“Whoever makes the decisions concerning these laws will bear responsibility,” Channel 12 military analyst Nir Dvori said yesterday. “They will not be able to say, ‘I was not aware, I did not know.’”
That is wrong. Even if disaster strikes, government leaders will say that no one told them, no one woke them in the middle of the night, and no one warned them.
I know this because that is what already happened. The October 7 massacre took place nearly three years ago. Afterward, politicians dodged all accountability with brazen audacity and without a single ounce of conscience or responsibility in their bodies. They said they did not know, that no one had told them.
Even though they were told, warned, and alerted.
IDF chief of staff Herzi Halevi pleaded with them to listen to him, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refused. Senior security officials wanted to meet with Netanyahu together to highlight the severity of the situation, and he refused. Coalition members refused to listen to military representatives who came to the Knesset. Military intelligence sent three warning letters to the prime minister, who dismissed them with contempt.
Political leaders were warned on Oct. 7, claimed it was an 'exaggeration'
When Yinon Magal asked Netanyahu about the warning of a multi-front war, he said that “there is a great deal of exaggeration.” The head of the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) personally warned him about war, but he did not listen. Avigdor Liberman warned him. Yair Lapid warned him. Gadi Eisenkot warned him. And he did nothing. Netanyahu put on his rose-colored glasses, and the government continued sailing like the Titanic toward the iceberg.
All the commentators, not only Dvori, believe that after all of these warnings, the government will no longer be able to dodge accountability. I say that they will. These politicians have a metaphorical laundry machine that washes away responsibility while simultaneously smearing others and shifting the blame onto them.
We can see it. It is here, rattling away without pause, constructing indictments and conspiracy theories against everyone, except for those who are actually responsible. Except for Mr. Security, who held the wheel and determined policy for a generation.
Current government may have skewed priorities
This month, I mark 40 years of working in journalism. I never believed we would reach this point, when an elected government defects from its responsibilities to the people and becomes a “government of the bloc,” attacking the state itself. This is an immune system failure, an autoimmune attack by the body against itself. It is a sustained, powerful attack, devoid of restraint or shame.
Look at all the lackeys surrounding Netanyahu, who leads this gang, and ask: what has happened to these people? How can a nonentity like Boaz Bismuth, who has done nothing in his life other than blather and flatter, attack the chief of staff over his warning letter and claim that it was sent too late, even though he knows that representatives of that same chief of staff sat before the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee with all the warnings, all the data, and all the red flags?
Look at Defense Minister Israel Katz, the low-skilled political operator who abandons the IDF to fade and falter, while prioritizing the interests of party members over those of reservists and combat soldiers.
Look at Likud as a whole. At the politicians who continue fighting over reserved slots, favors, and the spoils of government while the country falls apart and the public watches in despair.
There was once such a thing as shame. People did not take pride in this kind of conduct conduct. They were afraid to leave their homes or be seen in public. Today, even that is gone. They are proud of themselves. They carry their lies with honor and their disgrace with pride. They believe that nothing can ever shake them. Just as they believed on the eve of October 7, 2023.