JNS
“Operation Strength and Sword” in Gaza upstaged the protest movement’s plans to escalate its war against Benjamin Netanyahu on the streets of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
“Operation Strength and Sword,” the airstrikes in the Gaza Strip launched at 2:15 a.m. on Tuesday, didn’t only come as a shock to Hamas. Israelis, too, were taken aback, since they went to bed on Monday night preparing for a very different battle in the morning. The internecine kind.
Yes, the protest movement declared that it would be escalating its activities. Not that it ever ceased staging rallies against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for, well, just about everything.
For months, its focus has been his failure—for ostensibly personal and political reasons—to “bring all the hostages home now.” And Tuesday marked the 11th day of a more specific demonstration, this one titled the “Kirya Envelope.”
The name is a play on the term for the Gaza-border communities. It refers to the surrounding of Defense Ministry headquarters in Tel Aviv, where the security cabinet usually meets.
But the hostage crisis wasn’t the impetus for some 100 protest leaders to jump to attention. No, their latest excuse was Netanyahu’s decision to fire Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) chief Ronen Bar.
Never mind that he was the key figure responsible for not predicting and preventing the atrocities of Oct. 7, 2023. Forget that he even admitted as much shortly after the deadly Hamas invasion.
The fact that he's been serving since then as a hindrance to Netanyahu’s pursuit of the war goals is good enough for the “anybody but Bibi” crowd to be on his side. And for Histadrut labor federation chairman Arnon Bar-David to threaten to “grind the economy to a halt.”
Nothing invigorates this otherwise disparate gang of virtue-signalers like gearing up to shut the country down. It’s a motley crew that includes an illustrious list of former political and military officials whose loathing for Netanyahu is only surpassed by their envy of him.
That their public statements do major damage to societal morale and international standing is of as little concern to them as emerging victorious against Hamas. Considering Bibi a greater threat than the genocidal jihadists bent on Israel’s annihilation will do that.
The “moderates” among them aren’t much better. Take Brig. Gen. (Res.) Israel (“Relik”) Shafir, for example. In an interview on Tuesday with i24News, the former commander of the Tel Nof Air Force Base performed a rhetorical loop de loop characteristic of someone who can’t bring himself to give credit to Netanyahu.
Asked about the strikes on Gaza, Shafir began by naming its two elements: military and political. He likened the former to Henry Kissinger’s method during talks in the early 1970s with North Vietnam.
“When you’re in a negotiation and there’s some sort of halt, you attack forcefully to pressure the other side back to the table,” he said.
So far so good—until he went on to provide his take on what he considers the political motivation for the military maneuver. It was enough to inflict viewers with vertigo.
“The vote on the state budget is approaching,” he began. “The prime minister wants [former National Security Minister and Otzma Yehudit Party head] Itamar Ben-Gvir back in the government [to achieve a majority to pass the budget]. Ben-Gvir had said that he wouldn’t return until the war resumed.”
It’s worth noting here that later in the day, Ben-Gvir indicated that he would rejoin the government. The reason this issue is highlighted by the anti-Netanyahu camp is that if the coalition doesn’t pass the budget by March 31, the Knesset will automatically be dissolved and new elections scheduled.
Shafir’s mention of it was thus as predictable as it was cynical. What he asserted next was even worse.
The resumption of attacks on Gaza, he said, made it possible for Netanyahu to ”redirect the heat away from himself and from his attempts to fire [Ronen Bar], perhaps to postpone them and grab the headlines away from the protests.”
Even his interviewer was flummoxed since Bar was in favor of the operation. According to Shafir’s analysis, wouldn’t it be in Bar’s interest to oppose it?
“No,” Shafir replied. “[Bar] already said that he does what’s good for the State of Israel without taking his own needs into account.”
Pause for a guffaw.
“It was predictable that [Bar] and the IDF would support the action,” Shaffir explained. “There’s both military and diplomatic justification for it.”
Except where Netanyahu is concerned, of course. The proximity of it to the other issues—in Shafir’s view—is clearly suspicious.
“All of us actually knew that by March 30, the war would resume,” he stressed, blathering on about how Netanyahu “rejected” proceeding to Phase 2 of the ceasefire deal with Hamas to “return the hostages.”
Ultimately, he concluded, “in the battle between the hostages and [Finance Minister Bezalel] Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, at this point, the latter are winning.” This is precisely the kind of lie that Hamas loves to hear and force its captives to repeat in heart-wrenching hostage videos.
Shame on Shafir and his ilk for not keeping such vile thoughts to themselves while Israel is in the throes of an existential fight for survival and victory. Thankfully, their voices aren’t the only ones out there.
The Tikva Forum of Hostages’ Families—not to be confused with the Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forum, which has become enmeshed in the protest movement—has an opposite take from that which is handed the bulk of the airtime on a silver platter.
In a statement on Tuesday with the headline “All or Hell,” it declared support for the “government of Israel, the heads of the security establishment and IDF soldiers as the powerful fighting against the Nazi enemy in Gaza resumes."
It continued: “The past weeks have proven what we have been saying all along—that Hamas will never return all the hostages of its own accord. Only massive military pressure, a complete siege, including the cutoff of electricity and water, and territorial conquest that will lead to Hamas’s collapse will force it to beg for a ceasefire and a deal that will bring all the hostages back together, in one phase. If the offensive that began this morning continues with full force and without interruption, we will be able to bring all our loved ones home in one phase, on a single bus."
