László Bernát Veszprémy

Quo vadis, Netanyahu? Quo vadis, Israel?

In the 1930s, a Hungarian Zionist publication published a striking graphic. On the one side
was a fleeing, skinny Jewish woman and her child, with the words "galuth" written
underneath. Galuth is a Hebrew word meaning exile, or diaspora in a broader sense. On the
other side was a healthy, intact Jewish family, with the inscription "Erets" underneath. The
word Erets referred to Israel, the homeland of the Jewish people, the Holy Land. The
contradiction was clear: for the Jews, the Diaspora meant pogroms, persecution, while the
independent Jewish homeland meant security. This statement may have been true in the
1930s, and Zionism has since then, among other things, represented for Diaspora Jews the
hope that if they were ever persecuted again, Israel would protect and welcome them.

In October 2023, however, the Jewish state's sense of security was severely shaken. Israel
suffered more casualties in one day than in the 1967 Six Day War, and now the vast majority
of them are civilians. This time, the Jewish state was not attacked by the armies of three
Arab states, but 'only' by a terrorist organisation that has not been taken seriously in recent
years. In fact, some analysts have even talked of an Israeli-Iranian conflict rather than an
Israeli-Arab conflict. The attack hit Israel within its internationally recognised borders, and in
some kibbutzim, civilians were left alone for twelve hours or more in the face of terrorists
slaughtering them at will. As one survivor put it in an interview, "We have no state." For
some survivors, the verdict is clear: the Israel Defense Forces, considered one of the world's
leading military forces - not to mention law enforcement agencies, special units, etc. -
abandoned the civilians.

The attack raises serious questions about Israel's self-confidence and strength, but also
about its identity. If nothing else, the average reader is informed about the Mossad and Shin
Bet from the Fauda series: they are all-seeing and all-hearing. Yet, the infiltration of a
thousand terrorists has gone unnoticed.

According to Israel's Channel 12, there are 'concrete' indications that Israeli military and
internal security leaders were informed at dawn on the day of the attack that a group of
terrorists would attempt to infiltrate Israel, take control of one or two settlements and
attempt kidnappings. On 7 October at 4 a.m., IDF Chief of General Staff Herzi Halevi and Shin
Bet leader Ronen Bar, among others, reportedly met, but concluded that the matter could
wait until morning and no alert was issued. All that was done was that Shin Bet sent a small
operational team to the border area. The report is confirmed by the fact that Shin Bet lost an
unusually high number of agents in the early hours of the battle.

It is also a fact that senior officials responsible for Israel's security have in recent days taken
personal responsibility for the failure, including Halevi, Bar, and Defence Minister Yoav
Gallant. Reportedly, there were signs that Hamas was drilling for an attack in broad daylight,
but Israel has ignored these preparations. Egyptian intelligence officials told Israeli
newspapers that Israel had ignored repeated warnings that the Gaza terror group was
planning "something big". Israeli officials denied this of course, but who would like to admit
that there were signs?
It is difficult to understand how one of the most heavily guarded border crossings in the
world can not only be breached by primitive means, but also be used to transport hostages
in and out of kibbutzim for miles around, and not in armoured cars but in golf carts. Israel
has now mobilised, but the mobilisation reportedly leaves much to be desired. At the time
of the writing of this article, the IDF is patiently waiting at the Gaza border - or perhaps not
so patiently. IDF leaks indicate that the pointless stalling is having a bad effect on army
morale.

There is a strong demand for accountability. According to polls, a significant part of Israeli
society holds Benjamin Netanyahu and his government responsible, and not only on the left:
86% of the population and 79% of the supporters of the governing coalition hold the
government responsible. Moreover, this unprecedented and tragic fiasco cannot be blamed
on the pacifist left, as the current one is the most right-wing government in Israel's history.
So it is not only Israel's security that is at stake here, but also Netanyahu's political future.

Can Netanyahu's career survive this tragedy? Netanyahu's father was a historian - surely his
son has contemplated Israel's history as well. After the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when Israel
was attacked by surprise by its Arab neighbours and 2,812 Israeli soldiers were killed (twice
as many as the current war), a national commission of inquiry was set up to investigate the
failures of the IDF on the eve of the war. The commission looked at two main issues:
intelligence in the days leading up to the war and the IDF's operations to tackle the enemy. It
did not examine the later stages of the war. In the spring of 1974, the report called for the
dismissal of a number of senior IDF officers, and Prime Minister Golda Meir was eventually
forced to resign. It's worth recalling all this because, with a few names and dates changed,
the story could be happening today.

Netanyahu has so far refused to accept responsibility, despite considerable pressure on him
to do so. The Prime Minister's mantra is that his office was first informed of the attack
shortly after it began. Dissatisfaction is also high on the right. The self-critical lines of the
national-religious Israeli publicist David Ha'ivri describe the anger of the right-wing camp:
'today it is clear that those who were elected on empty promises, those who received
control of all the means and resources of the state, but chose to use them for other
purposes, to the extent that they didn't notice the real danger brewing for a long time under
our nose. Unfortunately, it turns out that the same personalities who hold the most senior
positions in the country still refuse to apologize. In retrospect this alone exposes that they
did not deserve any respect and power they were granted and that it was a mistake to trust
them.'

In 1974, Golda Meir drew direct conclusions from the events. The big question is what
Netanyahu will do, who has built his image - "Mr. Security" - on the premise that as long as
he is in office, things like this cannot happen. (Of course 'things like this' is a bad expression,
as no one could imagine that Hamas would do this. Perhaps this was Israel's largest fault: a
lack of imagination).

Can his career as 'Mr Security' survive the worst terrorist attack ever? Do the news reports
that are suggesting the responsibility of military leaders help Netanyahu or do they set the
stage for his downfall? How will the self-image of the Israeli right and the concept of Israel's
defence be transformed in the aftermath? These are serious questions, but in the Middle
East, the analyst must not dare to make predictions for his own good.

Another big question to be tackled: has the time come when the countries of the Diaspora
are clearly safer for Jews than Israel? The founders of Zionism believed that in the Diaspora,
Jews would be persecuted, but in a state of their own, their people would be safe. Some
radical nationalists, such as Ze'ev Jabotinsky, added that Jews would only be safe if they had
an "iron wall" around them. Well, now there is Israel, there is a nationalist-religious
government, there is a Jewish army, and there is an 'iron wall' - yet the massacre, the worst
in numbers since the Holocaust, has taken place. From the safety of their homes, the Jews of
the diaspora watched in horror all the terrible news. The failure is not the fault of the left, it
is not the fault of pacifism. The question facing the Jewish state in October 2023 is: where to
next, Israel, where to next, Zionism?