Netanyahu, you ran on a ticket of restoring security and you won a sixth term. If the government can’t do what you promised – let better qualified people take charge.
Ariel Kahana, ISRAEL HAYOM 06-21-2023 15:52<
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We don’t want any more promises of “hunting down the killers”; we are sick and tired of such statements. We don’t need any lecturing on “the bloody toll that comes with living on this land.” We know this because we live this reality day in and day out.
Please spare us the thoughts and prayers you express over the hardships of the “hero settlers.” Such comments can’t bring people back from the dead. You can also spare us the exposes and the reenactments and the snuff videos. We have had enough of all this, which contributes nothing. What’s worse – it can’t stop the next terrorist attack from happening. What we need is action; immediate, forceful, and targeted measures. Yes, I am talking about military action, not just ridiculous regional talks in Aqaba or for-show summits in Sharm al-Sheikh.
Mr. Prime Minister, you ran on a ticket of restoring security and you won a sixth term. This is your government’s task, this is what your ministers were elected to do. Can’t deliver on this pledge to Israelis and to the settlers on the front? Throw in the towel and let more qualified people be at the helm.
On your watch, since taking office some six months ago, 28 people have lost their lives to terrorism. As soon as one shiva ends another one begins. Mourning continues into more mourning. In fact, the fatality figures don’t reflect the true scale of terror: Attacks get perpetrated every several hours; Israelis are wounded every day.<
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Before Tuesday’s deadly attack near Eli, there was the attack on soldiers in Jenin, wounding five. Our troops are humiliated 24/7 – with rocks, paint, and Molotov cocktails – all across Judea and Samaria. A military that prohibits its soldiers from responding to such humiliation ultimately has to extract them under fire when things go wrong in a military operation, just like the incursion in Jenin turned into a South Lebanon-like inferno this week when IEDs were hurled at the officers.
Israelis deserve security; they have paid a heavy and bloody toll to know that Arab terrorism won’t stop on the Green Line or the security barrier. A country that won’t go on a counterterrorism offensive in Jenin will ultimately have to face bombs and rockets from Samaria raining on Tel Aviv. By not entering Jenin, we will only turn it into another Hamastan in Samaria, as we have learned from the 2005 Gaza pullout.
An operation is imperative because the current policy has been a proven failure. The escalation has continued for at least 18 months. It began when rock-throwing incidents tripled in Judea and Samaria. Then the number of more sophisticated attacks rose as well, with an ever-increasing geographical area from north to south. Eli lies at the heart of Judea and Samaria. The gas station where the attack took place Tuesday is just off a major artery that sees heavy traffic daily. In other words – terrorists are no longer scared or deterred.
The prime minister must be attuned to his best troops on the ground – the settlers. When they cried foul 20 years ago amid the same predicament, demanding that the government “let the IDF win”, they were first ridiculed, only to be embraced later when the horrific attack on Passover Eve in Netanya finally had the penny drop for the political echelon, who concluded that widescale military offensive was in order. The same reality exists today. Perhaps such action shouldn’t cover all Palestinian cities in Judea and Samaria, but what’s certain is that we have to shift gears from defense to offense. Adding more troops to guard the roads is not enough. We must send the soldiers inside terror hotbeds to root them out.
Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Gallant announced “emergency meetings” right after the attack. Well, that was 24 hours too late: Dead Israelis should not be the criteria for convening special national security sessions; the severity of the situation should. These consultations should have taken place earlier this week when the IDF found itself entangled in a Hezbollah-like booby-trapped mess in the middle of Jenin and came under fire for an entire day from terrorists, which almost prevented the safe extraction of the fighters. Alarm bells should have gone off then.
Over 140 years of Zionism have taught us that taking the war to the terrorists on their turf is the only way to prevent attacks.
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@Felix
It’s far worse than just these latest victims who where murdered while simply having an afternoon meal. There are today as many Jews who lie dead from terrorist attacks as had died all last year, and the year is not yet half over. Also, last year there were some 5,000 terrorist attacks against Israel, and this year it is likely to be greater than this, if not far greater. Bibi was elected to, among other things, restore the calm which fell apart over the past two years, and yet he is still simply reacting to each attack as if catching or killing the assailant will solve the problem of the escalating violence. Actually, I would suggest such a measured approach to the violence is emboldening the terrorists and exacerbating the problem. What is needed is a full scale operation to sweep the terrorists from their strongholds within the territories and end this terror war. Yet to do this will almost certainly trigger the further decay if not final collapse of both the PA and the Hashemites. And the political fallout from the fall of the PA and/or the Hashemites, not to speak of the political fanfare which is made against Israel during every military response she makes, is, I would suggest, precisely what is restraining Israel from having taken the action which is clearly needed to end this terror wave.
Regardless of what comes next, Israel must seize the moment to demonstrate that she is upto the task for which the state was founded, namely to provide the political leadership and whatever military action necessary to safeguard her citizens from further abuse and bloodshed. If by doing so it sends the PA and the Hashemites into the dustbin of history, well, these should simply be seen as an added bonus of ending the latest terror war which should be recognized as being in no small part related to the actions taken by both of these enemies of Israel, for which Israel seems to tremble to be without.
When Israel finally does respond as needed to quell the violence, and she will have to do so to see the violence quelled, she will emerge stronger than before and better respected by her allies and better feared by her enemies, simply for having done what was needed at the hour it was needed. Should we be so fortunate to see the PA and the Hashemites fall as a consequence of Israel’s strong response, it will simply offer Israel and the entire region a greater opportunity to move forward towards a more peaceful future in the wake of the loss of these two iniquitous institutions, ie the PA and the Hashemites,
Peloni 3 young people and another man were killed as they enjoyed a meal in a restaurant. To proceed to deal with this, which seems very widespread, and not reported, what holds Israel back? What do the anti Netanyahu crowd say on this? What’s going on?
Netanyahu praises Jenin drone strike: ‘We settled the score with the element of surprise’
If this quote is accurately reported, it portrays a damning naivete about the objectives needed to return calm and to protect the citizens of the state. In fact the most damning part of this statement, is that whether it is accurately reported or not, it easily characterizes the policy thus far pursued. Ben Gvir and Kahana are correct. This is a job for the army, not to be dealt with as if it were a one-off attack. The attack in Eli is the latest of a wave of increasing violence, coordinated against Israel, to which a large scale response should be the answer chosen.