On October 8, as the nearly 10 million Israelis began to realize that the Hamas attack the day before had been the deadliest day in the country’s 75-year history, Gideon Avital-Eppstein stood alone on Kaplan Boulevard with three banners in Tel Aviv. The slogans were “Bibi [el primer ministro, Benjamín Netanyahu] is responsible,” “Out of our lives and our dead,” and “It’s time.” The latter was a response to “It is not the time,” the consensus formula every time someone calls for Netanyahu’s head because of the enormous security fiasco that enabled the attack, his policies toward Hamas for more than a decade, and his refusal to do so Chanting “Mea Culpa” as the military leaders assume their responsibilities one by one.
Despite the growing and deep dissatisfaction with Netanyahu, the majority of Israelis insist on postponing the guilt debate “until the war is over” (another of the most commonly heard phrases today), because it is important that the leadership remains stable in the next war a few months. According to a poll released by the Dialogue Center five days after the attack, 56% of the population believe he should resign after the offensive in Gaza ends, including 28% of those who voted for parties in the coalition government in November. A poll published last week by the newspaper Maariv also shows that 80% of Israelis want Netanyahu to assume his responsibilities now, including as many as 69% of those who supported him in the last election. In the event of an election, his Likud party would advance from 32 to 19 of a total of 120 seats.
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Avital-Eppstein, 71, doesn’t want to wait. And he is no longer alone. Their initiative grew exponentially until, on Saturday evening, hundreds of people gathered in front of the Ministry of Defense in Tel Aviv with chants and banners such as “Bibi, terrorist for the security of Israel” or “You are an existential threat to Israel” or “You have Hamas fed to win elections.”
Demonstration against Netanyahu in Tel Aviv, on Saturday.Álvaro García
The demand remains a minority and is seen by many as premature, inappropriate or disrespectful to the suffering of the victims. But it is increasingly present: on stickers in the streets, on posters hanging on the bridges on the main road between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv or in the “Bibi, go home!” that an older woman spontaneously shouts and with it the silence at a rally in support of the relatives of the 230 hostages in Gaza. And especially on the internet with countless angry TikTok videos and an online petition for Netanyahu to “take responsibility and resign.” The goal is to reach one million signatures, i.e. more than 10% of the country’s population. This Sunday there were already more than 150,000.
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Avital-Eppstein, historian, author and veteran of the Yom Kippur War (1973), argues that trust is more important than stability today. “Especially when we don’t know whether we are at the end of the beginning or the beginning of the end,” he explains in the midst of the demonstrators. Netanyahu has “done everything possible to destroy Israel as we knew it,” he believes, and believes that a leader who “only cares about the well-being of the state” is more important than ever, as no one doubts that Golda Meir did this during the war. of Yom Kippur (he eventually resigned due to previous mistakes found by an investigative commission), and not “for his personal interests,” like Netanyahu, whom the office is protecting from the three trials in which he is accused.
The protector of Israel
This is emphasized by Yair Golán, the general commander of the reserve and former deputy economic minister of the left-wing pacifist party Meretz, whom many greet with admiration on the street in Tel Aviv: He rescued the uniform from the closet to run to get young people from a rave party that turned into a massacre. She calls on Netanyahu to resign immediately and to rebuild Israel based on its “historic values.” “I’m not a historian, but I’ve been in the army for 38 years and I can’t remember a country that fought well without trusting its leader,” he says.
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Avital-Eppstein recalls that in the middle of World War II, Winston Churchill also succeeded British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who was discredited because he had championed contemporary art against the Nazis. The historical comparison is often heard today because Netanyahu (the leader who has ruled Israel the longest) has built his career on the image of an effective economic manager and a tough man who does not negotiate with Israel’s security. “How would you like to be remembered?” a journalist asked him seven years ago. “As protector of Israel. “That’s enough for me,” he replied.
The newspaper library leaves it in a very poor state these days. This is the case with a video from 2008 circulating on networks and WhatsApp groups in which Netanyahu stated in parliament that Ehud Olmert would remain prime minister (after a critical report on the war with Hezbollah two years earlier). equates to “give a new ship”. to the captain of the Titanic so that “the same one who failed can fix the situation.”
Demonstration against Netanyahu in Tel Aviv.Álvaro García
Noam Gidron, associate professor at the Department of Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who has analyzed phenomena of social division, recalls that Israel is reaching this crisis in a context of unprecedented “affective polarization” and that Netanyahu “cannot be invisible.” He is considered “the person responsible,” even though he has been in power almost continuously since 2009. “It is true that he still has a camp that supports him, but we have not seen the phenomenon that normally occurs in the event of war and that would be expected,” he explains on the phone. This refers to the instinctive increase in support for the government that is brought about by crises or war conflicts and is usually referred to in political science as the “rally around the flag.”
