What is Bibi waiting for? (Or whom?)
What is Bibi waiting for? (Or whom?)
If you want to know WHAT THE HELL Bibi is doing to end the war, return the hostages, and/or step down, you will not like this answer.
The video of the five female hostages released yesterday by their families hit me a bit too close to home. The 20-year-olds served as taztpitaniot, or “observers”, on the army base on the Gaza rim, where many girls were killed while waiting for help to arrive that never came. Even though the tatzpis had been warning about an October 7 type of event for months and were actively ignored and even silenced often in grossly sexist ways, (“Your job is to use your eyes and not your brains,” girls were reportedly told by their superiors), and even though they were on the front lines of this dangerous border, these soldiers had no weapons on base as they were not trusted by the army, and they were left to their own devices. These smart, resilient young women were attacked not only by Hamas but also by their own people. They are presumed to be pregnant by murderous terrorists, and are now being left to die by our government. By our government. That has no plan or intention of ever getting them back. Which is why the families released this footage, in desperation, with the thought that maybe this will get someone in the government to take action.
Watch this video of the father of hostage Liri Elbag. Maybe grab your tissues first.
Our 20-year old daughter was also serving in tatzpi on October 7. She began her service on Feb 22, 2022, a date I can’t forget because we made her a “Twos-day” themed party. She served for a few months in this grueling job — 12-hour shifts of staring at a computer screen without being allowed to move your eyes even for a second off the screen, under pressure that those lost seconds may be the moment when terrorists get over the border. Then she did a commanders’ course and was told she would either serve on the base at the Gaza rim or at the Maccabim base close to home. My spouse and I were enthusiastically on the “close to home” team. I have spent many hours driving my other children to and from their bases in all corners of the country, including during wars to all kinds of locations, and I was totally ready to not do that again. “But it will be so boring,” she complained. I was like, Boring is so good. You have no idea how amazing boring is.
In the end the army decided for her. Maccabim. Close to home. Not Gaza.
Whew what a relief.
And then Oct 7 came. And the girls on the base she could have been on were butchered. Except for a few who ended up as hostages. And are still there. 230 days later.
(For the record, nothing about my daughter’s service after October 7 was “boring”. And I am incredibly proud of her as well as all her friends, many of whom have been to hell and back, and all of whom will carry the traumas of this war for a long time.)
The images of these girls being taken hostage — bloody, powerless, controlled by radical Hamas terrorists — are very hard to watch. They are kids. Young barely-adults who were just trying to do their job to protect their country with enormous responsibility under often terrible circumstances. And they are still there. In hell.
And this government clearly has no intention of ever getting them out.
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Netanyahu has had many opportunities to strike a deal. According to his own negotiators, he actively sabotages the hostage talks by creating unrealistic demands and moving the goal posts.
Remember how he once insisted that he could not agree to even a small pause in fighting in exchange for hostages? Well we have had pauses anyway. And no deal.
Remember how he insisted that we could not pull troops out of Gaza in exchange for hostages? Well we have pulled troops out of Gaza. And no deal.
Remember how he said he needs to kill the Hamas leadership? That it’s the most important thing? Well, that hasn’t happened. At all. The leaders are all alive and well. And still no deal.
Remember how often he talked about destroying Hamas? Even though so many people said that it’s not realistic or even doable? Well, guess what, Hamas isn’t even close to being destroyed. This week they are STILL launching rockets into Israel. Still.
It’s all been a ruse. All lies. Spin. Propaganda.
In fact, we now know for sure that rescuing hostages was never a goal of this war. Never. And it still isn’t.
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In all this fighting, the soldiers have rescued all told four hostages out of 250 over the course of 230 days. And accidentally killed another three because, you know, the soldiers weren’t actually looking for hostages at the time. Meanwhile, the bodies of hostages are piling up. The IDF has rescued more bodies than hostages. Let that sink in….
The only thing that got hostages back was negotiations. And the government isn’t even bothering to do that right now.
We need to face the facts: Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu has zero intention of getting the hostages back.
Members of his government have already been saying this out loud. Finance Minister Betzalel Smotrich has said already several times that the hostages are not important. Jewish Whatever Minister Orit Struck came out screaming against even the possibility of a hostage deal, saying, effectively, who cares about a few dozen hostages? She really said that. She said if the government makes a deal, it has no right to exist. An army brass guy said this week that we should expect the situation to take “years”.
Bibi’s own negotiators have been saying that he actively sabotages the negotiations.
