Hatikva – The Hope
Hatikva, our national anthem. The Hope. It seems that it is the eternal Jewish optimism that no matter how bad things get, we still believe that we will reach a time when things will get better. A hope that we, as a people will finally be able to be free in our own country. For the last 2 years, it has been very difficult to utter these words, to sing the anthem, yet I along with tens of thousands of others would sing it each week at the end of the demonstrations supporting the hostages. We would see the pictures of the hostages, hear hostage family members and supporters and then conclude with Hatikva, and the hope was and still is that all of our hostages would be home because until that happens, none of us can truly be free in our country.
We are now more than two weeks after the release of all of the living hostages and they are now home with their families and beginning their long road of rehabilitation. Yet, none of them can be free nor can the rest of the country until the last hostage returns.
We hope this happens quickly and all of our hostages are home. Can we then be free? Can we have the hope returned to us? I don’t think so, not yet. We have a long road in front of us with so many challenges. We have a government that doesn’t represent the people.
Netanyahu likes to brag that he received a clear majority in the last elections and therefore he represents the true desires of the population. To put things in their proper perspective, Netanyahu’s party, Likud received just over 23% of the vote, while Yesh Atid received almost 14% and the joint Arab parties received almost 9%. I would not call 23% a sweeping victory or a huge majority. Many of the votes that were cast for some of the left wing and center left were lost due to the threshold of 4%, meaning that any party that received less than 4% was not elected to the Knesset and those votes went to the garbage heap. Due to our government of coalition, Netanyahu was able to put together a government of over 50% of the Knesset by normalizing the extremist who were a fringe of society and giving them senior cabinet positions and turning racism and extremism into the new norms of his government.
Yes, this government makes up over 50% of the politicians elected to the Knesset and may have looked somewhat like a representation of the people but that was all before October 7. On that day, this government lost all legitimacy and should have taken responsibility and resigned immediately. There were many in the government at the time who were preparing for just that but the head, the Prime Minister had a completely opposing mindset. He genuinely feels that he is the only person in Israel who should be prime minister and nothing, not even the worst catastrophe in the history of Israel, can divert him from this feeling. That is why, on October 8, his most important meeting was with his political advisors and PR people to chart the course of his political survival. He immediately began his campaign of shirking all responsibility for October 7 and everything that brought us to that Black Saturday. And lo and behold, all of his people, who were ready to take responsibility and resign, followed his lead and the taking of responsibility became the next victim of October 7.
No matter what one thinks of Netanyahu, no one can deny that he is a master of staying in power. Over the years, he has made sure to neutralize any Likud member who was gnawing at his heels. Any threat from within was dealt with quickly. Those who might be seen as Netanyahu’s successor, their political life in Likud is then short lived. Some are ‘sent’ out of the country as consuls, others as ambassadors and the unlucky ones are destroyed from within by the Netanyahu poison machine. Some of those leave the Likud and form their own parties (Lieberman, Bennett, Saar, to name a few). He has succeeded in building a cult following by his methods of division and creating a common enemy, ‘the Left’.
There is little hope in the attempts to show his cultist, the Bibists who he really is and the damage he, personally has caused the State of Israel from within and without. There is absolutely no possibility that they will ever believe his major responsibility and blame for bringing us to October 7 or for his deliberate mishandling of the hostage crisis for all of 2 years. Fortunately, not all of his followers are the die hard Bibists and many have seen the light. The fence sitters, however blow with the wind. When the last remaining living hostages came home, many of these fence sitters gave the credit to Netanyahu and ignore the fact that he had nothing to do with it except to accede to Trump’s forceful demands. Netanyahu tried to get out of the deal but Trump refused to give him any leeway.
Netanyahu has always relied on and depended on the short memory of the Israeli voter. It is one of the main reasons that he has been able to hold on to power for so long. I still believe that October 7 is the end of this short memory. Most Israeli voters cannot ever forget October 7. It changed all of our lives and in fact, changed our DNA. The most sacred trust between the government and every citizen of the feeling of security was shattered that day and continued for much of the war. The government abandoned the entire country before that but the attack and massacre were the manifestations of that abandonment. And the government continues in this abandonment and acts no differently than they did on October 6th. Their agendas have not changed and their concerns and actions are all based on their personal and political self-interests. We don’t have to look any further than all of Netanyahu’s actions for the last 2 years, Ben Gvir and Smotrich both saw the war as an opportunity to further their agendas and gave no thought to the people, the hostages, the families or to the soldiers killed and maimed. And one of the worst examples of living on a different planet is the behavior of the Haredi parties. Their demands of continued draft exemptions after the deaths of over 900 soldiers since October 7 is a slap in the face of every soldier, reservists and their families and no less than spitting on the graves of those 915 dead soldiers.
When elections do finally come, we will all remember everything that has happened since October 7.
But that is not enough. There is an absolute necessity in establishing the State Commission of Inquiry of October 7, everything that led us there and all that has happened since. Not the Government Commission of Inquiry that Netanyahu is pushing for, but an official and independent State Commission.
