The war within the war: the witch-hunt against Netanyahu, Part 1

Editorial note: For this two-part essay, I have relied especially strongly on the work of Dr Gadi Taub and Michael Doran on their YouTube channel Israel Update.

The Israel Defense Forces are fighting two wars: it's soldiers and their immediate commanders are fighting Arab Muslims in Gaza, Lebanon and Judea and Samaria; while it's top brass, together with the security establishment, are fighting the government of Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israelis who elected him and the State of Israel. Thus has it been since well before the government was elected to office in November 2022.

The witch-hunt against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is running at fever-pitch, rapidly approaching Ehud Barak levels of hysteria. For months now, the security establishment, the media, left-wing politicians, academics and the never-Bibi electorate in general have been milking the issue of Israelis still in Palestinian captivity for all the political advantage they can get. Hamas's murder of six captives while leaving one alive for the IDF to rescue was linked to Netanyahu's refusal to hand the recently-taken, strategically-critical Philadelphi Corridor back to Hamas, providing the latest sick twist in the Left's exertions to destroy the elected Prime Minister.

Under the headline, "Netanyahu tells ministers he prioritizes Philadelphi over hostages, horrifying Gallant," Times of Israel, reporting on the explosive 29 August Cabinet meeting that descended into a shouting match between the Prime Minister and the Minister of Defense, quoted the The Hostage and Missing Families Forum as saying:

Every citizen should know that if they are to be kidnapped from their bed in their pajamas on a Saturday morning, their Prime Minister will do everything to keep his seat, even at the cost of leaving them to die in the Hamas tunnels in Gaza. (My emphasis)

This is a revealing choice of words, since there is neither an election, nor any vote of no confidence, under discussion. So where would this threat to the Prime Minister's seat that the Families Forum refers to be coming from? Two weeks ago, Dr Gadi Taub threw some light on this mystery:

Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant has been briefing journalists "off the record" saying, in direct contradiction to Netanyahu's position, that there is no need to insist on an Israeli military presence in the Philadelphi Corridor. The briefings of Gallant have been leaked and are widely reported in the Israeli press. In parallel with Gallant, IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi has been saying more or less the same thing, but on the record. That's the contrast: he said it to journalists. Sources in the Israeli delegation to [negotiations with Hamas in] Cairo have been leaking to journalists a complaint that, as negotiators, they have not been given enough room to manoeuvre regarding the Philadelphi Corridor. In other words, Netanyahu hasn't allowed them to accept Hamas's position.

To quote the Prime Minister directly:

The axis of evil needs the Philadelphi Corridor and for the same reason we must have control over the Philadelphi Corridor. Hamas insists for exactly this reason that we won't be there and it's exactly for this reason that I insist that we do stay there.

At the cabinet meeting a week later, the security establishment's war against Netanyahu continued with their psychological manipulation of the Israeli public through their "leaks" to the media. According to TOI:

Gallant and the security chiefs have repeatedly pushed Netanyahu for more compromise in the negotiations, particularly regarding the Philadelphi Corridor, fearing that the Premier’s hardline positions are scuttling a deal.

Times of Israel is quite wrong to talk of Yoav Gallant "fearing that the Premier’s hardline positions are scuttling a deal." Gallant has no interest in a deal per se. He fears his best chance of destroying Benjamin Netanyahu before the upcoming US elections is slipping away. Times of Israel knows this, of course. The Israeli Left are not the only people panicking. Netanyahu revealed:

The first crack came when we went into Rafah and took over the Philadelphi Corridor. When we took over the passage, that’s when they [Hamas] started talking differently.

Well, not exactly. Hamas first "started talking differently" as soon as Netanyahu started complying with US demands that Israel supplies aid to Hamas. Acceding to this preposterous demand threatened to turn the population against the IDF, with open Gush Katif-style confrontations at the Kerem Shalom Crossing, yet Netanyahu continued to fret over a diplomatic onslaught on Israel that had a momentum quite of its own anyway, regardless of what Israel did or did not do. Israel Today reports on Maj.-Gen. (ret.) Giora Eiland's Plan to Defeat Hamas, published today.

