A joint American-Israeli plan to topple Netanyahu starring General Gadi Eisenkot gains steam as the war in Gaza grinds on
BY GADI TAUB, TABLET JANUARY 24, 2024
The Israeli mainstream media is full of disheartening stories that say we are losing the war: They say that it’s unwinnable, that the economy is on the verge of a downturn, that reservists are torn between state and family, that students are losing the academic year and couples are breaking up, that we should Bring Them Home, Now!—not to mention the horror stories about the fate of the hostages, and the constant display, front and center, of the terrible predicament of the families.
Read the Israeli papers, watch mainstream TV and you may arrive at the conclusion that all this is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s fault, not Yahya Sinwar’s: Netanyahu is extending the war for his own political survival, Netanyahu kept Hamas alive with Qatari money, Netanyahu tore Israel apart over the judicial reform, Netanyahu is sidelining the generals—Benny Gantz, Yoav Gallant, and Gadi Eisenkot—in his own war cabinet, Netanyahu will ruin our relations with the U.S., Netanyahu puts his own career over Israel’s vital interests, and so on. These talking points run parallel to Washington’s messaging campaign against Netanyahu, as the Biden administration looks to impose its agenda on Israel, with help from its local clients.
The Israeli press, clearly, does not behave as though we are in the midst of a war for survival. Press conferences have become competitions between journalists, attempting to impress each other by asking the nastiest questions. Last week Netanyahu went off script on one such occasion to answer one particularly bizarre monologue disguised as a question by Channel 13’s Sefi Ovadia.
Ovadia “asked” the following: “A personal question with your permission. The public wants to be exposed to the personal side of its leaders. When you retire to your bed [at night] do you tell yourself about, or regret, certain mistakes that you would like to share with the public about things that happened before Oct. 7, shortly before or long before, or are you of the opinion, even in the privacy of your own thoughts, that you are mistake-free, and that it is the rest of the leadership that is responsible for the situation in which we find ourselves. If you’d like to share this with the public, I think it can be interesting.” This, mind you, was in a press conference where the prime minister was informing the public about the state of the war.
Netanyahu’s reply was quoted all over Israel’s social media: “I’ll keep fighting Hamas, and you’ll keep fighting me. That’s the division of labor.”
The Oct. 7 massacre has sealed the fate of the two-state solution on the Israeli side.
There’s a reason why defeatism and Netanyahu-bashing go together. Netanyahu wants to win the war, and surprising as this may sound at first, the press cohort, along with the virtual representatives of the Biden administration in the cabinet—Gantz and Eisenkot—are not exactly on board with that goal. The easy explanation for this is that fighting Netanyahu has defined the professional identity of so many journalists and politicians for so long, that even Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack could not change the trajectory of their lifelong mission. They see Hamas as an opportunity to finally expose Netanyahu for the failure they wish him to be, force an early election they’re certain he will lose, and thereby save Israel from him.
That line of reasoning puts hate at the center: hate so intense, that some would rather see Israel fail than see Netanyahu succeed. But there are greater forces at work here. And there seems to be a detailed plan, in which former IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot is playing a central role, that requires, as a first step, weakening Israel. Most of the plan’s adherents don’t want to destroy the country (although some of them want it fundamentally transformed). Rather, they think weakening Israel, and placing it under American stewardship, will help save the country from itself.
The coordinated nature of the anti-Bibi campaign is plain from the repetition of the same arguments and even the same phrases from Netanyahu’s adversaries in politics as well as in the press—on both sides of the Atlantic. It is no coincidence that we began hearing in both Jerusalem and Washington, at the exact same time, voices calling to end the war with a hostage deal, but without destroying Hamas (which is what the oft-used euphemism “an extended cease-fire” plainly means). Losing the war to Hamas will surely topple Netanyahu, and thus remove the obstacle to resuming talks with the aim of establishing a Palestinian state.
To forward this campaign, Eisenkot, who tragically lost a son in this war, has been chosen as the leftist elite’s new messiah, anointed semi-officially with a long flattering interview in Ilana Dayan’s prestigious Channel 12 TV show, Uvda (Fact). Eisenkot is currently sitting in Netanyahu’s war cabinet along with Gantz, another former chief of staff. The Biden administration once had its chips in on the tall and handsome Gantz, who nevertheless has little gravitas.
Eisenkot, or so many now hope, is made of stronger stuff. He has therefore been chosen as the tent pole for the joint American-Israeli project of throwing Netanyahu overboard and installing a more pliant Israeli leader who will pivot from the military objectives of the Gaza war to the larger objective of establishing a Palestinian state.
The Israeli dovish left has always been enamored with generals, who have mostly responded in kind. Hawks by and large don’t make it to the top in the IDF anymore, which is why as our army chiefs became increasingly obsessed with being seen as moral at the same time they lost much of their interest in winning wars.
The left’s romance with dovish generals is a faint nostalgic shadow of a once-proud Zionism that was both strong and humane. But our current brass are not of the original breed. Whereas the original breed won wars, the new breed has replaced the drive for military victory with public self-flagellation and moral grandstanding. We have a grotesque example of this new breed, the radical leftist General Yair Golan, the star of the tiny progressive electorate which did not make the threshold in the last national election. Golan, while serving as the second in command to the IDF’s chief of staff, compared Israel, in an official Holocaust Memorial ceremony, to Germany in the 1930s. Progressives applauded. Haaretz made him a hero. The rest of us were deeply disgusted.
