Ravit Hecht, a columnist for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, strongly criticized the disputes taking place inside Israel regarding the raging war in the Gaza Strip and its repercussions on the occupying state.
She said that the Israelis could mock the minister in the mini-war council, Benny Gantz, who saved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he appeared to be about to fall after the attack by the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) on October 7.
They can also mock the lack of “political sense” among Israel’s leaders, or be suspicious of Gantz’s intention to become prime minister.
However, Hecht believes that things are different. She wrote in her article that the problem is not with Gantz himself, nor with the “stupid” quarrels between opposition leaders that allowed the ruling Likud bloc to take the lead in the opinion polls despite the state of chaos prevailing in its corridors.
In this regard, she says, “When a society, or at least a large part of it, once again – as reflected in the latest opinion polls – chooses a prime minister whose women have been raped and whose children have been kidnapped, and who leads them to bloodshed, diplomatic isolation, economic stagnation, and a culture of corruption, criminality, ignorance, and backwardness, when a society extends… At least a large part of it is to abandon the hostages and their relatives and permit acts of violence against them.” The blame, then, does not fall on Gantz, nor on the Minister in the War Council, Gadi Eisenkot, nor on the demonstrations against them that bring the extremists back into the arms of Netanyahu again.”
But where does the problem lie then? The problem is in Israeli society itself, according to Hecht, who believes that all these manifestations are “a pathological condition of a rotting society that is stupidly and madly rushing towards oblivion and destruction.”
She adds that when anyone who calls himself a “Zionist” and “right-wing to the core” supports the prime minister, during whose long reign Israel lost two territories – while the war he is waging against Gaza does not achieve any of its goals – this cannot be explained by ideological reasons. As the article put it. “It is an incurable disease with no hope of recovery, and it may affect those who do not want to be cured.”
She concludes that the war may actually be lost, and therefore, in her opinion, it is better for the Israelis to spend their energy on survival plans rather than drowning in a “sea of despair,” as she puts it.