Eiland [explained] that the successful hostage deal in November of last year was made possible by the fact that Israel was allowing a mere two trucks of aid into Gaza every day until that point. One of Hamas’s chief demands in those negotiations was to increase the number of daily aid truck deliveries to 200.

With aid now flowing into Gaza in incredible quantities, Hamas is no longer in any rush to make a deal.

I look at Eiland's plan more closely, along with remarks by Jonathan Conricus, in Part 2. This smoking gun, however, has been in Netanyahu's hand for almost a year, yet it does not interest Yoav Gallant, because it does not help him get rid of the Prime Minister. Instead, he tried objecting to a series of maps that the Prime Minister had drawn up for IDF control of the Philadelphi Corridor. By this point, the Israeli Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant, effectively becomes the Palestinian Military Attaché to Israel. He told Ministers, “The significance of this is that Hamas won’t agree to it, so there won’t be an agreement and there won’t be any hostages released.” Gallant claimed the Prime Minister, the head of government and supposedly Gallant's boss, "had imposed his position on the security establishment."

Leaving aside the outrageous disrespect of this outburst, most revealing is Gallant's complaint that, "You have been running the negotiations by yourself ever since the War Cabinet disbanded. We learn of decisions only after the fact." Back in June, Gallant's co-conspirators, Gadi Eisenkot and Benny Gantz, resigned from the War Cabinet because they could not get Netanyahu to capitulate to the Americans who were demanding he hand Gaza to the Palestinians so they may form a state. Their resignations precipitated the Prime Minister's disbanding of the War Cabinet.[1] Now Gallant discovers his pernicious influence on events even further diminished.

Netanyahu insisted Ministers vote on the maps right there and then, but Gallant's other co-conspirator, IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, did his bit for the cause, objecting that:

The IDF will know how to enter and return to the Philadelphi Corridor at the end of the first six weeks of the ceasefire. There are enough constraints in the talks, you don’t need to add another.

This emboldened David Barnea, Director of Mossad and head of the Israeli negotiating team, to pipe up, "There is no logic to this vote right now. In any case, the negotiations are currently focused on (other issues) and not the Philadelphi Corridor."

Hamas's umbilical cord passes directly under the Philadelphi Corridor.[3] You can tell who wants Hamas to survive by who objected to, firstly, the IDF taking the Gaza border town of Rafah, and secondly, Israel seizing[2] the Philadelphi Corridor: the Biden administration, ICC Prosecutor Karim Ahmad Khan, corrupt Egyptian officials, Qatar, the ICJ, the Israeli security establishment and, of course, Hamas.

In desperation, Yoav Gallant resorted to playing the hostages card:

[Israel faces] two possibilities — either keeping the IDF deployed on the Philadelphi Corridor or bringing home the hostages — you are deciding to stay on the Philadelphi Corridor. Does this seem logical to you? ...There are living (hostages) there! ...The prime minister can indeed make all the decisions, and he can also decide to have all the hostages killed.

On the Left's psychological war against Israel, we may also draw on Gadi Taub, who observes:

There's always a faction within the government that is angling towards the American position which is leaning towards Hamas. We saw Gadi Eisenkot and Benny Gantz try to do it from within the [War] Cabinet. They then threatened and finally left the Cabinet in protest, because the Netanyahu government was not willing to accommodate these views. Now Gallant, a Minister of Security [Minister of Defense], has assumed the same position. He was probably on the same page with them when they were in the government, but they are now deliberately leaking this to the press in the midst of negotiations. (My emphasis)

