Liel Leibovitz
Tablet, Sept. 5, 2024
“#BringThemHomeNow demonstrates just how hollow and inflamed Israeli public discourse has become. To whom, exactly, is this exhortation addressed?”
Tens of thousands of protesters were swarming the streets of Tel Aviv on Sunday, calling on all restaurants, bars, and shops to shutter in solidarity. Many did. Highway 4, the major coastal route that runs from the Lebanese border down to the cusp of Gaza, was blocked in several locations by protestors setting tires on fire and confronting the police. The Histadrut, the country’s largest labor union, declared a general strike, which meant closing schools, businesses, and other essential institutions. Outraged, a slew of municipalities declared the strike illegitimate, with mayors threatening to take action against anyone who doesn’t show up for work. Although Histadrut abided by the Labor Court’s order to end the strike by Monday afternoon, the battle lines were drawn: town against town, brother against brother.
What are Israelis fighting about?
It’s a complicated question, but it is best answered, perhaps, by an editorial Sunday morning in Haaretz, the broadsheet beloved by Israel’s elites, accusing Israel’s prime minister of failing to do enough to release the six Israeli hostages executed earlier this week in Rafah. “Hamas may have pulled the trigger,” ran one key sentence, “but it was Netanyahu who sealed their fate.” In this telling, Netanyahu, succumbing to the far-right extremists in his coalition, refused to engage Hamas in fruitful negotiations, sacrificing the lives of the hostages in order to preserve his precarious coalition.
This line of argument was also echoed by Barak Ravid, the former Haaretz writer who is now an Axios and CNN contributor as well as a favorite of the Biden administration. “We warned Netanyahu and the cabinet ministers about this exact scenario,” a so-called senior Israeli official told Ravid, “but they wouldn’t listen.”
Never mind that the Israeli government sent delegation after delegation to attempt and negotiate with Hamas. Never mind that it was the terror group, not Netanyahu, who turned down iteration after iteration of any possible deal. And never mind that Netanyahu’s key objection, according to ample leaks from his security cabinet, was Hamas’ demand that Israel relinquish control over the Philadelphi Corridor, the strategically crucial strip that runs along Gaza’s border with Egypt and therefore a key asset for anyone hoping to smuggle in supplies, weapons, and ammunition. All such nuance was lost when the masses took to the streets.… [To read the full article, click here]
