New Flash! Former COS Gadi Eisenkot was just featured on the 18:00 news bulletin of Kan Radio for this posting on his Facebook page (original in Hebrew). He writes:
-Netanyahu - stop the total blurring.
-On 27/5/24 you brought to the war cabinet an agreement that was approved unanimously and in it were four principles: exchange of hostages for prisoners, permanent ceasefire, withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, and rehabilitation of the Strip in exchange for demilitarization.
-Since then, a series of excuses led to the blurring of deals that cost the blood of hostages and fighters.
-Two chiefs of staff informed you in a long series of cabinet meetings that the conditions for returning the hostages had been met.
-Political and personal considerations prevented the deal; the Hamas organization, which defines as its vision the destruction of Israel, was to be defeated in every way.
-A government that is afraid to make a necessary decision is not worthy to lead this people.
And in an article, published earlier Saturday, The New York Times Magazine claimed that Netanyahu intentionally prolonged the Gaza conflict to maintain political power.
Oops!
Here's the catch:
"in exchange for demilitarization"
A flying pig condition.
Hamas has never agreed to lay down their arms.
Demilitarization of the Gaza Strip by agreement was a dead letter from day one.
And yet the Israeli public is continually bombarded with this total falsehood claiming that political considerations are keeping 20 live and 30 dead hostages stuck in the Gaza Strip.
It is anything but a political consideration that Hamas can't remain an armed force in the Gaza Strip.
Yesterday Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu met with some of the hostage families in Washington and had both the guts and the decency to tell them the truth: that if Hamas won't agree to a demilitarized Gaza Strip then we will use our full military power to demilitarize the Gazsa Strip ourselves.
To read the complex situation like it is, go to this Spectator article by Alan Kessel, not the NY Times or Israel's leftist mainstream media.
Shame on Eisenkot for posting this lie.
Shame on Israel radio's Reshet Bet for featuring it.
Shame on whatever unnamed "sources" spoke to a foreign newspaper falsely accusing Israel's government in the midst of a war.
Shame on the New York Times for printing it, although I have no expectations from that anti-Israel paper.
Sure, it would be fantastic if there was a real "deal" out there which provided for the demilitarization of the Gaza Strip by peaceful means instead of fighting.
But like many other fantasies presented to us over the years since the start of the Oslo debacle, this pig will never fly either.
Dr. Aaron Lerner is head of IMRA - Independent Media Review and Analysis, since 1992 providing news and analysis on the Middle East with a focus on Arab-Israeli relations.