The families of the hostages being held in Gaza since their capture on Oct. 7th are using them in a cynical manner in their battle to topple the present prime minister. Their weekly demonstrations are supported and activated by those selfsame groups which demonstrated against Netanyahu, long before anyone dreamed of the colossal deficiency of the entire security system and its subsidiaries.
The Netanyahu government is doing its utmost to come to some kind of agreement with the murderous terrorist organization. Everyone can understand that it is no easy feat to negotiate with subhuman, inhuman creatures of that kind, whose value of life is less than an onion peel.
The ultimate motive of Sinwar and his cohorts is just to survive the war in order to return to control of the Gaza Strip — no more, no less, with all means permitted towards that end. The Jewish captives, like the Hamas captives lehavdil, are mere pawns in the game of their seeking control again of their territory. To this end. all manipulations are valid, and they are pinning hopes on the world at large to force Israel to halt the war. No less so, the demonstration organizers have the same goal, hoping to stop the war while Hamas is still operating.
In the opinion of the enemies of Netanyahu and the government opponents, he should announce a surrender and capitulate instead of carrying on with negotiations. When Netanyahu prevented an Israeli delegation from going to Cairo as part of an accepted tactic in dialogues, very determinedly so, arguing that he saw no good purpose in talks with intermediaries so long as Hamas was not budging from its position, he ignited a wild reaction accusing him of "muscle flexing" against Hamas. They insisted that he knuckle under to all of their demands.
But everyone believes, without argument, that halting the war at this point is tantamount to an Israeli surrender. Some maintain that the return of the captives is worth this price and that defeating Hamas can wait until after they come home. Others maintain that a cease-fire at this stage will mean a life-threatening situation for Israel and that we must continue our military thrust, even at the cost of endangering the lives of the captives.
Public opinion surveys show that if a conflict arises between the one of the other, then the latter must be sacrificed for the defeat of Hamas.
It is too much of a heartbreaking dilemma to bear: our hearts go out day by day, hour by hour to the families of the captives. But today, they are no longer talking about the release of the captives vs. a cease-fire. In the opinion of the demonstration organizers, the uppermost objective surpassing even the return of the captives and an end to the war, is the toppling of the Netanyahu government at all costs and under all conditions.
Indeed, if those organizers were to be asked if they would be happy with the return of the hostages at the price of the continuation of the Netanyahu government, we can assume that many would opt against it.
The Tip of the Iceberg of the Inadequacy
The revelations of the horrendous inadequacies of the Simchas Torah debacle keep mounting. According to recent reports, the 'celebrated' Israeli Intelligence unit, also known as 8200, succeeded as early as two years ago, to put its finger on Hamas' plan to gain control of the Aza Envelope.
Dozens of tightly compact and very detailed pages in Arabic were in the hands of the intelligence organization, and whatever we witnessed on that dreadful, ominous day in Be'eri, Kfar Aza, Sderot and Ofakim are described therein.
The question is: if such a plan was in the hands of Israeli intelligence, should it not have been a deterrent to Hamas? Or not. Should it have been shunted to the sidelines or shouldn't the army have made plans in the possibility that Hamas would carry it out?
One of the top officials in the organization, responsible for following the activities of Hamas, translated the document into Hebrew, dubbing it 'The Walls of Jericho'. He keeps tabs on material issuing from Gaza.
In Iyar, 5783, a year after this plan reached Israel, Hamas carried out a huge training maneuver on the border, carrying out everything detailed in the report with unerring precision, including the drones, motorcycles, vehicles and watercraft. Accurate to the letter - one by one.
The officer responsible over Hamas, read the report of the Hamas maneuvers, and continued to report to his superiors, and to nudge them that something is going on in Gaza. Furthermore, he heard from the media certain passages recorded from the speakers themselves describing what was said as pep talk before going out to war.
But all of his reports were stopped en route and did not even reach the commander of the intelligence corps. Nor did they reach the army top brass. Everyone considered him a nudnik, a small fry stirring up trouble, who must be waved aside like a nasty fly. Not one to be taken seriously.
So much so that on Erev Simchas Torah, when all of the facts combined into one picture, and intelligence was trying to warn of a comprehensive scheme about to be launched, the high echelons still believed that there was still time to postpone dealing with the facts at leisure until the next morning, Simchas Torah itself. Nothing was immediately urgent in their view. And no one felt that those in the government high places should be notified, surely not the prime minister himself, not even that Intelligence is in possession of such a program.
And this is only a tip of the iceberg that will shake up the country at large when they are collated by the national investigative committee that will surely be established. These are a result of egotism, superiority, haughty dismissal of petty officials, and a repeat of all the failures exposed after the Yom Kippur War.
And thus was demolished all the boasts of 'our might', 'our army', 'our power' with a big bang, pointing all energies against the Prime Minister and, it goes without saying, against the 'ultimate' enemy of the State of Israel - the Torah learning public, in whose sole merit a sevenfold and heavier tragedy was averted.
