expunging jihad indoctrination from the education system and shutting down mosques that preach hatred and violence. I'm afraid this is a far more intractable problem than Taub anticipates. It requires several other interventions additionally, and will take more than two generations to accomplish. But the sooner it begins, even in a limited way, the better.

Part 3/...

Picture credits:

Ehabich at English Wikipedia, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5679382

Obaida alnakhala - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=72617966

Israel Defense Forces

Screenshot from "We Went to GAZA", The Israel Guys, YouTube, 4 Sept 2024 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3fUyYEveXw