These polls are useless. The first poll was taken yesterday and the second 5 days ago.
https://www.jewishpress.com/news/left-vs-right/direct-polls-shows-right-recuperating-with-57-mandates-netanyahu-best-fit-for-pm/2024/01/26/
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/majority-of-israelis-believe-netanyahu-s-wartime-decision-making-driven-by-personal-interest-poll/ar-BB1h5TMc
Not sure why it says, “MSN” at the top it says, “NY Post”
@Felix Apart from Otzma Yehudit and Religious Zionism MKs who don’t have even have half the mandates between them that Likud does, is there anybody who isn’t even worse on the Concepzia and is there anybody at all who has the ability to maneuver the triple threats posed by the international community, the leftist deep state and its mass base within Israel, and Iran with its proxies while prosecuting the war that Bibi does?
EvRi
You leave out the most obvious thing. Regard to Netanyahu it was on his long watch that October 7 built up and exploded. Thanks to you he still is at the helm. But you too won’t learn.
https://www.jewishpress.com/news/left-vs-right/former-deputy-idf-chief-who-compared-israel-to-nazi-germany-wants-reeducation-camps-for-religious-zionists/2024/01/23/
Dayan gave up the Temple Mount for what!
Barak gave up S Lebanon in exchange for nothing!
Rabin joined a crook in Stockholm for what?
Sharon gave up Gaza in exchange for what?
Generals DO NOT have the political long-term “Vue”, acumen and or mind-set!
That is why the US wants a general Most are on the left!
Neither Bennett nor Lapid have shone by their leadership or charisma!
Bibi is a significant obstacle for the US antisemites.
@EvRe1: very good response. However, the real elites driving everybody are those in the WEF and if we look around, we can see on the internet that they are clearly telling us what they intend. Again, look around: we have Yuval Harari doing his thing for the WEF in Israel, we have the Biden Regime, the British government and umpteen EU countries whose governments were selected and placed by the WEF. Do a little on-line research and you will find all the details. I did leave out the WHO and the NWO but they are simply more of the same.
To me, as an American Jew, the masochistic and suicidal ideation of the Israeli left is terrifying. The left in the US is bad enough, but we are not so far surrounded by people who say all the time, and prove it by their actions, that they want to kill each and every one of us. What can be done to wake them up?!!!
Having said that, Bibi leaves things to be desired. There are reports that he gave Quatari money to Hamas to appease them, contradicting what he wrote in his 1995 “Fighting Terrorism” book. And a report that in one instance (can’t remember just which one) early in the war he was completely unaware of something his generals were reporting which was even in the press. I would like to see him stop begging for US approval and assistance, if at all possible. I’m sure there are more complaints to be made.
But the left is acting like a tool of Hamas! Remember, you guys on the left, if you kill Israel, you unleash even more antisemitism for the Jews in the diaspora.
The elites in America comprise about 0.01% of Americans. The money and power they have attained over the past two decades has led them to overvalue their ideas and their personal qualities. They believe themselves to be better educated than 99.99% of Americans and thus believe their policy ideas should be adopted. Anyone disagreeing with them is dismissed as ignorant and worse, as a “threat to democracy.”
The Israeli elites in the military and security agencies are responsible for the mistakes that led to the massacre of October 7th. Now these elites, if they are not psychopaths, i.e. if they have any conscience, must feel guilt that this occurred on THEIR watch. How do they deal with their guilt? I submit they deal with their guilt by denial and projection.
They deny that their own failures were responsible for October 7th, and they project all that guilt and responsibility onto Bibi.
But actually, this is not a new story for the anti-Bibi crew in the Israeli military and security: they have hated Bibi for years. They truly believe that if they were in power and running the country, they would have wonderful relationships with the PA and Washington DC, and Israel would be a paradise. The Palestinians under their watch would be pacified due to their excellent relationship with the PA. I know this is how some of them think because I heard this fantasy expressed by one of them.
They honestly believe that because Bibi doesn’t want this kind of excellent relationship with the PA, this is why the Palestinians want to commit genocide on Israeli Jews. They have a delusion that the Palestinians just want to be treated with respect, and if given that respect, they will drop their genocidal behaviors and impulses.
What they cannot bear is knowing they failed to protect the Israeli people. They will never accept this. Part of the problem is that they never fully accepted the responsibility for national security in the first place because they saw the problem of Palestinian violence as if it resided in their Prime Minister, not in the minds of Palestinians! So why bother investigating raw intelligence that said Hamas was preparing for a violent attack? As far as these military people are concerned, it isn’t Palestinians who are the problem, it is BIBI!
These elites cannot be reasoned with. Their minds are completely closed. This also goes for your Supreme Court Justices. These are people that are destroying Israel and blaming Netanyahu and the Israeli voters who elected him all the time.
These are people who should be court martialed, not running for national office and not allowed anywhere near military or security policy.