BYE BYE BIBI?

What did Bibi know and when did he know it?

According to a book by reporters for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Israeli P.M. Benjamin Netanyahu was personally alerted by the president of the United Arab Emirates that Hamas was planning a large-scale offensive against Israel a week before the October 7 2023 attack. Bibi denies it.

The Israeli government has never fully explained how it was so grossly unprepared for coordinated armed incursions from the blockaded Gaza Strip into the Gaza envelope of southern Israel.

Some 1,200 Israelis died; 251 were taken hostage and carried off to Gaza; ultimately 165 were released. The others died in Hamas custody. Sadly, this war was a gift to Bibi, making him a wartime P.M. It enabled him to stay away from the trial under way for corruption charges lodged against him, a trial that started in 2020 and is still active.

More than 77,000 people have been reported killed in the Gaza war so far according to the Gaza Health Ministry and Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, including 270 journalists and media workers, 120 academics, and over 560 humanitarian aid workers; 70% of the Palestinians killed in residential buildings or similar housing were women and children. How many were Hamas militants? We don't know.

Having previously held office from 1996 to 1999 and from 2009 to 2021, Bibi is Israel's longest-serving prime minister. He is running for re-election and at the moment, the race is too close to call. Bibi faces Gadi Eisenkot the former Israel Defense Forces General. The election is October 27th.

Israeli historian and human rights activist Adam Raz writes in his book “The Road to October 7: Benjamin Netanyahu, the Production of the Endless Conflict and Israel’s Moral Degradation” that the vast majority of Israelis fail to grasp the full extent of Netanyahu’s involvement in bolstering Hamas before the current war and in perpetuating an unending state of conflict.

Bibi thought that he could contain Hamas. The Israeli Times says that for years Bibi took an approach that divided power between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank — bringing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to his knees while making moves that propped up the Hamas terror group. The core idea was to prevent Abbas — or anyone else in the Palestinian Authority’s West Bank government — from advancing toward the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Israel was once widely admired and respected but is now one of the most reviled nation-states in the world, accused of genocide, an international crime committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group.

The unrelenting, widespread bombing of hospitals, schools and homes to dislodge an urban guerrilla force majeure — and to regard civilian populations as collateral damage — resulted in war crimes. But Hamas survives and has no dearth of new recruits.

Should Bibi be driven from office that is his legacy. If he is re-elected,, the stain will last far longer.

Image of Bibi created by Chat-GPT. Image of Gaza from CNN.