The horror of the Hamas attack was not enough for Netanyahu; he decided invent horrors that never happened

The attack by Hamas was not just an attack; it was the opportunity he had been waiting for for decades

PART TWO - THE SETUP

You have to be a special kind of monster to do what Netanyahu did once he realised the political dangers the attack on October 7th presented to his position as Prime Minister. He knew that the country would want a swift and decisive response. So he embarked on a level of deceit not only of his citizens but also of the global community, along with Israel’s allies. He disregarded the absolute horror of the attack and set about creating the false narrative of 40 beheaded babies.

I covered this in some detail in a piece I wrote on March 16th.

Let me be absolutely clear: I, like everyone, supported Israel’s right to respond. Nobody expected them to sit idly by after so many innocent Israelis had been murdered in a barbaric terrorist attack that was a war crime. I remember sitting at home with a deep sense of dread because of the false beheaded babies narrative Netanyahu was pushing at every available opportunity. It had caught fire, and there was understandable global outrage. He had even fooled the President of the United States into believing the lie, to the point where Joe Biden claimed to have seen images of said babies, which he later had to embarrassingly walk back.

He didn’t need the narrative he was creating; the truth of what happened was enough, but he deliberately chose to juice it up, because he knew exactly what he was going to do, and he wanted the story of 40 beheaded babies to give him a free pass to kill as many Palestinians as he liked without pushback. The truth is, he was not wrong in his assessment, but it proved something else to him; his lie now meant he could continue to lie with impunity.

Netanyahu had to respond strongly; aside from anything else, it was a political imperative, because he knew questions would be asked. His neck was on the line, so given the choice between killing thousands of Palestinians and likely losing large numbers of IDF personnel, it was a small price to pay to stay in power. He was a man under pressure, facing criminal corruption charges, and now he had presided over the single biggest security failure in the history of the state of Israel. It’s not until you dig into what the intelligence services knew that you understand the key failure was not that the evidence wasn’t available; they had it in their possession, but the arrogance of senior officers in the security services led them to believe that Hamas was incapable of delivering such an assault.

In a report in the New York Times in December 2023 (I have gifted the link), Ronen Bergman and Adam Goldman noted:

A blueprint reviewed by The Times laid out the attack in detail. Israeli officials dismissed it as aspirational and ignored specific warnings.

The approximately 40-page document, which the Israeli authorities code-named “Jericho Wall,” outlined, point by point, exactly the kind of devastating invasion that led to the deaths of about 1,200 people.

It also transpired that young female conscript spotters on the perimeter had observed and reported what appeared to be training exercises close to the perimeter fence. Their observations were brushed off, too.

The reporting continues:

… in July, just three months before the attacks, a veteran analyst with Unit 8200, Israel’s signals intelligence agency, warned that Hamas had conducted an intense, daylong training exercise that appeared similar to what was outlined in the blueprint.

[It] described a methodical assault designed to overwhelm the fortifications around the Gaza Strip, take over Israeli cities and storm key military bases, including a division headquarters. Hamas followed the blueprint with shocking precision.

Once again, the report was dismissed, and in a subsequent exchange of encrypted emails between the analyst and a Colonel in the Gaza Division, she unloaded:

“I utterly refute that the scenario is imaginary,” the analyst wrote in the email exchanges. The Hamas training exercise, she said, fully matched “the content of Jericho Wall.”

“It is a plan designed to start a war,” she added. “It’s not just a raid on a village.”

The bottom line was that senior intelligence figures didn’t believe Hamas was capable of such a coordinated attack, and these persistent misguided brush-offs of critical intelligence ultimately resulted in the death of over 1100 innocent Israelis and now tens of thousands of Palestinians. The key here is that Netanyahu permitted Qatar to fund Hamas for over a decade to keep them in power and prevent the furtherance of a two-state solution. This was a calculated and deliberate act because he felt he had a good understanding of Hamas's capabilities. I believe this arrogance poisoned the top levels of the Security Services, who brushed off all subsequent warnings presented to them. War has a habit of catching fire as a result of stupid mistakes, and this was one of them.

War also has the convenient side effect of postponing any detailed after-action reporting or public inquiry; thus, we are here. The other key consideration is political. Netanyahu is kept in power by a bunch of lunatic right-wing nationalists who want to see Palestinians expelled from Gaza. Bibi could see the real chance that Trump would be reelected, and for him, that was the final piece of the jigsaw. All he needed to do was massage Trump’s ego, maybe offer him a cut of the Gaza land development that Jared Kushner had long been salivating over, and he could create the perfect environment in which to settle his grudges with longstanding enemies like Hezbollah and Iran all at the same time.

Recent events clearly show that he was not wrong—a small price to pay to nominate Trump for his desperately sought-after Nobel Peace Prize. Trump is a sucker for effusive praise, and Netanyahu knows it.

You have to look at this human catastrophe through a lens where the US and Israel are as one. AIPAC has bought the legislature, so Bibi and Trump can just sit down and hatch out a plan. I firmly believe that it includes relocating the population of Gaza. Trump is already trying to put pressure on the Israeli government to drop the corruption charges against Bibi. There is no question in Netanyahu’s mind that if he can be the one to expel the Palestinians from Gaza, he will be a hero to the hard right and will be able to stay in power for the foreseeable future without fear of prosecution. All he has to do is pull all the threads together. He believes he will have decapitated Hezbollah, crippled Hamas, and silenced his old foe Iran. All that while having Trump in his pocket, not a bad year’s work in Bibi’s book.

While I think the pair may think they have things sewn up, I think they are wide of the mark. I don’t believe the Arab nations are going to allow the Palestinians to be expelled. That move would bring numerous geopolitical challenges in its wake. The thing about Trump, though, is he does know how to bully, and you never know what kind of pressure he will cook up to get his way. I also believe that many in Gaza are exhausted and do not want to live with starvation and the possibility of being killed by the IDF or an airstrike. There may now be a large number of Palestinians prepared to leave voluntarily if presented with a reasonably attractive proposition. If you were in Gaza, how would you feel?

Gaza reconstruction will take years, maybe decades, given its almost complete destruction. Just clearing unexploded ordinance alone will take forever, but this was precisely the intent of the Israeli government. To make Gaza uninhabitable, and they have largely achieved that objective. Without regard for the safety of the hostages, might I add. I fear there will be no consequences either for Netanyahu or the Israeli government, as they have ignored the UN when it suits them for decades. They are now ignoring the International Criminal Court, which the Trump administration has sanctioned; therefore, I struggle to envision what a just settlement would look like.

The international community have now lost all credibility and is, in my view, complicit in the crimes perpetrated by Israel on the Palestinian people. Tens of millions of ordinary people have taken to the streets to protest. Not only have their voices been dismissed, but they have all too often been targeted as Hamas supporters. Nowhere is this more true than in the United States, where people have had their right to remain revoked and their visas rescinded. This ties into my next main piece after this Gaza article, when I’ll be doing a deep dive into Project Esther, which is a project by the Heritage Foundation designed to deny human rights, wrapped in tackling anti-Semitism in America.

This concludes The Setup. Next, we move on to PART THREE: Deliberate Starvation.