There are 3 main reasons for a state commission
- Fix what was broken– So many things were done wrong before October 7, on the day and following. The army was completely unprepared and it took days before they regained their footing. The government was in total chaos and most of the ministries continued to by dysfunctional for over a year. Fortunately, the civilian population quickly picked up the pieces and performed the functions that the government was supposed to act on. Every single one of those broken areas need to be investigated and major changes must be carried out accordingly. It cannot be like the State Comptrollers reports that make the headlines and then nothing gets done.
- Put responsibility and blame on the right people – This government has made the word responsibility a dirty word. Netanyahu doesn’t believe in taking responsibility for anything that goes wrong. It is always the fault of someone else. He only takes credit for things that go right, even when the credit belongs to others. As opposed to Harry Truman, the US President who had a sign on his desk “The Buck Stops Here”, meaning that he takes responsibility for everything that happened in his administration, Netanyahu would have a sign saying “The credit stops here, the responsibility goes anywhere else”. People need to be held accountable and where necessary, punished for their criminally negligent actions. Punishments vary from being removed from a position, such as the IDF Chief of Staff and the Chief of the Shin Bet, forbidden to hold public office again, or being charged with real crimes, such as negligent homicide, which is what happened on October 7.
- Provide answers to the families of the 1200 victims of October 7, the 251 people taken hostage, the over 900 soldiers killed since October 7, the survivors of October 7, the hundreds of thousands who became refugees in their own country, and the rest of the victims of October 7: the people of Israel with whom the most sacred bond was broken.
Public officials and employees work for the people. They don’t live in a vacuum or a silo that belongs only to them. They have responsibilities and one of the most important responsibilities is to provide answers for what they do, what they don’t do and what they are supposed to do in service to the people. Politicians forget that, especially ours. Our leaders believe that they only need to answer to the people before elections in order to get our votes and even then, their answers are self-serving. They take credit where credit is not due and throw blame to the other side without evidence. We can never rely on them for providing answers or for choosing the investigators who need to investigate them. Only an independent commission can do that.
With all of that being said, we also must remember and learn from the failures of the most recent State Commissions. The last 2 commissions: Submarine and naval vessel acquisition and the Mount Meron Disaster, both found Netanyahu and others directly responsible for major failures.
“The ‘Submarine affair’ inquiry found Netanyahu’s decisions compromised national security. Netanyahu, the commission charged, took decisions that endangered national security and harmed Israel’s foreign relations.” (link) It’s hard to find something more damning to say about a prime minister.
“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel Police commanders, and local officials were personally responsible for the 2021 Mount Meron crowd crush that claimed the lives of 45 people, according to the Mount Meron Disaster Commission’s final report, submitted to the government in March 2024.
The report detailed how negligence, lack of preparation, absent governance, no enforcement of construction law, and conflict over responsibilities, authority, and land ownership by politicians, civil servants, and law enforcement led to dangerous overcrowding and hazardous and illegal facility conditions, year after year, during the pilgrimage to the tomb of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai Tomb for Lag Ba’omer.”(link)
The failures of these 2 State Commissions were that they lacked teeth. The Commission to investigate October 7 must be granted from the start the teeth to make a difference. They must be given the power to indict or instruct the State Prosecutor to indict people for crimes committed. They must be given the power to determine that people must leave their appointed positions as well as elected officials to be removed from office, and along with this power to determine if those same individuals can ever hold public office again.
Their ’teeth’ must be strong and sharp enough to make change and it must be comprehensive. We live with ironic situations in this country. Let’s take a look at some of our ‘leaders’. Aryeh Deri, one of Netanyahu’s closest advisors and the head of the Shas Haredi political party, was convicted of bribery, fraud and breach of trust. He served 3 years in prison. Based on his criminal record, he would not be allowed to be hired as a janitor in a public school, yet Netanyahu wanted to give him a major ministerial post. The courts prevented that.
Netanyahu himself, has also been charged with crimes of fraud, breach of trust and bribery and is on trial on all of these charges. According to the law, he is not allowed to be appointed a minister in his own government, but the Supreme Court fell asleep at the wheel and allows him to be prime minister. Being charged and on trial for those crimes, he would not be allowed to be hired for most of the jobs in any of the government ministries, but he can be Prime Minister.
All of these situations must be taken into account and the State Commission’s teeth must be able to overcome all of it. The outcome of the commission cannot only be recommendations that may be adopted or not. The outcome must be the ability to force the changes needed and to actually keep the people criminally and/or ethically and morally responsible from ever having any position that can impact the lives of the people.
This is the hope that we are living with today. A change of government with new leaders who are deserving of representing us, leaders who each day feel that they are responsible for proving they are deserving of us, leaders who have vision for a future of peace and are willing to take the necessary risks to bring us this peace. Politicians who tell us that we must forever live by the sword are cowards and not deserving of a single vote. They must be part of our history and not our future.
