Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

Att: brooklyn13 (you can still read) -- As furious protesters take to the streets, Netanyahu may well have reached his political dead-end

'Inside Iran: The proxy war on the brink of erupting | Four Corners"

Related: Biden has been bad for Palestinians. Trump would be worse.
[...]Everything we know about the former president, from his extensive policy record on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict .. https://www.vox.com/2018/11/20/18079996/israel-palestine-conflict-guide-explainer .. to his top advisers’ statements on the war, suggests he would have no qualms about aligning himself completely with Israel’s far-right government. While Biden has pushed Israel behind the scenes on issues like food and medical aid to civilians — with some limited success — it’s hard to imagine Trump even lifting a finger in defense of Gazan civilians whom he wants to ban from entering the United States .. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/16/us/politics/trump-gaza-refugees-travel-ban.html .
P - The Israeli right understands this and pines for Trump In an early February interview with the Wall Street Journal, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir made his views quite clear.
P - “Instead of giving us his full backing, Biden is busy with giving humanitarian aid and fuel [to Gaza], which
goes to Hamas,” Ben-Gvir said. “If Trump was in power, the U.S. conduct would be completely different.”
P - Expert observers have a similar take. In a recent New Republic essay lambasting Biden’s Gaza policy, two former high-level officials — American David Rothkopf and Israeli Alon Pinkas — argue that the difference between him and Trump is still massive.
P - “Whatever our critique of the Biden administration’s Israel-Gaza policy to date, the only hope of undoing recent mistakes and achieving positive results lies with maintaining America’s current leadership,” they argue. “Donald Trump, as we have both written elsewhere, would be many times worse, many times more accommodating to the extremist elements in Netanyahu’s government.”
P - This is not meant as a bank-shot defense of Biden. The current president should not be judged by the standards of his predecessor; there’s far more he could have done, and could still do, to help pull Israel’s government off its deadly and self-destructive path.
P - But with one of these two men almost certain to be inaugurated next January, it’s worth being clear-eyed about their actual policy differences. And the truth is this: Biden is a traditional pro-Israel American centrist, while Trump has openly and publicly aligned himself with the Israeli right wing. Those are two very different worldviews that would yield very different policies.
P - In fact, they already have.
P - “The most pro-Israel president ever”
P - Donald Trump loves deals...
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=173961023

Alon Pinkas

Israelis have kept their contempt for the prime minister in check for the sake of the war effort. Is his time finally up?

Tue 3 Sep 2024 18.00 AEST
Last modified on Wed 4 Sep 2024 00.17 AEST


Protesters in Tel Aviv, 1 September 2024. Photograph: Eyal Warshavsky/SOPA Images/REX/Shutterstock

All links

Despondent and livid Israelis, exuding deep anger and fury, have taken to the streets. Once it became known on Saturday that Hamas had executed six hostages, Israelis staged the largest demonstration against the government since the war in Gaza began. Those hostages could have been saved had Benjamin Netanyahu assented to a hostage deal. But he didn’t. In fact, he actively undermined the possibility for months, evading and reneging constantly.

The 350,000 who protested in Tel Aviv were the equivalent of about 2.4 million Britons or 12 million Americans gathering in the same place for the same cause. Immediately, the question of whether this was a political inflection point for Netanyahu was raised.

The answer is possibly – but that depends on how sustainable these demonstrations are. Do they reflect a critical mass of disgust that would translate into political turmoil? Will the defence minister, Yoav Gallant, the Israel .. https://www.theguardian.com/world/israel .. Defense Forces top brass and the intelligence community’s frustrations with Netanyahu fuel more demonstrations? We can’t know for sure yet, but if so, Netanyahu will face a major political predicament, one that he has somehow managed to avoid for months.

However angry Israelis felt, the murder of the hostages was tragically predictable. Gallant warned that this would happen, as did the head of the Mossad and the head of the General Security Service, the Shabak. Yet Netanyahu never wanted a hostage deal that included a ceasefire. He does not want any deal that he cannot label “total victory” – a bogus and unattainable goal he set to make sure the war lingers on.

Furthermore, his flirtations with escalation, combined with prolonging the war in Gaza, are glaring indications that his broader interests prevent such a deal. He wants to promote the narrative that this is not a war limited to Gaza, but a broad conflict with Iran and its proxies. This puts the 7 October debacle in a wider context and, in his mind, ameliorates his responsibility.

The 7 October terror attack by Hamas was the worst day in Israel’s history, a calamity of historic proportions in every respect: policy, deterrence, security, intelligence, reputation and national pride.

Netanyahu, who vainly branded himself as “Mr Security” .. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/21/the-netanyahu-doctrine-how-israels-longest-serving-leader-reshaped-the-country-in-his-image , a world leader in counter-terrorism and a self-ordained saviour of western civilisation against “Islamofascism”, was revealed to be anything but. He refused to take responsibility, defied critics who questioned his lax and flawed policies and evaded accountability. Instead, he blamed the military, the intelligence organs, the “liberal elites” and anyone else he could think of for his failure.

