Something is rotten in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s kingdom. Not since yesterday, and not since the day before. And yet the rot and the stench seem only to be spreading.
While the international media, alongside the Israeli press, continues to uncover more and more about Netanyahu’s responsibility for the failures of October 7, Netanyahu’s mouthpieces are, embarrassingly, busy mocking prime ministerial candidate Gadi Eisenkot for having an accent that is not American enough.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
(Photo: Reuters)
While The New York Times has confirmed a Haaretz report about an Emirati warning delivered directly to Netanyahu regarding a major Hamas attack from Gaza, and The Atlantic has corroborated earlier reporting by Yedioth Ahronoth analyst Smadar Perry about a similar Egyptian warning, the prime minister's aide Jonatan Urich and the rest of the gang at the pro-Netanyahu Channel 14 are cracking jokes with a racist undertone about a bereaved father, a former IDF chief of staff and, above all, a man who has devoted his entire life to the State of Israel.
That is the level, and that is also the problem with “Netanyahu’s kingdom.” Beyond the mouthpieces and the base, the magic is fading. The tricks are becoming too transparent, the jokes are pathetic and the flight from responsibility is becoming embarrassing.
The warnings first reported in the Israeli, Egyptian and Emirati media are now being corroborated by two of the world’s most respected news organizations. And more and more evidence regarding Netanyahu’s own failure, which paved the way for the massacre, continues to pile up.
Are these media outlets immune from mistakes? No. Still, they are organizations that enjoy a high degree of credibility and, at least in their news reporting, verify facts and information.
A-F-R-A-I-D
Netanyahu’s people will seize on this and say that The New York Times has a clearly anti-Israel editorial line. The Atlantic, however, is hardly suspected of being anti-Israel.
The attempt by Netanyahu’s people to smear journalists Shlomi Eldar and Smadar Perry is also disgraceful and ineffective.
There is already a critical mass of facts and reporting that makes clear why Netanyahu so strongly opposes the establishment of an independent state commission of inquiry.
Netanyahu is A-F-R-A-I-D.
His disregard of the Emirati warning, and his decision not even to report it to the heads of the security establishment, can only be interpreted as negligence, as contempt whose meaning is heavy responsibility for the failure.
Even after receiving that warning, in the now-famous meeting he chaired on Oct. 1, 2023, not only did he fail to mention it, but he instructed the system to maintain calm toward the Gaza Strip.
That was despite the fact that Ronen Bar, then head of the Shin Bet, who would later become an enemy of the "royal family," demanded in that same meeting that Israel strike senior Hamas operatives in Gaza who were directing terrorism in the West Bank.
Netanyahu, as noted, instructed that quiet be maintained as a matter of policy.
The Egyptian warning, which reportedly contained a similar message, was also ignored by the prime minister, according to all these reports.
Netanyahu was too complacent, too self-assured, and for long months charged straight into the wall while insisting on continuing with the judicial overhaul even though it was clear that it would lead to a security disaster.
Netanyahu did not ignore only the Egyptians or the Emiratis. He also ignored a warning of war presented to him by the head of the Shin Bet, as well as warnings from senior Military Intelligence and IDF officials about an approaching disaster.
Netanyahu rejects those warnings too and argues that none of them referred to Gaza. True. But the Emirati and Egyptian warnings already spoke specifically about Gaza, and instead of raising them with the professional security echelon, Netanyahu simply kept them out of the loop.
Netanyahu’s emissaries take every opportunity to spread conspiracy theories claiming that Ronen Bar and then-IDF chief of staff Herzi Halevi deliberately concealed information from Netanyahu that night. It now appears that it was Netanyahu who concealed information from them.
And none of these warnings even comes close to Netanyahu’s scandalous responsibility for turning Hamas into a military power on Israel’s border.
He was not only the man who led the system from 2009 onward and pursued a policy of preferring Hamas over the Palestinian Authority. He, and no one else, was the one who pushed for Hamas to be funded through Qatar beginning in 2018.
That same patron of the Muslim Brotherhood, which Netanyahu attacked from the UN podium only a few days ago, is the country Netanyahu approached and asked to help transfer money to Gaza instead of Palestinian Authority funds — because, of course, he regards the PA as an enemy.
And the even more incomprehensible scandal, for which there is unequivocal evidence, is that even after Netanyahu was warned in 2019 that this money was reaching Hamas’ military wing, no less, he instructed that the Qatari funds continue to be transferred to Gaza.
In the simplest terms, Netanyahu built the monster with his own hands.
He prefers to have his mouthpieces attack the heads of the IDF and Shin Bet, even though they have all already been fired or resigned, in an attempt to keep the flames away from his own cloak.
Avi IssacharoffPhoto: Yuval ChenBut he was the one who dismissed the warnings from the IDF and Military Intelligence, the Shin Bet warnings and the warnings from friendly countries such as the United Arab Emirates and Egypt.
He was the one who employed, and still employs, advisers who were paid by Qatar to tarnish Egypt’s image in the eyes of the Israeli public.
And he can continue blaming the media, the left, the heads of the military and the heads of the Shin Bet.
At the end of the day, he was the man who brought the October 7 disaster upon us, and he is the one responsible for the greatest massacre in the history of the Jewish people since the Holocaust.