The main national satirical television program, Eretz Nehederet, parodied him mercilessly last week. He began his speech to the nation with a sentence in which it seemed as if he was taking responsibility and then said that he was taking the afternoon off with his wife Sara because it was very difficult to find out that Hamas exists – whose name he has to read – and that it has been firing rockets against Israel for years.
Deleted tweet
If the program reveals the extent of Netanyahu’s discredit, even as the war puts aside many political differences, the mess he got into on Sunday shows his political weakness. The reason: a tweet – which he eventually deleted – in which he indirectly responded to a question about whether he had received military reports in recent months warning of the growing possibility of war. That’s what a journalist asked on Saturday, at the Prime Minister’s first press conference since the disaster. After the appearance, Netanyahu tweeted that he had “at no time” been warned about Hamas’s “war intentions” and that “all security officials, including those from military intelligence and the Shin Bet,…” [los servicios secretos en Israel y Palestina]“They assumed that Hamas had been dissuaded and was interested in reaching an agreement.”
With the atmosphere already heated, the tweet did not go unnoticed. Especially since the man who didn’t go beyond a vague “Everyone will have to give answers, including me” and insisted that responsibilities be clarified because now “it’s time for war” pointed the finger at two specific people: Aharon Haliva, head of the army’s military intelligence, and Ronen Bar, director of the Shin Bet. Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, two former chiefs of staff who left the opposition to join the emergency government created specifically for the war, immediately called on him to retract. Also, from the right, his finance minister, the ultra-nationalist Bezalel Smotrich, and from the left, the former prime minister Yair Lapid, who accused him of crossing “a red line”.
Sticker calling for Netanyahu’s resignation on a container in Tel Aviv on Friday. Alvaro Garcia
Shortly afterwards, Netanyahu corrected himself on X, the social network formerly called Twitter: “I was wrong. The things I said after the press conference should not have been said and I apologize for that. “I give my full support to all security force chiefs.” The controversy is also part of the covert battle over the burden of blame waged by the political and military establishment. Since Israel is still at war, they are settling the matter quietly for now and through leaks to the media.
While the Israeli army maintains social support (with an approval rating of 87%, it remains the institution most valued by the Jewish majority), the government lies despite the fact that it took days to regain control of the attacked cities , already at 20%. This emerges from a survey published last Monday by the Analysis Center of the Israel Institute for Democracy. That is eight points less than in June, when the controversial judicial reform was already under discussion. The decline is particularly noticeable among right-wing Israelis: from 42% to 31%.
This is the case of Gary Jackob. He is 54 years old and the last time he cast a vote at the ballot box was in 2021, he did so for the Likud. On Friday he felt betrayed. “Of course he is not the only one responsible, but he sold us a safety motorcycle that I voted for him. And in this mini-holocaust he showed that he was not strong, but weak. And that there was nothing behind his words, that it was a bluff,” he emphasized on the promenade of the Tel Aviv Art Museum, where he showed his solidarity with the relatives of the hostages. Jackob, who stayed home while much of his city of Tel Aviv demonstrated against judicial reform, now accuses the government of “mistaking itself as the enemy.” What have you been doing for almost a year? The enemy is Hamas, not the Supreme Court,” he says of the currently paralyzed reform that deprived the court of one of its most important prerogatives.
Gary Jackob, at the solidarity rally with the families of the hostages, on Friday in Tel Aviv. Alvaro Garcia
Sharon attended the same event next to a Sabbath dining table with empty chairs in memory of the hostages. Although she took part in the protests against the reform every Saturday, she considers it “very out of place” now about “Netanyahu, yes; Netanyahu, no.” “You have to put your energy into other things. It’s time to unite, not demonstrate. And the truth is, if I were one of the relatives of the hostages, I wouldn’t like it at all when the people next to me shout: “Bibi, go away!” he criticizes.
At his side, Tzipi, 67, declares himself “full of doubts” about this issue. “At first I thought, ‘We have to be strong and give all power to the government.’ And Bibi is an experienced leader. But as time goes on I tend to, I don’t know, maybe we need another person to fight this war… but I also don’t want it to get worse and worse.”
The debate takes place on the street. And in an Israel with frayed nerves, discussions easily arise.
“I kidnapped five friends, take responsibility!” a young man shouted at a woman.
“And I’m a daughter at the front and I don’t want her to do that,” he replied.
EITHER:
“Now the most important thing is that Bibi goes.
“That’s what you call unity?” That everyone thinks like you?
Two men end up insulting one another next to Lilah Hershkovitz, standing in front of a sign that reads: “How easy it is to say that now is not the right time.” Hershkovitz insists that Netanyahu “must go now.” “Whoever led us to catastrophe cannot lead us to victory,” he argues, but sends a message to the rest of the politicians: “It can’t be the case that everything now says: ‘Either Bibi is in power, or Bibi is guilty.” ”
Lilah Hershkovitz, on Friday in Tel Aviv.Álvaro García
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