The security establishment is briefing an enemy with whom their country is at war. I call this treason. The head of the Israeli government, however, pleads with these traitors, "We must stand united as one," as if the country is in a state of peace. What makes Netanyahu think that they would acquiesce in his plea? How far would Benny Gantz, Yair Lapid, Gadi Eisenkot, Yoav Gallant, Herzi Halevi and the rest of that poisonous cabal have to go before anyone in Israel calls them traitors, actually uses that word? It is possible that this is already the case; I do not have access to Hebrew sources. Nonetheless, I am put in mind of the Dialogue between Krishna and Arjuna, as the latter grappled with the war he was about to launch against his own blood. Clearly, the security establishment regards its services to the perpetrators of 7 October as more important than allegiance to their own state, support of their Prime Minister in war, or the blood of their fellow citizens. I cannot help drawing comparisons with Abraham Lincoln confronted with "a most efficient corps of spies, informers, supplyers, and aiders and abettors," abusing their freedoms and rights for the benefit of an enemy to whom such freedoms and rights were anathema. It is a critical job that someone has to do, and it is not lost on me that throughout this crisis, the Prime Minister has made a point of marginalising his Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir. Even Gadi Taub, insightful and critical as he is, does not approach this question (again, perhaps he has done so in Hebrew):

This is not something marginal (sic - trivial). You have a Minister of Security [i.e., Minister of Defense, AP] who is undermining the Israeli position by also hinting to Hamas that there are people in the government who are willing to entertain their views. Hamas being knowledgeable about Israeli politics, as they are, have now put out statements saying that what is now holding back the deal is Netanyahu's recalcitrance. So they're playing into the game in Israel and basically supporting the Kaplan Left, because Secretary Blinken directly blamed Hamas. He said Israel has accepted the bridging offer that the United States made and now Hamas should do too.

The Left's target, of course, is not Hamas, but Netanyahu:

Then the whole chorus in the Israeli press immediately says Netanyahu is putting stumbling blocks in the way of the deal and journalist Ben Caspit has audaciously put on his Telegram channel a picture of the six returned bodies of the murdered hostages with the official Israeli symbol of mourning, a candle with "Yitzkor" and under it directly blaming Netanyahu for their deaths. So the press in Israel and Hezbollah are trying to say that the reason the hostages are not back is Netanyahu and some are saying that the reason some hostages are dead is Netanyahu's fault. However, the public isn't buying that line at all. (My emphasis)

What, exactly, one has to wonder, stops Netanyahu from simply sacking Gallant? Mostly interestingly, during last week's Cabinet row, Gallant finally said to the Prime Minister, “If [Hamas leader Yahya] Sinwar presents you with the dilemma: either you leave Philadelphi, or you return the hostages, what do you do?” Netanyahu replied, “I stay on the Philadelphi. Only resolute negotiations will force [Sinwar] to fold,” which promptly morphed into the disgraceful Times of Israel headline quoted above. More interesting than Netanyahu's response, though, was Gallant's challenge. Yoav Gallant had linked the return of the captives to a Netanyahu red line. It was not a smart move, but an even dumber move was soon to follow. Jewish News Syndicate (JNS) reports on 1 September:

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich shot back at Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Sunday after the latter called for a retreat from the Philadelphi Corridor, a move that would entail a reversal of a decision the Security Cabinet took in an 8-1 vote on Thursday.

At the Prime Minister's press conference the next day, the media did not disappoint. Journalist after journalist beat the same drum. With the nation still reeling from Hamas's spiteful murder of six Israeli captives moments before their rescue, the Prime Minister said:

Over the past day I've spoken on the phone with several of their family members and while we were talking I was looking at the pictures, the images of these pure souls, and my heart, the heart of this entire nation, was shattered to pieces. You can see the light that they emanate. You see the hope, the nobility. You hear their amazing life stories. And all this light got put out at once, all this purity got cut off by the brutal hand of monsters. I said to the families, and I reiterate this this evening, I ask for your forgiveness that we did not manage to bring them back still alive. We were close, but we didn't achieve it.

