Israel: No Victory in War; No Political Redirection

Journalists and pundits are assessing what Israel has and hasn’t accomplished as they mark the half-year anniversary of Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel and Israel’s retaliatory war on Gaza. 

Haaretz columnist, Amos Harel writes, “After six months, few of the Israel-Gaza war’s goals have been achieved…. Today it is clear to everyone – other than blind followers – that the promises of “total victory” that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made every other day are totally worthless.”

Haaretz columnist Zvi Barel concurs with other leading observers that while Israel’s total victory and the destruction of Hamas are beyond reach and many of its basic political and security assumptions have been proven false, it has “no realistic exit strategy” from Gaza.

The basic assumptions, conceptions, and paradigms that were assiduously fostered and taken as gospel…collapse[d] in a thunderous roar…. Within six months, the blanket of trust that prevailed in Israel's defense doctrine and the strategy that translated it into action have evaporated….Israel is now operating ad hoc and out of confusion, based on daily developments on the ground, and with no realistic exit strategy.

Reuters reported that in October 2023 Hamas’s Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigade consisted of 40,000 fighters. Israel’s optimistic estimate is that it has killed 13,000 Hamas fighters since then. Hamas claims it has lost 6,000 fighters. The actual number is likely somewhere in between. Even according to Israel’s high estimate, more than half of Hamas fighters remain at large. Israel has killed over 2 civilians for every fighter.

The high level of civilian casualties is in part due to Israel’s extensive use of automated targeting. An investigation by +972 Magazine and Local Call led by Yuval Abraham revealed that the Israeli army has deployed an artificial intelligence targeting program known as “Lavender” to identify 37,000 suspected militants of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), including low-ranking ones, as potential bombing targets. During the first weeks of the war, the army relied especially heavily on Lavender. Humans often functioned as “rubber stamps” for its decisions, devoting only about 20 seconds to verifying them, despite knowing that the program’s rate of mistaken identification is about 10%.

Another automated program called “Where’s Daddy?” tracks Hamas operatives and targets them for death when they are at home with their families. Rules of engagement permit killing as many as 100 civilians when targeting a high-ranking Hamas commander, 15 or 20 for a junior officer.

The failure of the Israeli government to achieve its war objectives despite these high tech innovations has impelled it to take aggressive risks, like the assassination of the commander of Iran’s Al Quds Force in Lebanon and Syria, General Mohammad Reza Zahedi (Hassan Mahadawi), in a consular building next to the Iranian Embassy in Damascus, together with seven other Revolutionary Guards senior officers. Embassies are considered the sovereign territory of a country. So, this was an escalation in Israel’s attacks on Iran, taken without prior consultation or notification with the United States. Prime Minister Netanyahu has long sought to embroil the United States in a war with Iran.

Against the background of worse-than-anticipated military results, an increased danger of escalation with Iran and its regional allies, the continuing evacuation of some 60,000 Israeli residents from the border area with Lebanon, the deaths of some 570 Israeli soldiers in Gaza since October 7, and the failure to free additional hostages since November, street protests against Netanyahu and his government have resumed.

On Saturday April 6 as many as 100,000 Israelis rallied in 50 locales, including Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Be’er Sheva, Haifa, and Caesarea (Netanyahu’s private residence). One group of families leading the previously apolitical “Bring Them (the hostages) Home” campaign has united with protesters opposed to the Netanyahu government and its conduct of the war. The demonstrations called for early elections and an immediate deal to secure the release of the hostages remaining in Gaza. Protesters in Tel-Aviv marched towards the headquarters of the Histadrut labor union to call for a general strike.

In Tel-Aviv, police forcefully dispersed demonstrators, and a driver intentionally rammed his car into protesters, injuring 5. Both incidents reflect the long-term deterioration of civil public norms which the war has dramatically accelerated. Free speech, a free press, academic freedom, and the right to public assembly have all been assailed by government supporters and openly fascist organizations, like “Im Tirtzu” (If you will it, an illusion to the epigraph of Herzl’s utopian novel Altneuland).

Im Tirtzu has targeted dissident academics, primarily Palestinian citizens of Israel. Several have been fired, suspended from their jobs, and investigated by the police. Student pressure at Hebrew University resulted in the suspension of Prof. Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian after she initiated a petition accusing Israel of genocide. When her suspension was lifted, students mounted a campaign to demand that she apologize. Im Tirtzu agitation led to the suspension of Regev Nathanson, a lecturer at Sapir College, for signing a petition of the US-based Academics for Peace calling for an immediate halt of transfer of all offensive arms and related funds to Israel.

Consequently, the Swedish Varieties of Democracy Institute’s 2024 Index dropped Israel from the ranks of “liberal democracies” to an “electoral democracy.” Palestinian citizens have long quipped that Israel is “democratic for Jews and Jewish for Arabs.”

But no political savior is in sight.

Despite his call for early elections in September, former IDF chief-of staff and head of the National Unity Party, Benny Gantz, who is currently polling as Netanyahu’s most likely successor as prime minister, is retaining his seat in the national unity war cabinet. “The war most not stop,” he said. Nathan Thrall, a Jerusalem-based expert on the conflict and the author of A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy told CNN, Gantz “does not have a significantly different set of ideas for Gaza or for the future of Israel, Palestine or for Palestinian sovereignty.” The plan for Gaza of Gantz’s political partner and fellow war cabinet minister, Gadi Eisenkot (another former chief-of-staff), is “very similar” to “Netanyahu’s wholly unrealistic plan.”

Yair Lapid, the leader of the opposition “Yesh Atid” (There is a Future) party, similarly supports the war though not Netanyahu himself. He vehemently rejected the UN Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire, proclaiming it “dangerous, unfair, and Israel will not accept it.”

Despite the sharpening political debate over the fates of Netanyahu and the hostages, the vast majority of Jewish Israelis continue to support the war in Gaza. They are frightened, traumatized, and politically disoriented. A large minority would support an even higher level of civilian Palestinian casualties and more massive destruction of the Gaza Strip. Many believe the government’s propaganda that international outrage over Israel’s devastating assaults on Palestinian civilians, international aid workers, journalists, and Gaza’s physical, medical, educational, and cultural infrastructure is motivated by antisemitism or naivete.

Meron Rappoport explained in +972, “Halting the Gaza war means recognizing that Israel’s military goals were unrealistic — and that it cannot escape a political process with the Palestinians.” The great majority of Israeli Jews are not yet ready for this.