Israel didn’t start this war, but Israel must finish it

On October 7, 2023, Hamas jihadists from Gaza malevolently carried out sheer wanton attacks on Israel.

In southern Israel, Hamas slaughtered more than 1,400 Israelis and injured over 4,600. Hamas also kidnapped over 200 Israelis and took them to Gaza as hostages. There is evidence of horrendous crimes committed by Hamas against their victims: torture, rape, desecration of corpses, etc.

The attacks came as a shock to those who believe the lies they are fed and, therefore, think the Gaza Strip was still ‘under Israeli occupation.’ Strangely, they do not realize the internal contradiction: the movement of thousands of terrorists would have been stopped or at least noticed by the Israeli soldiers enforcing the “occupation,” if that was the case.

In 2005, Israel completely withdrew from the Gaza Strip. In February 2005, the Knesset approved the unilateral dismantlement of all Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip, and the evacuation of all Israeli settlers and army from Gaza. In September 2005, every Israeli solider, as well as every Jewish man, woman, and child in Gaza, was expelled by the Israeli government. Even the dead were dug up for reburial inside Israel.

In 2012, Hamas admitted that Gaza is not occupied by Israel. Hamas Politburo Chief Khaled Mashaal had wanted Hamas to hold mass demonstrations against Israel inside Gaza to join those that were being organized at the time by the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority in the so-called “West Bank” (Judea and Samaria); however, Hamas Foreign Minister Mahmoud al-Zahar declared such a protest to be irrelevant. Al-Zahar stated that while the “West Bank” is “still under occupation” and that armed resistance, and other types of resistance, should be used in that territory, “popular resistance is inappropriate for the Gaza Strip.”

Al-Zahar asked, “against whom could we demonstrate in the Gaza Strip?” He added, “When Gaza was occupied, that model was applicable.”

Under international law, a hostile army must have “effective control” over a territory in an area where its authority can be exercised, to the exclusion of the territory’s established government, for it to be deemed in occupation of the area. What Hamas’ foreign minister stated on behalf of the Hamas government has been a fact since September 2005: Israel is no longer in Gaza and the Israeli government does not displace Hamas’ authority.

Yet even amidst the grief of the October 7 terrorist attacks on Israel perpetrated by Hamas—the largest mass slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust—there are things that must be said, so that they may make a permanent impression.

 

From 2005, when Israel gave up control of Gaza, it was only a matter of time before such a mass slaughter would occur.

First, there was a colossal intelligence failure that many people are comparing to the intelligence failure of the Yom Kippur War in October 1973: The IDF’s conceptual failure that blinded the General Staff to the threat Hamas posed to Israel in the months preceding the October 7 invasion.

When Khader Adnan (a top terrorist from Iranian-controlled Islamic Jihad) died in an Israeli prison after 83 days of refusing food, Islamic Jihad and Hamas began firing hundreds of rockets and mortars on Israeli communities. Instead of a firm response to the belligerence, IDF generals said they wanted to focus on restoring deterrence in the north against Hezbollah and did not want to be distracted by Hamas in Gaza, as if Israel is facing two separate theatres. An attack in Gaza resonates in Lebanon. Moreover, it is unsustainable for terrorists to attack Israel without repercussions.

Senior Hamas terrorist Ali Baraka stated in an October 8, 2023 interview that aired on Russia Today TV, and was translated by MEMRI, how Hamas duped Israel into complacency. Hamas had been secretly planning the invasion of southern Israel for two years, even as it was making it seem like it was busy governing Gaza. He indicated that this is the reason Hamas did not join the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in its previous round of fighting against Israel.

Baraka said: “We made them think Hamas was busy with governing Gaza, and that it wanted to focus on the 2.5 million Palestinians there, and has abandoned the resistance altogether. All the while, under the table, Hamas was preparing for this big attack.”

Furthermore, in recent months, former defence minister Moshe Ya’alon, and former chiefs of general staff Ehud Barak and Dan Halutz called for soldiers and police to disobey lawful orders.

In February 2023, a squadron of reserve Air Force fighter pilots announced they would not serve in reserves if the Netanyahu government continued with its plan to place minimal limits on the powers of the Supreme Court and Attorney General; using their position to extort the government and the public that voted for it. Similarly, other leftist reservists from technology, artillery and other units announced they would not serve in reserves if the Netanyahu government continued with its plan.

In July 2023, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the danger to the country posed by IDF reservists who threaten to refuse to serve if the government advances judicial reform legislation. At the weekly Cabinet meeting, Netanyahu said: “It is impossible for there to be a group within the army that threatens the elected government [and says] if you don’t do as we wish, we will turn off the switch on security.”

300 reserve members of the elite General Staff Reconnaissance Unit (Sayeret Matkal) had announced they won’t serve if judicial reform continues.

The Israeli government’s judicial reform plan, if passed in full, will realign Israel’s currently unchecked judiciary with the checked judiciaries of advanced democracies. Its main components include: placing judicial appointments under political control; requiring justices to base their judgments on the law, rather than the vague “reasonableness”; banning the Supreme Court from amending or overriding Israel’s Basic laws, which serve as Israel’s quasi-constitution; placing constraints on the Supreme Court’s power to abrogate laws duly promulgated by the Knesset, while providing the Knesset with a mechanism for overriding the Court’s decisions; and preventing the attorney general’s opinions from binding the government that he purportedly serves.

