Bibi, bars, the Emirates and the risks of pointing the finger

Before 7 October, Israel had been experiencing months of protests. It seemed that the unity which had always underpinned the strength of the Jewish state had now broken down. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, already a divisive leader and the central figure in Israeli politics, refused to listen to his opponents, who were calling for a joint effort to bring about judicial reform, whilst his opponents did not address the substance of the reform and most of them framed it as a question of authorship: it was unacceptable because it was Bibi’s idea. Israel’s enemies watched those months of strikes and protests and became convinced that Israel was no longer what it once was; it was more fragile, more vulnerable to attack. Hamas had been planning the pogrom against the kibbutzim in southern Israel for some time; it struck when everything was in place, galvanised by the image of a country that appeared to be in disarray.

It seemed that on 7 October, the profound tragedy and collective grief might bring people together; instead, it has divided them, and the trauma has turned into a relentless, suffocating struggle that obscures the path to properly identifying where things went wrong: those who failed to keep a close eye on the Gaza Strip, those who ignored the warnings, and those who deluded themselves into believing that a terrorist could become a businessman. There is a rush to point the finger at Bibi, who, as Prime Minister, bears more than his fair share of responsibility. Bibi is rushing to shift the blame onto the army or the former head of the Shin Bet, Ronen Bar, who, after 7 October, apologised to the Israeli public but remained in his post, promising that there would be time for investigations. That time has not yet come – though this is not Bar’s fault – but shifting the blame from one office to another does nothing to help Israel heal. It is a dangerous short-circuit that reveals an apparatus now frayed at the edges. The announcement of Netanyahu’s visit to the Emirates is also a sign of this: such a trip should not have been made public before the Prime Minister’s return home. It seems there is a race on all sides to subordinate security to politics, and Israel cannot afford this.