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Meanwhile, as this war continues on indefinitely, with no real goals, no endgame, no timeline, and no sign of it even ending — IDF Chief of General Staff Herzi Halevi has been trying for weeks to get Bibi to stop the fighting, and has called out the “Sysiphean” task the army is now undertaking, and his fear that the army will be doing more of the same and going backwards into places that the IDF has already pulled out of — Bibi doesn’t care. He is so unmoved by these pleas that rumor has it Halevi is on the verge of an emotional breakdown.
Bibi is unmoved by the growing infuriated protest of Israelis. I belong to several groups of parents protesting the war, including an increasingly frustrated group called, “Parents of Combat Soldiers say ENOUGH!” in which 900 parents signed a petition calling for a cease fire and withdrawal from Gaza. Over the Yom Ha’atzmaut holiday, the group was protesting outside homes of government ministers. (I was standing outside Herzi Halevi’s house, which is how I heard the rumors about his emotional state…).
This group, which includes many parents of wounded soldiers, has now started protesting outside the Tel Hashomer hospital, dressed up as wounded soldiers. It’s a bit too on-the-nose for me, but the desperation gives you some idea of what some parents are going through.
It’s quite a big deal for parents of soldiers to turn on the government. In Israel, army service is a kind of sacred cow. Heralded as an honor, as a duty, as historically and spiritually significant. Holy. Untouchable.
No more.
In the parent’s petition, they write that they “no longer trust the IDF” to value the lives of their children. That’s huge.
Indeed, there have been many reports of the army making bad decisions that risk the soldiers’ lives unnecessarily for the sake of politics or photo ops. (Some of these reports I have heard from soldiers I know and love sitting in my living room.)
And then there are soldiers who refuse to do this. Who would rather go to prison than to participate in all this.
And I haven’t even mentioned what the soldiers have been doing for the past seven months in Gaza. I can’t say it out loud in the same sentence in which we are talking about our kids. It is way too hard and painful for me to face head on. But it’s deep in my heart and we are all going to have to deal with this eventually.
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I feel all this spilling out of me this morning. I haven’t blogged in weeks, ever since the beginning of the campus protests. The protests had a chilling effect on me, making me a bit nervous about what I want to say and how it will all be taken. Because in theory, I agree with the idea that Israel needs to stop this war. Period. We need to negotiate for a cease fire and release of hostages. To end the suffering and inhumanity on all sides. To help us all get started on the work of rebuilding and healing. Instead of this endless, endless bloodshed. Endless. At first I thought that these ideas were driving the campus protests. But then it soon became clear that the protests were being driven by something else, and weren’t even necessarily about Gazans or the campuses or the students but about something else going on outside the campuses. And then I decided I can’t say anything at all about anything until the dust settles. After all, the last thing I want in my life right now is to side with antisemitism. But that’s tricky. Because today there sometimes seems to be a fine line — or none at all — between calling for an end to the war in Gaza and calling for an end to Israel or even to Jews. Sometimes at least. And wow I do not want to step in that quagmire.
But today, I’m realizing that I don’t have the luxury of not speaking out. Because the dust may never settle and we are still in Gaza and at war and our kids are being used as cannon fodder and the hostages are being left to die and with every day of this, the people of Gaza are in danger and the Jews of the world are in danger, and our unbearably corrupt government doesn’t care at all.
The Prime Minister of Israel is all about himself and none of these other things are his concern at all. He doesn’t care about kids on campus or American Jews. He doesn’t care about the hostages. Or the soldiers. Or the soldier parents. Or the hundreds of thousands of protesters screaming their heads off for something to change. And certainly not about the Gazans, whose humanity isn’t even a blip on the radar.
Bibi Netanyahu cares only about himself. And staying in power. Period.
So I need to keep writing. Because if we don’t speak up, this will just go on forever. And I can’t quietly participate in that.
And also because I have something I want to say from all of this that has been brewing in me for a while.
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Here’s the thing. I realized something recently. It’s not just that Bibi doesn’t care if the war lasts forever and if Jews of the world are in danger. He actually WANTS that. He actually seriously wants American Jews to be scared. Because the more they are scared and screaming about antisemitism, the more they help silence the opposition.
