Maariv’s polling numbers do not usually mean all that much. But when they find that voters prefer Benny Gantz at 48 percent to Binyanim (“Bibi”) Netayanhu’s 28 percent, and that National Union now polls at 40 Knesset seats versus 18 for Likud, serious-minded right-wing and religious Israelis and their supporters cannot turn a blind eye and make sport of the poll. This is serious stuff, and it finds that, if elections are held now, the results will see Gantz with 40 seats, Lapid with 15 — so 55 right away — and Liberman with 7 and Meretz at 6. So, if elections are here and now, Israel would be looking at either a primarily left-wing government (with Lapid and Meretz bending Gantz) or a primarily anti-religious one with Lapid and Liberman forcing their agenda against religion. Or it could include both Meretz and Liberman to focus on crushing religion only, since Liberman is not a Meretz leftist, and Meretz are a bunch of Ashkenazi Beautiful People Elites who turn their noses up at Liberman’s Russians just a centimeter less than they do at Sephardim. But they all hate religion, except a few in National Union. And even those few are no bargain.
There would be no need for Mansour Abbas’s Muslim Brotherhood Arab party in the coalition to sabotage the Israel Defense Forces from the inside. And Labor would continue sinking in the political quicksand it created for itself by sabotaging Meretz before the last elections. For that, Merav Michaeli deserves the Israel Prize: (i) she knocked out Meretz last time, and (ii) she is knocking out Labor this time. Who else in Israel history can say proudly “I killed two leftist political parties in two straight elections?” She is a national treasure.
So why am I not more aggravated by these horrible survey results? More accurately: Why am I celebrating these polls?
Because, many times, things that at first seem absolutely awful turn out to bear the seeds of great blessing.
1. When it comes to Hamas in Gaza, I don’t care how anti-religious Liberman is. He was on record years ago, when he was Netanyahyu’s Defense Minister, to annihilate Hamas in Gaza. Bibi got his cabinet to opt instead for “mowing the lawn.” Thus were planted seeds that have grown into Liberman’s eternal hatred for Netanyahu. Bibi tricked him several times, and all of Israel pays for it because Liberman will never bring his 5-7 seats into a right-wing cabinet as long as Bibi reigns. Once Bibi departs, Liberman will deal with Likud as in the past. He hates sitting with religious Jews? Well, he hates sitting with Arabs more. He is proven right on Hamas: they must be exterminated. He should be included in the inner War Cabinet.
2. Bibi cannot be trusted. If his polls now were decent, he would be capitulating to Biden and all others. Already, he is acceding to Biden’s proposed $100 million in “humanitarian” aid for Gaza so that the Gazan Arabs can build humanitarian missiles, humanitarian underground tunnels for humanitarian terrorists to cross into Israel, humanitarian schools and summer camps where Arab kids will be taught to hate and murder Jews, humanitarian knives and wire cutters, humanitarian paragliding equipment, and even humanitarian smartphones with which to film and photograph for social media the humanitarian slaughter, humanitarian rape, and humanitarian infanticide and humanitarian baby decapitations that will follow. Bibi always talks tough: remember the map of how he will annex the Jordan Valley? Then no follow-through.
3. However, these fabulously horrible polls leave him no choice for salvaging his own political survival and legacy. Presently, his entire life legacy is about to be reversed from glory to shame, exactly as with Golda and Dayan after the 1973 war. Golda was super-heroine, especially among American Zionists. They loved a woman prime minister who spends her day in the kitchen making chicken soup. And so did the Arabs. Sadat would never have made war if Menachem Begin or the old Arik Sharon were in charge. Golda and her chicken soup invited that Yom Kippur invasion and neglected intelligence. Dayan, the bogus “hero” of the 1967 War — who cowardly refused to annex Judea and Samaria, expel the Arabs, and declare sovereignty over the Temple Mount — was exposed as the Yom Kippur War destroyed his and Golda’s legacies.
4. Bibi is deeply narcissistic, hedonistic, and conscious of his place in history, his legacy. He revels in history recording him as Israel’s longest-serving prime minister. After being ousted by an illegitimate government when Naftali Bennett perpetrated a perfidy on his voters and coalesced with Yair Lapid, Bibi was determined to close his Wikipedia biography as a winner. This latest Maariv poll now forces upon him to do what he neglected the past eighteen years: annihilate and exterminate Hamas. Not even dental records should remain. If he does not, he is toast, and Likud is the brown scrapings. Either he obliterates Gazan terror or his legacy parallels Golda’s and Dayan’s.