----------
[Insert: brooklyn13, Still stuck in stupid, eh -- Road to Redemption
How Israel's War Against Hamas Turned Into a Springboard for Jewish Settlement in Gaza
[...]American Leaders Should Stop Debasing Themselves on Israel
[...]Add it all up and you see a reckless act of economic, military and moral overstretch — committing seven million Jews to control more than seven million Palestinians .. https://www.timesofisrael.com/jews-now-a-minority-in-israel-and-the-territories-demographer-says/ .. (including two million Israeli Arabs) between the river and the sea in perpetuity.
-----
[You're right there Mr. Friedman, just you could have given Shimon Peres credit for saying it long ago. See:
brooklyn13, There are responses to attacks, and responses. I'll remind you of positions
of two very prominent and respected Israel leaders. One late, one still with us.
Ehud Barak blames Binyamin Netanyahu for “the greatest failure in Israel’s history”
[...]As Peres told them so many decades ago:
P - That is, Peres thinks that the Likud Party and its partners are living in a fool’s paradise if they believe they can annex the whole of Palestinian territory without getting the Palestinians as Israeli citizens eventually. And then, Peres says, no more Israel as a Jewish state.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=174298978
[...]
Reminder: Related: Ehud Barak: the military mast aring a US television interview last year that he would "probably" strive for nuclear weapons if he were in Iran's position.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=173530549
P - With more -- https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=174402440
P - Only a sentence more here -- https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=174402925
P - brooklyn13, We all feel Israel's pain. Just both Peres then and Barak now were and are able to have a much
more realistic look at it than you are willing to do. They as some of us here today also feel Palestinian pain.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=174567534]
P - That would be madness in a time of peace. In a time of war — a low-grade three-front war that could become a high-grade three-front war any day — it is insane. Israel is increasingly alone, because what ally would want to partner with that agenda?
P - And that is why I agree with every word that former Prime Minister Ehud Barak wrote in Haaretz .. https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2024-06-13/ty-article-opinion/.premium/israel-must-oust-its-failed-government-before-it-sinks-into-the-moral-abyss/00000190-1285-d621-abfa-5bb5e9840000 .. last Thursday: Israel faces “the most serious and dangerous crisis in the country’s history. It began on Oct. 7 with the worst failure in Israel’s history. And it continued with a war that, despite the courage and sacrifice of soldiers and officers, appears to be the least successful war in its history, due to the strategic paralysis in the country’s leadership.”
P - Israel, added Barak, a former army chief of staff, is “risking a multifront war that would include Iran and its proxies. And all this is happening while in the background the judicial coup continues, with its goal of establishing a racist, ultranationalist, messianic and benighted religious dictatorship.”
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=174765317]
----------

Given that in the nine months before 7 October, Israel was engulfed in mass demonstrations against Netanyahu’s anti-democratic constitutional coup, there was an expectation that the war and Netanyahu’s ineptness would precipitate large-scale protests.

That didn’t happen. First, because the devastation, agony and humiliation of 7 October had paralysed a dejected public. Second, in the Israeli patriotic mindset, when the country is at war, you do not demonstrate. Third, the Israeli public justified the war, desperately wanting to exact vengeance and gullibly assuming that Netanyahu would willingly resign at some point. Fourth, an opposition alliance, led by Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, temporarily joined a “war cabinet” to lend their experience and balance the extreme right wing.

But this reasoning has proven to be hollow. The devastation has lasted 11 months, when it should have been clear after three or four that the war was being intentionally prolonged. The fact of Netanyahu’s incompetent leadership should have overridden the noble practice of “not protesting when the guns are firing”.

Gantz’s gracious willingness to contribute his experience resulted in him conveniently staying in the cabinet for eight months, during which he did nothing, added no value and rarely challenged Netanyahu. Instead, he provided Netanyahu with ample and enduring political cover and, by extension, convinced many Israelis that if he was in the cabinet and the war was going on, there was no point in demonstrating.

That’s exactly what Netanyahu banked on. His plethora of foreign policy failures, such as Iran, Gaza and relations with the US, and domestic inadequacies – a failed constitutional coup, the high cost of living, social strife – should not conceal the fact that he is a far savvier and more cunning politician than any of his rivals, individually or combined. Forming a coalition glued together by populism and demagoguery and managing to survive are the only things he is good at.

However, there is evidence that he has reached a political dead-end. A consistent 70% of Israelis .. https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-810113 .. in recent polling want his resignation. So, it seems clear, does the US administration. Netanyahu’s mismanagement of the hostages’ fate may have been one manipulation too far – even for him.

Alon Pinkas served as Israel’s consul general in New York from 2000 to 2004. He is now a columnist for Haaretz

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/sep/03/israel-protesters-netanyahu-gaza-war

So brooklyn13, there is an avenue for you to whine and bitch
and defend Israel during the next two weeks. Go to it, son.