Of course. Why focus on Hamas, famine, or an endless war in Gaza when you can fight your own army chief?
Amos Harel’s latest column in Haaretz reads less like sober military analysis and more like a case study in political narcissism, starring Benjamin Netanyahu and his ever-loyal hit squad of ministers, influencers, and Twitter trolls. The plot is simple: turn Israel’s biggest military disaster in half a century into a PR victory for the Prime Minister by making Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi the designated piñata.
1. The Harassment Machine
Netanyahu’s people have been hammering Halevi with all the creativity of a bad tabloid:
- Daily Public Attacks – MPs and ministers hurling blame grenades in every direction but Bibi’s.
- Social Media Storms – digital lynch mobs dressed up as “patriotism.”
- Strategic Leaks – conveniently timed whispers to paint the General Staff as clueless or disloyal.
All this noise serves one holy mission: erase October 7th as a political failure and repackage it as a purely military blunder. If the Prime Minister can’t govern, at least he can gaslight.
2. Halevi’s “Original Sin”
And here’s the cruel irony: Halevi himself handed Netanyahu the perfect shield. On October 10th, with the country still reeling, Halevi did the noble thing. He stood before the nation and said: “The IDF is responsible. We failed.”
A statesman’s words. An officer’s duty. And, politically speaking, an act of self-destruction.
Netanyahu’s war room immediately carved those words in stone. Ever since, they have chanted: “See? Even the Chief says it was the Army’s fault!” Meanwhile, the man actually in charge of the government during the disaster is miraculously recast as a bystander to his own premiership.
3. The “Day After” Nobody Wants
But the fight isn’t only about the past. It’s about the future—specifically, Gaza’s post-war fate:
- The Army’s View: Without a political plan for who runs Gaza, the IDF will be stuck in a Groundhog Day of re-occupation and ambushes.
- Netanyahu’s View: Any plan equals political suicide. His far-right allies dream of settlements, annexation, and Biblical cosplay. So—better no plan at all.
Naturally, when the generals point this out, Netanyahu’s loyalists cry foul: “How dare the Army meddle in politics?” Translation: Don’t ask the emperor why he has no clothes.
4. Unity, But Make It Toxic
Harel sums it up best: instead of wartime unity, Israel now has a public knife fight between its civilian and military leadership. It’s not strategy. It’s not oversight. It’s survival politics, with Netanyahu clinging to power the way a drowning man clings to driftwood—except he’s happy to drag the entire army under with him.
The Sarcastic Bottom Line
Israel today is living through the absurd spectacle of a Prime Minister who failed at security, failed at strategy, and failed at leadership—but excels at one thing: finding someone else to blame.
And Herzi Halevi? He may command tanks, planes, and divisions, but in Netanyahu’s Israel, he is just another disposable character in the Prime Minister’s never-ending soap opera of self-preservation.
Because in this war, the battlefield is Gaza.
But the real front line? It’s inside Israel—between a general who took responsibility, and a politician who never will.
Comments