5. This is going to be a very horrible ground invasion. Had it been done 10-15 years ago, it would have been like the Old Ariel Sharon crushing the PLO and Fatah (same thing) in Jenin. But Bibi’s two decades of “lawn mowing” has allowed Hamas to build an unprecedented nationwide terror infrastructure of tunnels, improvised explosive devices (IEDs), Russian Cornet and Iranian Dehlahvieh anti-tank missiles, rockets and bombs. Gaza is worse than Faluja or Afghanistan. Eighteen years of dallying while Hamas meticulously built a Bora Bora. This means many boys will not come home or will be permanently disabled. It will be a ground invasion that, no matter how successful, will be horrible. Therefore, anyone who even whispers “tohar ha-neshek” (purity of arms) must be reviled. The green light must be given to shoot and grenade and bomb as the IDFy must. If Arabs fire from an ambulance, take out the ambulance. If from a school, take out the school. If from a residential apartment building, take out the building. If thousands must be killed inadvertently as collateral damage of Hamas hiding behind human shields, take out the human shields. No Jewish boy should be compromised by “tohar haneshek” instructions.
6. Gaza must be blockaded completely. Not only electricity and fuel but also no food, no water, and no medicine. Let them die in the streets if the hostages are not freed — all 200 plus Hadar Goldin, Oron Shaul, and Avera Mengistu. No exchanges. There will be horrible accounts in the left media and 100,000-Arab demonstrations in London and Paris, while Haaretz, Yediot, much of Maariv (except for Kalman Liebskind), and Channels Kan 11, Keshet 12, and Reshet 13 weaken the home front’s morale. A simple solution: stop reading and watching them. Ignore them all. People have been falsely accusing Jews for two thousand years of wantonly shedding children’s blood. Ignore them. Don’t aim to kill innocents, but if they get in the way, they become collateral damage. When governors of Florida and North Carolina warn residents to evacuate before a predicted hurricane, Washington State does the same when a volcano bubbles, they all get out. The one die-hard who stays behind, telling the media “I ain’t goin’ nowhere,” becomes a national icon and dies a few days later. Any Gazan in the way was warned to evacuate.
7. Bibi will be compared to Hitler, and Israel’s ground invasion will be compared to Hitler’s blitzkrieg. But the polls say his career will torpedo in historic defeat if he flinches. His narcissism will save Israel. Legacy concerns will impel him to fight until his Maariv poll numbers rebound, and that requires exterminating Hamas.
8. Israel now must begin conducting public Nuremberg/Eichmann War Crimes trials. Every Arab in Israeli prisons with a murder conviction needs to be tried publicly, the same as Eichmann was and as the West tried 21 of the most important surviving leaders of Nazi Germany and six German organizations. These War Crime trials will educate. Although previously convicted for murder, new charges should be brought for “Crimes Against Humanity.” Those convicted should be held secretively as Eichmann was. As convictions come, Israel already has, from its Hadar Goldin negotiations, Hamas lists of prisoners they want returned. Israel should announce that, for every Jewish hostage Hamas kills, Israel will execute the next Arab murderers on the list. Or just skip the Nuremberg/Eichmann Trials, and make the announcement. The country now has the stomach. Let Shikma fight in Gaza. Israel can kill them as she did Eichmann and America did Bin Laden: no fanfare, just dead and dumped or incinerated.
9. Hamas had precise diagrams of attacked kibbutzim. They knew precisely about people’s comings and goings. The fools in government allowed 17,000 Gazan Arabs into the country every day. That fills a basketball stadium. Whole cities in Israel are no larger: Beir She’an has 18,000. Or Akiva has 19,900. Ariel 17,688. Giv’at Shmuel 18,500. Where did those 17,000 “work”? Who monitored each one? None spied the border, the fence, IDF’s coverage and lackings? None spied kibbutzim? Hereinafter, that border must be sealed permanently.
10. Gen. (Res.) Yitzchak Brik was absolutely accurate. For his prescience, he should be awarded the “Israel Prize” along with 25-year-old Inbar Liberman of Kibbutz Nir Am who famously saved her entire community by organizing an heroic defense. Brik had warned that IDF leadership was getting too soft, relying on electronics and high-tech while getting soft to do the tough work on the ground. When Shmini Atzeret came, our boys were asleep, relying on the fence’s compromised sensors, and the south was unprotected. Hours passed while Jews were being raped, butchered, beheaded, and burned before ample IDF arrived. Heads have to roll after this debacle ends.
