Staggering Public Backlash Has Netanyahu Reeling!

Right, so it’s all going wrong for Benjamin Netanyahu, oh boo hoo, I’m sure your heart is breaking as much as mine is, but if he thought a ceasefire with Lebanon largely it seems on Israel’s terms was going to score him some brownie points with the people that Hezbollah’s rocket fire has displaced, it seems he was sorely wrong.
Being able to go home and rebuild their lives as some Lebanese people have been able to do has been met with relief, but in Israel? Nope. The very people who can now return home to the north of Israel, to all those places pounded by Hezbollah such as Kiryat Shalom and Nahariya are incensed. Not only do they feel that Hezbollah have been let off the hook so to speak for targeting their homes, 61% of Israelis believing Hezbollah won and beat the IDF, but they also don’t trust Netanyahu’s government when they tell them it is safe to go home, seeing him as having capitulated with none of their objectives in Lebanon achieved. Netanyahu is seen as having failed where it comes to Lebanon, as having left them unsafe and having agreed to a ceasefire far too early as also now being weak. The very people who can now go home are calling for Netanyahu to go, all of this potentially destabilising the ceasefire and are actually calling for Netanyahu to now resign over it.
Right, so this couldn’t have gone more wrong for Benjamin Netanyahu if he tried frankly. The rest of the world is pleased there is a ceasefire with Lebanon, in theory making the north of Israel much safer, but try convincing the people from there who have had to flee from Hezbollah fire having commenced from the 8th October last year that that is the case? I mean for starters why should they believe in this ceasefire any more than we do?
Israel have already broken the ceasefire, they broke it within hours, having arrested alleged Hezbollah members, killed others, denied entry to the homes for Lebanese people who have also been displaced, wounded two journalists and then held a press conference to tell the world that they’d already breached it. Since I put out a video on that just yesterday, Israel have now bombed Southern Lebanon again, allegedly targeting Hezbollah activity, but isn’t that very much a story of here we go again, they strike what they like saying it is Hezbollah, just as every building they level in Gaza is Hamas. You cannot trust them to be straight and honest in their actions, they refuse monitoring except by loyal allied nations like the US and France, they shoot journalists to prevent news of their actions getting out, it all just provides cover for their word having to be taken as read and it seems not even the people of Israel itself are prepared to do that, so why should anybody else?
Aside from that the other really important point regarding this ceasefire is that it isn’t actually a ceasefire, but a temporary, 60 day truce, so where people are being encouraged to return to their homes, they’ll be asking themselves for how long? They’ll be looking at continued strikes in Lebanon despite said ceasefire and thinking much like many commentators like myself have, in that how long will it last when Israel are clearly already ignoring it?
I’m sure Netanyahu and his government would have imagined his own people would be delighted by this ceasefire, to be able to go home, in their heads they’ve had this great victory, they’ll happily tell all and sundry the damage they figure they’ve done to Hezbollah, to destroy that organisation being their main goal, the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah was seen as a victory, the pager attack instigated by Israel’s shady cyber spy wing of the IDF, Unit 8200, was expected to cripple the organisation, but as has been proven since, it actually had no effect whatsoever and since then, we’ve seen the single largest strike on Israel by Hezbollah ever, with some 340 rockets fired and with many finding their marks far further south than ever before, the southernmost strike on the port of Ashdod, just some 20 miles north of the Gaza Strip, so actually Netanyahu’s actions in Lebanon have if anything ended up making Israel even less safe at Hezbollah’s hands.
Factor in the utter failure to advance any distance in southern Lebanon before being forced back, over 130 IDF soldiers killed, more than 1200 injured, nearly 60 of their feared Merkava tanks left in smoking ruins, multiple drones brought down, it has been catastrophic failure and so much of it played out in real time and was exposed due to the monitoring operations of UNIFIL, who I daresay given the Israeli response to Netanyahu’s ceasefire, are far more trusted in what they are telling the world, what they are reporting, than Netanyahu is.