I saw this last week in a head-spinning experience. I was conducting interviews for a story I had been assigned about American Jewish Zionist influencers. In one interview, a 30-something blogger was talking about the campus protests and how they are driven by Iran and by the “woke progressive left” that have infected American culture and how she’s been warning about this for decades (!) and how the movement has ruined her life (!) and gotten her cancelled, even though she said she is considered one of the top writers on the subject in the world. I found her rambling, ranting, self-contradictory, and incoherent. And at times racist and maybe homophobic. (After all, the BLM and LGBTQ communities are part of the Iranian-backed antisemitic progressive left threatening her life….or something like that). And as I’m trying to follow her sentences, I couldn’t help wondering how this helps Israel. So I subscribed to her blog. There she writes that the Palestinians are all lying and that Israel has never done anything wrong, and she actively tries to disprove that tens of thousands of Gazans have been killed by the IDF since October 7. So I decided not to include her interview in my story because she was impossible to follow, she was full of hollow assertions, and she brought no evidence of her assertions. And mostly, I felt like this is not a person who I would choose to represent a positive approach to Israel and Zionism.
And then a few days later she announced that she had been chosen by the Israeli government to join a mission to Israel for American Zionist influencers. Apparently her third all-expenses-paid trip to Israel. By Bibi’s government. So she can tell his story to the world.
I was like, WOW so THAT is how the government is spending its money while claiming it is out of funds for displaced families from the Gaza rim.
Yeah. So this is where we are today. Hostage families are being beaten up by the police. Soldier parents are desperately trying to save their kids lives. But ranting American bloggers who call Gazans liars are given a podium and a crown.
Just so we know who we’re dealing with.
Another one of my interviewees, also heralded as an American Zionist influencer with a paid podcasting job coming out of Jerusalem, is a self-described Black American Jewish conservative who is anti-BLM and pro-Trump. When I asked her who she was supporting in November, she said, “Well obviously, I can’t vote for Biden.” I really thought that sentence might have had a completely different ending. When I asked her why she felt that way, she said that Trump was better for the Black community than Biden. (!) Then I pointed out that, as a Zionist, she should perhaps appreciate that Biden is the best American president for Israel in generations. She said, “But Trump moved the embassy!” I said, you know, that really has no real impact. Like, who cares where the embassy is when we are in this war and hostages? She had no response, though her podcast later hosted Elise Stephanik and called her a great hero for the Jews, ignoring the fact that Stefanik is an appallingly heartless and horrible Trump patsy who happened to scream the loudest in Congress about campus antisemitism. That doesn’t make her good for the Jews or good for Israel. But my interviewee — like so many other Jews right now — is having a hard time seeing their way out of their narrow tribalist fears and are even eager to have Trump back in power just to confirm their own bias. So that happened.
Anyway, my interviewee somehow got the impression that I enjoyed our exchange and missed the part where I was tearing my hair out. She was excited to be in my article — although she wasn’t in it in the end. I’m not giving a platform to incoherent Trump supporters just because they call themselves Zionists. My page, my rules.
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And that’s when it all hit me. I finally put the whole story together. This head-spinning crazy reality we are living in. With endless bloodshed, an impotent democracy, and the absence of all reason, common sense, and humanity — coming at us from all sides, it seems.
Bibi is actually trying to help Trump win in November.
It’s not just that Bibi is happy that Jews are screaming about antisemitism. He is also thrilled that these campus protests are working to make Biden lose his grip on the Democratic party. He is happy to let this go on and help get Trump elected in November.
I suddenly realized that this is all part of Bibi’s deliberate plan.
Bibi thrives on fear and chaos.
The more the better.
Bibi Netanyahu will throw everyone under the bus to stay in power.
He is throwing the hostages under the bus. And their families.
He is throwing soldiers under the bus.
He is throwing Israeli protesters under the bus, and at times in jail.
He is throwing American Jews under the bus.
He is certainly throwing Gazans under the bus.
And he is throwing Biden under the bus. Eagerly.
And democracy. The hell with democracy. It can die along with everyone else.
Bibi much prefers Trump. Absolutely. Mostly because wannabe dictators prefer each other’s company. Bibi sees in Trump a kindred spirit. They will ultimately have each other’s backs. It doesn’t matter if Trump makes flippant antisemitic remarks or occasionally says he doesn’t actually like Bibi. That’s nothing. The guys are dictator-bros, there to help each other into power and help each other stay there. Like a secret club.
And so I think that this is actually his deliberate plan. Bibi is hoping that he can stave off all the protesters in Israel through November, until Trump wins, and then he’s in the clear. Then he can do whatever he wants without anyone trying to hold him back. By then even the Hague won’t matter because they will all be busy trying to grapple with the end of Democracy as we know it, coming from the USA and spreading globally. The end of an era.
That’s where we are headed. I feel like I cracked the case.
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And yet, I also feel a bit powerless in bringing about an alternative ending.
But that’s why I decided to start writing again. I feel like, I need to say these things out loud. So we all know what part we are playing in this
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