An Israeli newspaper has repeated its call for Benjamin Netanyahu to resign over the security and intelligence failures that preceded the breach of the Gaza border by Hamas.
A day after the editorial board of Haaretz blamed the Israeli prime minister for the deadliest raid into Israeli territory in 50 years, the left-leaning newspaper ran an op-ed whose headline said “Netanyahu: Resign Now!”
The piece by Nehemia Shtrasler, in a paper that has repeatedly criticized Netanyahu’s time in office, said that the Hamas attack was “the worst failure in the country’s history.”
He criticized how Israeli army battalions were transferred from the Gaza border to guard settlers and when the attacks started, the Israelis living near Gaza “received no help but were abandoned to a terrible death.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is seen in Jerusalem on September 27, 2023. The newspaper Haaretz has called on him to resign.
ABIR SULTAN/Getty Images
“The shocking videos the terrorists filmed are reminiscent of the Holocaust,” wrote Shtrasler. “For such a massive failure, there is no forgiveness. There is one person to blame for this terrible disaster: Benjamin Netanyahu.”
He said the prime minister had been focusing too much on his indictment in three corruption cases that drove the push for controversial judicial reform, removing the Supreme Court‘s power to cancel government decisions it did not accept.
Netanyahu had also neglected to visit Gaza-area communities or ask questions about the Israeli army’s deployment.
“He said over and over again…Hamas is deterred and does not want war because it does not want to risk its economic achievement,” referring to the money earned by Gaza residents permitted to work in Israel.
“The tragedy is that with this money, Hamas bought pick-up trucks, machine guns, paragliders and rockets, and used them to kills us,” Shtrasler wrote, “For all these crimes, and in order to save the state of Israel, Netanyahu must resign, today.”
Some social media users have also condemned Netanyahu. Journalist David Rothkopf shared another article in Haaretz, written by Alon Pinkas, whose headline said the Israeli prime minister “Must Go Now.” “Unflinchingly, [Pinkas] describes an essential truth: Netanyahu must go now, not after the Gaza war,” Rothkopf wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
Steven Strauss wrote on X that the Israeli prime minister has “credibly been accused of massive dereliction of duty” next to an Associated Press report that Israel had ignored Egypt’s warnings about the severity of the situation in Gaza.
The historian Edward Luttwak posted how few troops were deployed in the perimeter around Gaza and so “were easily overwhelmed.”
“After the war, Netanyahu must patriotically resign,” he wrote.
Newsweek has contacted Netanyahu’s office for comment.
On Monday he said Israel had begun a war which would be “for the security of our existence” and would be one “we will win.”