Betrayal

The entire policy of Israel’s elite after 7.10 boils down to twisting the government’s arm and preventing victory over Hamas. Before 7.10, it threatened to destroy the country from within. And what about 7.10 itself?

Alexander Maistrovoy | Sep 1, 2024

Alexander Maistrovoy   A. Maistrovoy

According to Hegel’s dialectics, at a certain stage of development “quantity inevitably turns into quality.” This is what happened to the ruling class of Israel.

For 30 years, the Israeli establishment (judicial, military, political, Academy and media) played with the destinies and lives of its people cynically and unceremoniously in favor of its interests and ideological preferences. The Shamir-Arens government was the last one allowed to be guided by the responsibility for the country’s future. Then the games began: gambling and bloody.

Here they are – the elite “Hunger Games”:

• Oslo Accords

The “deal” with the head of a terrorist group cost lives of hundreds of people. Peres and Rabin called them “sacrifices on the altar of peace.” It was a new pseudo-religious cult with mass human sacrifices.

• Ehud Barak’s flight from Lebanon in 2000.

The South Lebanon Army was abandoned to its own fate (like the Arabs who collaborated with Israel before them), and Hezbollah became a powerful force here.

• Ehud Barak and Camp David

The offer to Arafat to transfer to him 91-95% of the territory of Judea, Samaria, part of the Negev (as part of a “territory exchange”), the Arab areas of East Jerusalem and most of the Old City was rejected by the PLO leader. He didn’t want to share the fate of Anwar Sadat. He gave carte blanche to the militants. During the four years of the Al-Aqsa Intifada, also known as the Oslo War, more than 1000 Israelis were killed and more than 5500 were wounded.

• The “Disengagement”

In 2005, Ariel Sharon, who proudly declared: “The fate of Netzarim is the fate of Tel Aviv”, wiped out the thriving Jewish communities of Gaza. The Zionist, mostly Religious Zionist, residents were thrown into the trash heap. The elite triumphed. Some of the youth of Gush Katif lost themselves into drinking and taking drugs and some emigrated. It was literally an expulsion from paradise. Two years later, Hamas came to power in Gaza.

• Kadima party, Annapolis, and the planned disengagement in Judea and Samaria.

The opportunist Kadima party of Sharon, Olmert and Tzipi Livni was ready to liquidate more than 90% of the Jewish communities of Judea and Samaria. However, Mahmoud Abbas, like Arafat before him, refused to accept the idea of “conflict is over”. In return, Kadima decided to carry out a second “unilateral disengagement” – this time on Judea and Samaria. Luckily, it failed to be implemented due to the second Lebanese war.

These projects were not buried by the elite, who aspired after three strategic things:

• ending the falsely termed “occupation” (“the apartheid regime” according to the former head of the Mossad, Tamir Pardo).

• transformation of Israel from a Jewish state into a state for “all its citizens” (de-facto, one more Arab state).

• elimination of the settler movement (peopled by those called “subhumans” by Meretz party head Yair Golan).

Netanyahu’s stubbornness caused fury. He would not give in to the elite establishment nor would he fulfill its goals. He was seen by the world as a statesman and by a majority of Israelis as the leader they wanted. So the elite were prepared to jeopardize the country to get rid of him.

Meanwhile, the rot kept growing. We observed shocking manifestations of it – some examples: fictitious court cases against the head of government, Netanyahu; the shameful trial of Elor Azariya; the Shin Bet’s use of female soldiers as sex toys for terrorists in prisons; the deadly Jewish pogroms in Lod and Acre in 2021, which took the Shin Bet and the police by surprise (as they always do); the humiliating concession of gas fields to Hezbollah in 2022; the Supreme Courts decisions to abrogate powers of every part of government and be the judge of the legitimacy of its own powers.

After the right-wing government won the elections by a large margin, the elite resorted to open sabotage. Their worst nightmares seemed to be coming true: Avi Maoz’s (“Noam”) call for the restoration of Jewish identity and family values; Ben Gvir’s “national guard” project; finally, an attempt to define the unlimited powers of the judicial caste (the “priestly corps” of the elite) and have checks and balances – all these became a pretext for starting a de facto coup.

Even if the judicial reform’s first steps were half-baked, it certainly did not pose a threat to democracy. Prof. Alan Dershowitz suggested that with the reform implemented, Israel would be much more like “Canada or New Zealand or Australia, or many European countries”, still a far cry from the USA.

The defense establishment led this crusade. Not a day passed without some former chief of the General Staff, ex-head of Shin Bet, Mossad or AMAN declaring that “democracy is under threat” or the country is “on the verge of dictatorship.”

The elite threatened to refuse to serve when called up, and pilots did not report for reserve duty necessary for maintenance of their operative level. The elite threatened to take their money, grown exponentially due to government encouragement and tax breaks to strengthen the economy, out of the country. They set fires on main roads, blocked them and were treated with kid gloves by law enforcement, whose then heads identified with them.

Hamas was watching.