In Israel, Basic Laws have quasi-constitutional status, and serve as the source of the Supreme Court’s ability to strike down legislation. Recently, the Israeli Supreme Court held a 13.5-hour hearing on judicial reform indicating that the court intends to violate Israel’s Basic Laws, until now treated as inviolable by the court itself.

The government stated in its response to the court’s review of a recently passed amendment to Basic Law: The Judiciary, restricting the court’s ability to strike down legislation based on whether the court finds the legislation “reasonable:”

“This esteemed Court is prohibited from granting relief concerning the validity of a Basic Law or an amendment to a Basic Law… judicial review of constitutional amendments does not exist in any lawful Western country without explicit authorization in the constitution itself.”

Israeli Justice Minister Yariv Levin criticized the Supreme Court for taking up the case, because it has no legal grounds on which to do so. Levin said, “Presidents and justices of the Supreme Court over the generations all agreed—the people is the sovereign, and its will is represented in Basic Laws legislated by the Knesset.”

The quasi-constitution Basic Laws should not be open to court interference, just as the U.S. Supreme Court cannot strike down parts of the U.S. Constitution.

Nevertheless, the outgoing Israeli Supreme Court President Esther Hayut indicated during the hearing that the Supreme Court could violate Israel’s Basic Laws.

On September 28, 2023, the Supreme Court conducted a hearing on a petition calling for it to strike down an amendment to a Basic Law, dealing with the court’s ability to remove a prime minister from office.

It is not the norm in advanced democracies for the courts to have the ability to remove the head of the government from office. In America for example, the U.S. Supreme Court lacks the power to remove the U.S. President from office.

The amendment to Israel’s Basic Law: The Government, limits the circumstances under which a sitting prime minister can be removed from office It states a prime minister can only be removed if he announces he is physically or mentally incapable of fulfilling his duties, or if 75% of Cabinet ministers and 80 Knesset members request that he be removed. Its explanatory notes state that to remove a sitting prime minister under any other conditions would annul the election results and the democratic process.

Furthermore, for nearly a year, the left-wing minority that lost the last election kept presenting itself as “the majority.” Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, whose Meretz Party did not even get elected to the Knesset in the last election, kept referring to himself as “We the people,” because the media backed his ridiculous claim, while castigating the democratically-elected government’s effort to pass democratically the judicial reform plan it ran on, as a coup d’état against democracy.

Since at least March 2023, Barak has been scheming for a “counter-revolution” (essentially, a coup d’état) to bring down the Netanyahu government. In a speech in June 2023, Barak urged demonstrators against the Netanyahu government’s judicial reform program to revolt.

In July 2023, Israeli Public Diplomacy Minister Galit Distel-Atbaryan, exposed Barak’s alleged longstanding plan to bring down Netanyahu’s government; describing an interview of Barak on Forum 555 (a group of retired pilots and navigators) on the plan that included deliberately inflaming the civilian population, creating a false representation of a danger to democracy, and bankrolling protests, including purchasing flags. Reportedly during the interview, Barak said, “A friend of mine, a historian, once told me, ‘Ehud, they will call you when bodies are floating in the Yarkon River [in north Tel Aviv].’ I wish to stress: not the bodies of illegally residing Palestinians from the territories will be floating, and not Israeli Arabs. The floating bodies will be of Jews that were killed by Jews.”

In July 2023, Israeli Transport Minister Miri Regev asked Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara for an investigation to be opened against Barak for allegedly inciting a coup d’état.

 

Meanwhile, Iran media has been propagating statements by Israeli opposition leaders and retired generals predicting Israel’s imminent collapse and calling for IDF soldiers to refuse orders to serve.

Quoting these statements, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps commander Hossein Salami, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, and various Hamas and Islamic Jihad commanders and preachers declared that Israel is falling apart and its destruction is imminent, and called for their jihadist forces to prepare for victory.

Hamas could have reckoned that the recent mass left-wing protests over the government’s effort to pass democratically the judicial reform plan it ran on, and statements by Israeli opposition leaders and retired generals predicting Israel’s imminent collapse and calling for IDF soldiers to refuse orders to serve, created an atmosphere of domestic distraction and an erosion of deterrence.

The blame for Israel’s enemies’ current sense of empowerment, where Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran believe they can attack Israel with impunity, also belongs to the previous government; the Lapid-Bennett government that took no action to fight their growing military capabilities in Gaza and Lebanon until after it had fallen in a no-confidence vote and elections were called, because it was dependent for its existence on the Muslim Brotherhood’s Ra’am Party.

Israel did not start this war with Hamas, but Israel must finish it. May God watch over the people of Israel and those in charge of their defence. And may God crown their efforts with victory.

 

Dr. Sheyin-Stevens is a Registered Patent Attorney based in Florida, USA. He earned his Doctorate in Law from the University of Miami.