I think it will help Netanyahu. 9/11 helped Bush, even though it happened on his watch. And even though it was also a gross failure of intelligence, and was stuff that Gore had been paying attention to as VP, and that Bush had trouble comprehending (an attack that wasn’t organized by a nation.)
Bibi’s aggressive Palestinian agenda has been unpopular with Israeli liberals. Now they will get behind it. And just generally, in times of war, people get behind their leader.
Whether that leads to long-term popularity depends on how the war goes, how much it becomes blamed on crappy or ignored intel under Netanyahu’s watch, and how much the general Israeli narrative turns into “They attacked us for no reason” versus “We backed them so far into a hopeless corner they had no choice but to strike back”.
I’m in no position to handicap any of those trades. But I bet those trades will be the ones that matter.
I live in the US, so take what I say with a grain of salt compared to an Israeli on the ground. However, that’s not the sense I get at all.
You’re underestimating how big of a deal this was. This wasn’t 9/11. This wasn’t a terrorist attack - a quick punch past our defenses that did a bunch of damage before anyone could react, like a suicide bomber or a plane flying into a building. This was roving bands of armed men murdering and raping Israelis with impunity. Like @Alessan said in the other thread, this was a pogrom.
Now if this was some kind of bolt from the blue unforeseeable scenario then this kind of failure could somehow be forgiven. But at the end of July, in a pretty unprecedented move, Bibi got warned, by numerous sources, that his nonsense with the judicial reform bill was hurting the country’s readiness to respond to exactly this type of situation.
Some choice quotes with my own translation:
It is possible that Hamas would have launched this attack even without the major crisis in Israel, that which began with the attempt at judicial reform by Netanyahu, Rotman, and Levin. But it is extremely doubtful that Israel would have been so vulnerable without this disastrous initiative.
As Iran mustered its forces, Hezbollah continued its preparation for conflict, and in the Gaza strip Hamas built up in secret for this mass slaughter - the [Israeli] government dealt mainly with the following issues: will the Haredim be excused from military service? Will Levin accept the proposed changes to the committee to appoint judges. In the Classical Literature it is written: “They who the gods wish to destroy, they first drive mad.” [Netanyahu’s] government led a mad dance while its enemies waited in ambush in the darkness.
Israel is not America, and this was not 9/11. A better comparison is the Yom Kippur War of 1973 for which Golda Meir was absolutely blamed. It cost her the government. And the scale of this fuckup is monumentally greater than anything that happened in 73.
The comments on hebrew YNET articles trend rightwards, far more than the site itself or (in my experience) the general population. But there are multiple comments from right wingers who agree with how monumentally Bibi fucked up and that he must be replaced.
Tearfully and with a broken heart,
Every word [of the article] is etched in stone and with a heavy heart I say, we failed, we failed, we failed, I am sorry
I have been remembering Golda Meir the last day. She could even have been said to have done her best at that time. What can be said about Netanyahu and his government won’t be that charitable even in 50 years.
There are talks of a Unity Government that will involve a coalition between Netanyahu and the opposition (without the far right parties Netanyahu currently draws support from) to deal with the war. I think Netanyahu’s place in history with regards to this conflict will hang on whether he genuinely works with the oposition in this way. If he drags his heels or tries to leverage this too hard, I think it will backfire on him. If he genuinely puts country first, that will help his legacy. But it won’t save him when the war is over. He’s done.
Yeah, in the case of Israel, “you had ONE job” is something on which to call out whoever’s in government more so than perhaps any other country. Being perceived as that you spent your energies primarily seeking to shut down your critics, entrench yourself in power and pander to single-issue fringes of your “base” is not going to be a good look. Even those who wanted you to do that are not going to take kindly to having failed at what was expected as Mission One, I should hope.
Would want to think that if he tried to define “Unity” as “you sit there and back ME on everything or I’ll denounce you for weakening us” he’d have a hard time. But as you said we are looking from outside.
Yeah. This isnt some rockets launched in retaliation for a Israeli retaliation for some rockets launched, ad infinitum.
The equivalent would be Mexican Cartels coming into Texas. killing hundreds of Americans, raping, looting and maiming even more people. America would go apeshit.
I am not that familiar with Israeli politics or with Netanyahu beyond the thin content reported in the US, but Netanyahu seems Trumpy enough to pin this on someone else and throw them under the bus, rather than take responsibility himself. And while having various parties coalesce in times of crisis seems normal, Netanyahu seems like the kind of character that would interpret that coalescing as support for himself and his own pet policies. Again, looking from afar.
Another day, another roast of Bibi in Ynet’s opinion section.
Hebrew, again, but I’ll just translate the headline and blurb.
Netanyahu is the main culprit. He must go.
He nurtured Hamas, who concluded that the warnings were a conspiracy against him, that enabled his mad supporters to fire up the West Bank and Temple Mount. Golda [Meir, referring to 1973]'s behavior pales in comparison to his.
The article basically says “*Netanyahu is relying on the Israeli tendency to come together and show solidarity in a moment of crisis. This is a noble tendency but it has allowed Netanyahu to slip through past screw-ups and failures in his very long career with no consequences. This time his behavior was too negligent and the consequences too severe to allow that to happen”.
In the short run, it’ll strengthen Bibi. But in the long run, I think he will be unraveled.
Bibi’s message was that a strong hard-right stance would protect Israel. Not only has the worst attack in 50 years happened under his watch, but it was partly his decision to alienate the intelligence communities and cause bickering in the government that has handicapped Israeli intel that might have alerted such an attack.
Well, it’s the internet outlet for Yediot Aharonot which is the newspaper that Bibi allegedly got favorable articles from in (one of) his corruption scandals.
They aren’t generally fawning over Netanyahu or anything but they do trend a bit right I’d say.
Yeah, and it’s not like Ynet is slavishly pro-Likud. They’re plenty critical of Likud and Bibi. There was a specific article (or pair of articles actually) published in Yediot Aharonot that was favorable to Bibi at a key moment and there are allegations he worked with the owner of the paper to ensure the timing on that (and they appear pretty well substantiated), but that specific transaction doesn’t mean that the paper is always Likud friendly. (If they were, Bibi wouldn’t have needed to resort to sketchy methods to get favorable coverage, right?).
My sense is that Ynet leans slightly right relative to the Israeli political spectrum. But according to Ground News they lean slightly left (relative to America’s spectrum).
It looks like the unity government idea has run into road blocks.
[Again, ignore the preview]
Money quote: He also called on the opposition parties to form a broad coalition government, after an attempt by the two biggest opposition party leaders failed on Saturday.