The disaster that befell Israel on the holiday of Simchat Torah is the clear responsibility of one person: Benjamin Netanyahu. The prime minister, who has prided himself on his vast political experience and irreplaceable wisdom in security matters, completely failed to identify the dangers he was consciously leading Israel into when establishing a government of annexation and dispossession, when appointing Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir to key positions, while embracing a foreign policy that openly ignored the existence and rights of Palestinians…

Above all, the danger looming over Israel in recent years has been fully realized. A prime minister indicted in three corruption cases cannot look after state affairs, as national interests will necessarily be subordinate to extricating him from a possible conviction and jail time. This was the reason for establishing this horrific coalition and the judicial coup advanced by Netanyahu, and for the enfeeblement of top army and intelligence officers, who were perceived as political opponents. The price was paid by the victims of the invasion in the Western Negev.

And, on Sunday, the Times of Israel chimed in,

For years, the various governments led by Benjamin Netanyahu took an approach that divided power between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank — bringing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to his knees while making moves that propped up the Hamas terror group. The idea was to prevent Abbas — or anyone else in the Palestinian Authority’s West Bank government — from advancing toward the establishment of a Palestinian state. Thus, amid this bid to impair Abbas, Hamas was upgraded from a mere terror group to an organization with which Israel held indirect negotiations via Egypt, and one that was allowed to receive infusions of cash from abroad.

Most of the time, Israeli policy was to treat the Palestinian Authority as a burden and Hamas as an asset. Far-right MK Bezalel Smotrich, now the finance minister in the hardline government and leader of the Religious Zionism party, said so himself in 2015. According to various reports, Netanyahu made a similar point at a Likud faction meeting in early 2018, when he was quoted as saying that those who oppose a Palestinian state should support the transfer of funds to Gaza, because maintaining the separation between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza would prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.

I cannot help but think back to 2001, and the absolutely supine reaction of the American press to the attacks of 9/11. The flag pins. The abandonment of any skepticism that allowed the Bush Administration to dodge its responsibility for the biggest US intelligence failure since Pearl Harbor. The fog of patriotic bombast that allowed the mini-Caesars and laptop bombardiers to drag us all into a war in Iraq based of lies and stovepiped intelligence. Imagine a major American news operation that wrote as ferociously about the Bush administration’s failures on September 12, 2001 as Haaretz wrote on this past Sunday. Imagine if there were as searching an examination of American meddling in the Middle East as the one that Times of Israel made of the current Israeli government’s attempt to use Hamas as a hammer on the idea of a two-state solution. If you can imagine those things, I commend you, because I can’t. However, I admire the journalists in Israel who, literally under fire, nonetheless are fulfilling their obligations to hold accountable the people in power who are now running a war. It’s a testimony to democracy far more eloquent than any flag pin or the biggest bouquet of yellow ribbons.