Who Pays the Price for This Obsession?

Netanyahu strides over a field of bodies and tears as if treading on a red carpet. With each step, there’s an echo of power that doesn’t belong to him. His arrogance is that of a man who believes he owns the truth, but the truth never belonged to him. He governs with the savage instinct of a cornered predator, ready to skin his own allies if it means one more day on the throne. He’s not a leader. He’s a thief of lives.

We face a man who sacrifices the future to cling to the present. He refuses to negotiate a ceasefire, like someone smashing a mirror to avoid confronting his own ugliness. And in that shattered mirror are the faces of the hostages, the six who were murdered with bullets to their heads, coldly, like numbers on a war report. Netanyahu didn’t kill them with his own hands, but he held the gun behind the curtain, pulling the strings of the macabre theater that Israel’s government has become.

There is a more than diabolical choice in opting for war over life. In his confrontation with Gallant, Netanyahu doesn’t debate; he dictates. The phrase “so be it” is the epitaph he chooses for the hostages as if they were chess pieces ready for sacrifice. There is no morality, dignity, or even the pretense of justice. There is only the insatiable hunger of a man who feeds on the fear of others. He doesn’t act like a leader in times of war; he acts like a vampire sucking out the last vestige of humanity from a nation already drained.

He pulls out the Philadelphia Corridor like an ace of spades, the last card of a dirty player who shuffles the game never to lose. He claims it’s crucial for Israel’s security, but until yesterday, he didn’t even mention its name. What changed? Not the threat, not the geopolitics. His need to fabricate a new excuse for the carnage did. It’s not the Corridor he wants; it’s absolute control of the narrative. And for that, he lies with the audacity of someone who no longer fears judgment.

Meanwhile, the Israel Defense Forces are forced to follow a plan that collapses under its own farce. The tunnels, he says, are the reason. But they’ve all been destroyed. Could Hamas rebuild them? Perhaps, but not in the blink of an eye. Netanyahu knows this but prefers to ignore it because his most significant threat isn’t Hamas; it’s peace. He fears calm because, in a calm, lies float to the surface.

And when the tide rises, he points the finger at Gallant. He accuses him of the desperation of a man who always needs a scapegoat, a Judas, to kiss and sell in public. The Hamas document, the infamous “it’s true this note,” is the rotten cherry on a cake that is already crumbling. Netanyahu waves it around as if it’s the lifeline for his leadership, but it’s just another dirty trick from a magician whose rabbit is already dead.

He undermines his defense minister right in the middle of the battlefield, creating a crisis that makes the war almost seem like a detail. Gallant, who dared to disagree and had the impulse to save lives, is now the traitor or the useful idiot. There is no way out for him except humiliation or expulsion. But that’s Netanyahu’s strategy: turn every ally into puppets or enemies. And he believes the strings will always be in his hands.

Netanyahu doesn’t fear Israel becoming a pariah; he wants Israel to be a hostage to its dread. And who pays the price for this obsession? Who sheds tears when the light of hope goes out? Those who still believe in life and peace. Netanyahu wants to be the man who decided the nation’s fate, but he will be remembered as the man who sank it in his own mud of power. He is no savior. He is the man who sold Israel’s soul to buy a little more time in office.