Tabaja says his parents were trying to leave their home in southern Lebanon and were stuck in heavy traffic when they were hit by an air strike. Family members had been trying to reach them for hours, and Tabaja says eventually their burnt out BMW was found in a ditch.
He says his parents’ bodies were badly burned but his mother’s watch was found inside the vehicle.
“They bombarded the roads,” he says of the IDF. “Bombarded people who have nothing to do with this conflict.”
The path they are seeing is the path for Benjamin Netanyahu and his far right party to hold on to power for a few more years, all else be dammed.
His far right campaign and political messaging pre October 7th focused hard on how he was the only one strong enough to control Hamas, and on how he could ensure the fires of conflict would burn just hot enough that they would never find common ground and unite with the West Bank (the pretense that Isreal and the US demands they do before the West Bank authority can be recognized as a nation by the UN) but never got enough to possibly harm Isreal itself.
Between constant legal battles and scandals with Isreal’s supreme court, he was just bearly able to hold onto power when Hamas demonstrated that they clearly weren’t actually under his perfect control, and so now he needs a win a war to play the strongman and distract everyone from what he had been saying up until that point. He needs a reason to shut down media outlets criticizing him, and war powers to run over the opposition.
He also needs the votes of the farthest right of his far right party, and thusly needs to appear amenable to their position of complete Israeli annexation of the West Bank and Gaza.
All of this means that the IDF must be seen fighting a great war for the very survival of the nation, not a series of hostage rescue or series of commando raids to capture high value targets and more importantly intel. It’s also why he cannot let this end in a ceasefire or give into Hamas original terms of a hostage exchange for the Palestinians being held without charges for years in Israel, but must fight on until whatever passes to the far right as a total victory.
Little things like burning though most of Isreal’s foreign support and international reputation are at best problems for the future, and maybe even opportunities for campaigning, because when the world turned its back on Isreal only he and his party of strong men are going to be able to keep things going for the average citizen.
I agree with most of your points except for the end bit. The day the west stops suppporting Israel is the day Israel ceases to exist, unless they find new allies or make some sort of piece with at least one of their neighbours. They need to stay on the “good” side or they will slowly drain themselves of weaponry and troops.
Perhaps, but to people who have spent the last few decades in the halls of power surrounded by members of a western style military who take it as given that they are a western nation just as formidable as their close allies in Europe and Asia, the idea that the nation itself could falter in such a way is certianly far from many of their minds. Doubly so for a party that is used to bulldozing its way through critical media outlets, courts, and public protests.
They’ve had general success in previous wars with most if not all of their neighbors, and something tells me the focus in their telling is not on the massive amounts of foreign aid they received in the lead up or duration.
They may often talk about how any given threat may be an apocalyptic end of the nation, but I don’t think they actually believe it, at least when it comes to the court of public opinion in some far off foreign lands.
Could a senior politician be so disconnected from the basic reality of their situation by yes men, loyalists, and wishful thinking? Well by all accounts Putin did honestly believe the FSB’s reports that Ukrainians would welcome any Russian forces in droves as liberators, and that any conflict would be over before well before the west could respond, so I’d say yes.