Ominous prophecies about an impending “dictatorship”, threats of civil war, allusions to the collapse of two Temples, pogroms, and Ehud Barak’s “wishes” to fill Yarkon with corpses created an atmosphere of hysteria and fear.

Yet all of this was not enough. Something bigger was needed that would plunge the entire country into chaos.

This would allow:

• to create a government of national unity by introducing people loyal to the establishment.
• to push out the so-called “Kakhanists” of Otzma Yehudit and “Noam” parties
• to remove the judicial reform from the agenda.
• to weaken Likud as much as possible. Same for the Religious Zionists.
• eventually, to remove Bibi from the big politics once and for all.

And after that, they could move on to the strategic tasks mentioned above.

Stalin wrote: “The forest is cut – the chips fly.” Why wouldn’t these principles be still relevant today? Perhaps all means seemed acceptable.

A Hamas attack would make it possible to objectively achieve the assigned tasks in the shortest possible time.

Maybe they thought the scale of the attack would be limited. Maybe they couldn’t imagine that Hamas would decide to carry out massacres because the enemy they hated was Bibi, not the terrorists. Maybe they didn’t consider that a music festival with the participation of left-wing youth would take place nearby. Maybe…

But remember that Ehud Barak said that “the corpses had to float along the Yarkon”.

I have not the slightest doubt that the conditions for the massacre were prepared. Warnings by observers were ignored, the border was unguarded (by tacit agreement? or worse?), and the predator was allowed into the territory of defenseless Negev settlements. It took hours for defense establishment help to arrive. Israel was saved by the initiative of its heroic sons and daughters.

And the massacre plunged the entire country into horror, chaos, and mourning.

So, a betrayal turned into a crime, and it not only continues, but reaches a new level.

The entire policy of the ruling class after 7.10 boils down to twisting the government’s arm and preventing victory over Hamas.

The country must be brought to its knees before the Islamists, so that our elite will be able then declare: Netanyahu lost the war, he is responsible to the hostages’ deaths and we must hold elections now.

“Elections NOW!”, “Rak Lo Bibi – anything but Bibi”. That’s all that matters.

All means at their disposal are used for this:

• Mass hysteria and playing on the suffering and emotions of the families of hostages. The goal is to force the government to return the hostages NOW at any cost: that is, to give up control over Gaza, the Philadelphi Corridor won with the blood of IDF soldiers, and return Sinwar and his thugs to power. It will be clear and unconditional capitulation, but doesn’t matter.
• Blaming Netanyahu for the deaths of hostages in Gaza instead of Hamas, using the mantra “bring them home” instead of “set them free”, while knowing full well that the repeated demonstrations made Israel seem divided and raised the price for freeing the hostages.
• The assertion that Hamas cannot be defeated because “it is an ideology”.
• Coordination of actions with White house. In fact, the entire military establishment, as well as former generals, including Galant, Gantz, Eisenkot, and media are on a short leash of the Democratic Party and systematically voice its demands to wind down the operation and hand Gaza over to the PA.
• Blocking an independent investigation of 7/10.
• Sowing confusion and disarray in society by pursuit of soldiers and reservists for “mistreatment of the Nukhba terrorists” while not bringing one terrorist to trial.
• Hounding (in unison with the US administration) of right-wing politicians like Ben-Gvir and Smotrich.
• The desire to drag the country into a war of attrition with Hezbollah NOW, before the Hamas regime in Gaza is destroyed.

Israel must be sacrificed on the “altar of peace”. In framework of this “peace” there will be no place for Israel, but it doesn’t matter.

The result of this unscrupulous manipulation is ambiguous. The ruling class has won the battle, but probably has lost the war. The left is traditionally strong at intrigue, but weak at strategy. The ordinary people are making their voices heard. The IDF rank and file, reservists and medium level echelons are loyal and dedicated to saving the country.

In truth, the left camp is demoralized.

These were its most consistent adherents who became tragic victims of the massacre, and the consequences of this will have far-reaching results. The veil of great-heartedness fell from the eyes of many: it became obvious that Jews were tortured, raped, killed, roasted in ovens not because they were “right-wing extremists” and “colonists,” but only because they were Jews. And this can happen not only in Israel, but everywhere: from New York and Toronto to Berlin, London, and Paris.

What also became obvious is that the Middle East remains the same Middle East and will not turn into Iceland or New Zealand. The entire society is traumatized, but the left is traumatized much more, because until now they lived in the world of illusions.

The war awakened the country to the dedication of the Religious Zionists and aroused national consciousness to the need to involve the haredi population, start a process where they eventually join military service and contribute economically. And clearly, they won’t be on the side of the elite either.

Thus, a tactical victory will turn into a strategical defeat.

Alexander Maistrovoy is a graduate of Moscow Univ. in Journalism, worked there in his field and made aliyah in 1988. He works at the Russian language newspaper Novosty Nedely, has had articles posted on many internet sites and authored “Ways of God” about different religious and ethnic groups in the Holy Land, Agony of Hercules or a Farewell to Democracy (Notes of a Stranger), and with Mark Kotliarsky the Russian book Jewish Atlántida.