The commander of the IDF Northern Command, Major General Ori Gordin, held a security briefing on Monday for the heads of border municipalities in the north, but except for the head of the Matula Council David Azoulai, none of the other 89 heads of the other municipalities whose residents had been evacuated from their homes in the fall of 2023 came to the meeting.
Ten months ago, going on eleven, it was Gordin who decided to evacuate the residents from their homes in the north. In no scenario did he and the security establishment chiefs estimate that the evacuation would last ten months or more.
On June 3, during a meeting with the heads of the municipalities, General Gordin had to bang on the table to stop the onslaught of the attack on him by the civilian leaders, as the discussion had spiraled into a frustrated confrontation.
At the briefing, which was eventually attended by six heads of municipalities, Gordin asked to update them on the pre-emptive attack the IDF had launched against Hezbollah on Sunday – an attack that fizzled out in a few hours, deeply disappointing millions of Israelis who were hoping for a decisive shutting down of the Hezbollah threat.
And so, the heads of the municipalities of Kfar V’redim, Ma’alot, Yesod Ha’Maalah, Metula, Katzrin, and the Golan, heard from Gordin that “the IDF is in a campaign whose purpose is to change the security situation at the border so that the residents of the north can return to their homes and resume their routine safely and with a sense of security.”
He claimed that the pre-emptive strike was aimed at thwarting threats aimed “mostly at the north, and some at the center of the country.”
This was the official IDF Spokesperson’s message, which was intended to countermand the popular name Israelis had given the attack, Operation Peace of Tel Aviv. Israeli media were rife with complaints that in the eyes of the security establishment, the blood of Tel Aviv residents is somehow redder than that of Israelis who reside along the border.
The proof was in the pudding: it took one lost life from a Houthi drone in Tel Aviv to deliver a devastating strike on the Houthis’ port city some 2,000 kilometers away. Meanwhile, fatalities from Hezbollah fire in the north are approaching fifty, and nothing even reminiscent of what was done to Yemen is being done to, say, Beirut.
The Chairman of the Line of Conflict Forum, Moshe Davidovitz, who boycotted the meeting with Gordin, told Ynet he would no longer be willing to take part in such meetings with the commander of the northern command.
“It’s a meeting that, in its essence, is meant to praise the activities of the IDF in Lebanon, and as a citizen and as the head of a municipality, when I saw what was happening, I no longer wanted to participate in this celebration,” Davidovitz told Ynet.
He also left the WhatsApp group of the heads of municipalities, “I don’t have time for another horse pucky group,” he said in frustration.
Major General Ori Gordin, 55, was born in San Diego, California, where his parents stayed during their studies.
