Education Minister and Habayit Hayehudi Chairman Naftali Bennett on Tuesday morning tweeted a response to the statement by Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu Monday night, that the security cabinet discussed the Gaza terror tunnels before the 2014 Protective Edge Operation. Bennett said Netanyahu should accept responsibility for the ramifications of his decisions, not try to conceal them.
“Any company commander in the army learns his lessons at the end of an exercise, to avoid making future mistakes, and what’s true for an infantry company is doubly true for the political and security leadership of the State of Israel,” Bennett tweeted. “In preparation for the next war, we must learn from the mistakes of the past and not deny them. Drawing real lessons is a sign of strength and self-confidence. He who does not learn from the mistakes of the past is doomed to repeat them,” Bennett concluded.
Netanyahu has been saying in closed sessions that the IDF had been seeking operational solutions to the terror tunnels since 2013, and the security apparatus had dealt with it numerous times. The PM was responding to the harsh attacks on his administration’s conduct of the 2014 Gaza War.
On Sunday, 32 bereaved families of fallen IDF soldiers in Gaza demanded in a letter to Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Liberman that a state commission headed by a judge investigate the government’s decision-making process throughout the war.
Bennett stood out during the war weeks as the most stubborn advocate of sending the IDF in to demolish the Hamas terror tunnels, and was behind the popular notion that the Netanyahu security cabinet was unaware of the tunnel threat. But Walla, which in recent years has emerged as Netanyahu’s other favorite media outlet, reported on Tuesday that the cabinet held at least eight debates on the tunnels, and hosted 20 professional discussions with IDF and Intelligence officials to examine ways to locate and demolish the tunnels.