11. Elections are three full years away. All coalition parties know they are minced meat if any brings down the government prematurely. The horrible ground war may take eight months or even a year, leaving two years to elections. A year of commissions, investigations, and recriminations will follow, even as Gaza has quieted. Thousands will mourn and grieve bitterly throughout that year. That will leave one year till elections. With Hamas eliminated and Gaza quiet, with the economy booming as often happens during and after a war, and with thousands of kaddish recitals now over, people will calm down. Bibi will leave. The settled public will not vote for a Meretz- or Liberman-dominated government. They may well prefer Gantz, but Likud will rebound while Gantz’s halcyon numbers will recede somewhat. Though the future will be fluid and dynamic, present trends suggest that the next government in three years will be comprised of Gantz and Likud, with Gantz as prime minister and Likud led by new faces like Nir Birkat, Yuli Edelstein, and maybe even Yuval Levin. Gil Erdan will present as blame-proof because he was in America, and same for Tzipi Hotovely in England. The religious parties probably will face unprecedented pressure to accept more draftees, which would enhance them and Torah in the long run, with the IDF forced to be more religious. Secularists will rue the day they asked for Haredim in IDF. Liberman will find a way in; Meretz may not. Unfortunately, the prospects for Smotrich and Ben Gvir being included in the next coalition are worrisome.
12. One year ago, Yair Lapid was just concluding his time as Israel’s shortest-serving prime minister and emerged from new elections with 24 seats, only 8 shy of Likud and twice Benny Gantz’s 12 seats, making him leader of the Disloyal Opposition. One year later, his numbers mark a 38 percent decline. Where he once led Gantz by 24-12, he now trails by 40-15. He has become irrelevant. Gantz is in the War Cabinet of the Unity Government; Lapid is on Twitter, destroyed politically. His Yesh Atid will replace Labor at the bottom with Meretz, and he will be ousted internally.
13. The “Two-State Delusion” already was dead and cremated. Now the ashes are buried. No Arab will agree to one million Jews of the eastern communities of Jerusalem and the rest of Judea and Samaria living in “Palestine.” No Israeli government can logistically remove them. This is not Yamit or even Gush Katif’s 8,500 Jews. This is 850,000 Jews: one hundred times the number. Impossible. Moreover, even Shikma’s Beautiful Ashkenazim of Tel Aviv are faced with the reality that a “Palestine” entity opens a third front, if Israel gives Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) what Ehud Barak gave Nasrallah and Sharon gave Hamas. Missiles and rockets will rain everywhere all day. Rapists, beheaders, baby killers will be in Tel Aviv, Herzliya, and Haifa just as at the kibbutzim of the south. Arabs already are building rockets in Jenin. The Hamas Massacre has taken “Two-State” off the table, even if Biden and Harvard students don’t know yet, and Israel can and must continue populating Judea and Samaria to one million.
14. Finally: Imagine you are G-d. You look down on your holy precious people whom You have sanctified and chosen from among all other nations, and You see them tearing themselves apart with 40 weeks of “spontaneous” demonstrations at more than $100,000 each, paralyzing the country’s equanimity. You see Your country in chaos, restaurants for the first time defiantly open in Tel Aviv on Tisha B’Av night, rabid secularists breaking up Yom Kippur ne’ilah services in that most populous city and promising a nationwide campaign to take down religion and the Chief Rabbinate — all funded by 27 million shekels, much raised from Reform Judaism and Conservative Judaism “Jews,” born of non-Jewish mothers, in America. You absolutely will not allow a Third Churban (Destruction), but civil war looms, and two crazed former Prime Minister Ehuds traitorously calling for civil war, one dreaming of floating dead Jewish bodies that will induce the nation to call upon him to lead them to destruction — again. Meantime, the United States has just authorized $6 billion to Iran, ensuring their nuclear bomb with billions also to fund Hezbollah and Hamas. You see reservists defiantly refusing to report for duty and threatening to abandon the country. Others in high tech and finance deliberately working to sabotage the national economy, discourage new investment in Israel, and withdrawing their own assets. You see the Prime Minister pathetically begging Saudi Arabia for a deal, while Saudis emphasize they will not deal unless Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) is given his own country, and the PM seems open because this will be the plum on his legacy. You want to bury the ashes of the Two-State Delusion that already is dead and cremated. So what would You do to solve all of that in one horrible, catastrophic step, with everyone remembering that, once the Angel of Death is set loose, he makes no distinctions? (Bava Kamma 60a) Think about it.