Benjamin Netanyahu proceeded to lay out in detail why Israel must never leave the Philadelphi Corridor. One can take issue with one or two of the details, but now is not the time. The Left continues to cast Netanyahu as the villain of the piece for refusing to give up Israel's most vital interests, which is the Hamas demand. "So there is a close fit between the Hamas position and the anti-Netanyahu protesters," says Gadi Taub. How close, exactly? Let us see.

“I cannot promise you that it's Sinwar, but definitely senior Hamas leaders. This is the original document in Arabic and this is its translation into Hebrew." This is how Benjamin Netanyahu introduced a handwritten Arabic document recovered from a Hamas tunnel a few months ago, and which he displayed to his audience. The Hamas document instructs that the dissemination of images and videos of captives be increased since they create psychological pressure. It urges continuing the claim that Netanyahu is responsible for everything that happened, and calls for undermining the Israeli narrative that the ground offensive serves the return of the captives. The document even speaks of the psychological pressure on Gallant, mentioning him by name.

"Word for word, that's Hamas's strategy," continued the Prime Minister. "They want to split us apart. They want to break us down. They are relying on an internal rift.” This is not only what the Israeli security establishment has been doing, but exactly how they have been doing it. The Israeli Left has been Hamas's most effective battalion.

Now the Israeli media immediately amplify and broadcast the security authorities' every word on the Philadelphi Corridor, including that the issue is "a bomb that Netanyahu planted in order to sabotage the deal."

The Israeli media assembled at the press conference, in any case, were on cue. During questions, first off the mark was Channel 13:

Prime Minister Netanyahu, all of the heads of the security establishment, the Chief of General Staff and the head of the Shin Bet said that it is possible to leave the Philadelphi Corridor in order to reach a hostage deal. You chose not to listen to them. After that difficult outcome of six hostages who were murdered in captivity, do you understand the magnitude of your mistake, and do you have some personal responsibility over this tragic outcome? I feel profound sorrow. I truly regret the fact that we couldn't bring them home. We were so close, but it didn't happen because of this decision.

It was as if this journalist had not heard a single word Netanyahu had just said. In the US, they call the equivalent mindset 'Trump Derangement Syndrome'. Of this what we may call "Bibi Derangement Syndrome", Gadi Taub explains:

[A] trap that had been laid for some politicians and pundits where right-wing pundits asked them in interviews: what if you can get a hostage deal in return for Netanyahu staying in power? That completely paralyses them. So the idea is to take Netanyahu down; it's not the hostage deal.

There has been much talk of the awakening of the Israeli people after the Simchat Torah massacre. For the Israeli Left, Jews shorn of illusions is a time-bomb, but they remains deaf to its ticking. Taub again:

Israelis understand that this insistence on the Philadelphi Corridor is not some crazy demand that Netanyahu is putting forward in order to sabotage the deal. People in Israel are more savvy than that. They understand that on the other side of the issue, more and more security has-beens [insist] that we can do without the Philadelphi Corridor, and that it would be enough to have sensors there. Yeah, we know what sensors can do. We tried that until October 6 and up to October 6 it actually worked.[4]

Netanyahu's unwillingness to give up Israel's most vital interests gratifies the awakening public and exasperates the security establishment and the popular Left, but that is also "exactly why Hamas is angry. Their demand is that we would give up all that we have fought for in this war and also give up victory."

[The security establishment] want the hostages for sure—everybody wants the hostages back—but they think that we can end this war without a victory, because that will help topple the right-wing government and open the way for the solution they still believe in: the two-state solution. That's what I think is behind the hysterical, very silly campaign as if Netanyahu's insistence on anything in this negotiation is sabotage. Nothing short of complete surrender to [Yahya] Sinwar's demands would be considered a viable Netanyahu position.

The security establishment's attempts at riling up the Israeli population against the elected government is nothing short of an insurrection.