All of that begs the question therefore as to what was in it for Israel to even agree to this ceasefire if they hadn’t achieved their goals, though of course it’s being sold as such by Netanyahu and Co as they have, but clearly people know different and with 61% of Israelis of the opinion Israel did lose, published on Israel’s Channel 13 as that poll was, with just 26% believing Israel had won, Bibi isn’t fooling anybody, so why agree to it? Didn’t believe the polls? Wants to turn the narrative to something else, like Iran, because Lebanon has been such a complete balls up, or something else?
Do they honestly believe Hezbollah has been hurt because their actions certainly imply otherwise. We’ve seen Israel talk of it’s total victory in Gaza and far right nutcase Itamar Ben Gvir use that same term in association with Lebanon too, in his opposition to this ceasefire, but their version of what counts as victory is counted in devastation, is tallied up in lives lost, the sheer number of civilian deaths meted out by the IDF in both states is catastrophic, and ultimately that is what Israeli victory at this point can be best summed up as, genocide and destruction. In that, if that is Israel’s goal, if that is what they call achievement or victory, then sure, their mission could be considered a success. If it is to rescue hostages and protect their land, their territory and their people, then they have failed utterly. Netanyahu might believe he’s done enough, a 60 day ceasefire will give time to see if that is the case, nobody is going to come down on Israel’s side over that however for as long as they themselves keep violating the ceasefire. If they are looking for evidence that they’ve beaten Hezbollah, then they’ll take their inaction as a sign of that, but if Hezbollah are just biding their time, waiting for the ceasefire to end, as it will, because Netanyahu won’t his government together if it becomes permanent, Ben Gvir has already said he’ll collapse the government if it goes beyond 60 days and then giving Israel a rude shock once it’s all over. Will it even last 60 days the way Israel have seemingly completely ignored the fact it has even started?
Ultimately the people who Netanyahu needs to convince are his own and they remain very much unconvinced.
Having a break to see if Hezbollah are truly broken also gives Hezbollah a chance to regroup and rebuild whilst keeping to the terms of the ceasefire. Israel as they continue to attack southern Lebanon continue to destroy themselves in the eyes of the world and their own people as far as meeting their concerns go and addressing them, so amongst some Israelis what Netanyahu has done is not only dishonest but also incompetent and this has even managed to be broadcast on Israeli media as Channel 12 interviewed several people driven from their homes in the north, covered in this excerpt from United Arab Emirates based news outlet National News:
‘Metula Council head David Azoulay, who represents one of the most destroyed areas in the north, told Israeli broadcaster Channel 12 he would not advise residents to return and described a meeting he held with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu late on Tuesday evening as a "a one-sided spectacle”.
"We are now entering a situation far worse than October 6, they're misleading us,” he added, referring to the long-standing fears of northern residents about Hezbollah's military build up in the region before the Gaza war began.
Father of two Tzahi David Hafsadi, 34, a resident of Kiryat Shmona, northern Israel, said his family “does not feel good about the idea”.
“I have no problem with a ceasefire but I don’t think we should stop now," Mr Hafsadi added. "I paid a price, my family paid a price, my community paid a price. I feel like we didn’t finish the job, so I don’t know why we paid this price."
Moran Brustin, 39, a mother of three who returned to Kibbutz HaGoshrim, echoed Mr Hafsadi, saying: “It’s a problem that we stopped the war and didn’t finish the job.”
“I don’t support war but it seems like nothing changed. There was a siren a few minutes ago and I had to put my kids on the floor and lie on top of them because we don’t have a safe room in the house. We need to trust our army but I think that after October 7 that’s hard, because there was no one there."’
Benjamin Netanyahu misleading his own people for his own ends, surely not? Yeah right. These people basically have as much reason to distrust Netanyahu as the people of Gaza or Lebanon, quite frankly if you lived in Israel with him in charge would you feel more or less safe?
He’s tried to pull a fast one on his own people, but they have their own eyes, they do have outspoken anti government media and almost 2 in every three people think he’s screwed up. Perhaps that more than anything is what will bring this ceasefire farce, this 60 day truce as it is, to a swifter end, because if Netanyahu thought this was a good mover for himself politically, he called it wrong.
For more details on how Israel has broken the ceasefire on literally day one, within hours of it beginning, do check out this video recommendation here as your suggested next watch and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.