What just happened on Saturday, October 7, in Israeli cities on the border with Gaza, in towns like Sderot or Netivot, the kibbutzim, the military bases, is a real disaster for the Israeli army and the Israeli government. The word catastrophe is probably far too weak. This is a turning point in Israel’s history. Fifty years, almost to the day, after the army was surprised by the Egyptians and Syrians during the Yom Kippur War, it never saw Hamas’ deadly attack coming. As I write these lines, Israelis are stunned, paralyzed, they don’t understand. Because the catastrophic result of the attack is here: hundreds of murdered Israelis, civilians and soldiers, two thousand wounded, many of them in a very serious, even desperate condition, streaming into hospitals in the south, and dozens of civilians and soldiers kidnapped and forcibly taken to Gaza .
The day is not far off when the Israelis will take stock, demand explanations, determine responsibility and bring charges. Of course, we will first put the spotlight on the famous IDF intelligence services, which understood nothing and was unable to analyze what was happening on the other side of the border, while obvious signs pointed to the impending attack: concentrations of terrorists, cars and Motorcycles, Hamas military preparations. How could a scenario so similar to the 1973 attack happen again? It’s just unbelievable, unthinkable. In some ways, what happened on Saturday is even more serious than the Yom Kippur offensive, since Arab armies were unable to occupy Jewish sites until their residents had been evacuated.
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But apart from the negligence of the army and the military chiefs who will fall, the Netanyahu government will soon no longer be able to escape its terrible responsibility for this catastrophe. An exhausted prime minister who has become completely incapable of acting sensibly, a government with ministers whose incompetence has long been evident and, above all, which has, stupidly, for many months been obsessed with a judicial revolution that would undermine the balance of power and Israeli democracy. After such intense trauma and such evidence of incompetence, I believe that all Israelis, not just liberal circles, pro-democracy demonstrators and the center-left opposition, will demand political accountability and not receive any gifts. We must hope that this Netanyahu government is just a bad memory, that there will be new elections and that a government consisting only of sensible and responsible people will finally be installed.
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