Finally, these was one sane voice from the floor of Netanyahu's press conference, that of a French journalist from Le Monde:

Mr Prime Minister, I was wondering, could you define what would signal the end of the war. You've been talking about the total victory that you are expecting, but what would be the factors that would signal this total victory? Would, for example, the elimination of Yahya Sinwar be one of them?

It made a refreshing change from the tedious obsessions of the Israeli Left. Netanyahu clearly appreciated hearing another adult in the room.

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.

It might not be as incisive an answer as some would like, e.g., he skirted Yahya Sinwar, but by the standards of what went before, it was more than enough. Netanyahu would not be Netanyahu if he did not seize the opportunity to stick it up the Israeli journalists.

But since you asked a question in English, I'll answer in English a question that I was asked in Hebrew. I was asked whether I'm not doing enough to the release of hostages. I want to set the record straight.

On April 27th Secretary of State [Antony] Blinken said that Israel made an extraordinarily generous offer for a hostage deal on May 31st. Israel agreed to a US-backed proposal. Hamas refused.

On August 16th Israel agreed to what the United States defined as a final bridging proposal, Hamas refused again.

On August 19th Secretary Blinken said Israel accepted the US proposal; now Hamas must do the same.

On August 28th, that's five days ago, five days ago, Deputy CIA Director said that Israel shows seriousness in the negotiations; now Hamas must show the same seriousness.

I want to ask you something: what has changed in the last five days? What has changed? One thing: these murderers executed six of our hostages.They shot them in the back of the head. That's what's changed.

And now, after this, we're asked to show seriousness? We're asked to make concessions? What message does this send to Hamas? It says kill more hostages, murder more hostages. You'll get more concessions. The pressure internationally must be directed at these killers, at Hamas, not at Israel.

We say, yes; they say, no. All the time. But they also murdered these people, and now we need maximum pressure on Hamas. I don't believe that either President Biden or anyone serious about achieving peace and achieving the release, would seriously ask Israel to make these concessions. We've already made them. Hamas has to make the concession. (Emphasis original)

And now, dear reader, I ask you please to read my first reaction to 7 October, written the day after. It has a direct bearing on the current essay.

Part 2/...

Notes:

1. One may debate why the Prime Minister preferred to disband the War Cabinet, rather than appoint two Zionist Ministers to take the place of Gantz and Gallant.
2. If Gaza is only to be annexed piecemeal, then annexation must begin with the Philadelphi Corridor. The rest must remain militarily occupied until annexation. Without Israeli annexation of so-called "Muslim land", Hamas will have won. For a discussion of the imperative of annexation, see https://www.murtaddtohuman.org/the-annexation-of-territory-in-war-answer-to-dr-meir-finkel-2/
3. "People understand why we need the Philadelphi Corridor, because after we discovered that under the Philadelphi Corridor, there's a highway of smuggling going on in some 200 tunnels and we now know that there there are depots of ammunition waiting on the Egyptian side for the opening of the Philadelphi Corridor. There's a lot of money involved and also this would be a an easy route of escape for Yahya Sinwar and the hostages. What if they smuggle the hostages to Iran?" (Gadi Taub)
4. According to Taub, there is a full-page advertisement buried somewhere in the Twitter archives "signed by hundreds of senior officers in the reserves and senior people in the security establishment" proclaiming the Disengagement from Gaza to be good for Israeli security.

Picture credits:

Grenavitar at English Wikipedia - CIA, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38157540

Oren Cohen/Flash90 (via Times of Israel)

Israel Defense Forces

Oren Rozen - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=139045112

Screenshot from "Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu news conference - as he faces pressure over Hamas ceasefire deal", YouTube, 2 Sept 2024 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uU0eoVbII4o&t=1199s

Comments:

On 5 September 2024 at 19:42, Ben Dor A. wrote:

Dear Anjuli Pandavar

Thank you for posting this important article which I shared with many friends and family.

I'm forwarding to you a few published articles and some of my thoughts to these articles. Kindly read these articles and my added comments and if you require more information, please feel free to ask.

Best Regards
Ben Dor A